A Hid­den Life – first look review

Ter­rence Malick’s breath­tak­ing new epic is book­end­ed by a promise made by two lovers to one anoth­er, a ten­der call and response that seems to bridge an infi­nite dis­tance and spans an end­less length of time, reach­ing all the way to the heav­ens. In the first instance we hear a husband’s solemn vow – prayer-like in its hushed, assur­ing tone – that he and his wife will one day build a nest togeth­er, high up in the mountains.

As the voice soft­ly falls away the frame nar­rows and we’re sud­den­ly trans­port­ed back to Nazi Ger­many cir­ca the late 1930s. Boxy black-and-white archive footage shows Adolf Hitler parad­ing before an adult­ing crowd – flags wav­ing ecsta­t­i­cal­ly, right arms extend­ed in stiff salu­ta­tion – before cut­ting to a still more sober­ing clip from Leni Riefenstahl’s infa­mous film about the Nurem­berg Ral­lies, The Tri­umph of the Will.

A few hun­dred miles away, farm­ers Franz (August Diehl) and Fani Jäger­stät­ter (Valerie Pach­n­er), are rais­ing their three young girls in St Rade­gund, a small vil­lage set in the idyl­lic foothills of the Aus­tri­an Alps. In flash­back we see the moment when the couple’s eyes first met, Mal­ick spend­ing time savour­ing the sweet spring of their romance before jump­ing ahead to the point at which their world is shat­tered by the news that war has bro­ken out across Europe.

Con­flict invari­ably results in fam­i­lies being bro­ken up and whole com­mu­ni­ties being destroyed, and this is accel­er­at­ed in Franz and Fani’s case by his refusal to fight for the Nazis (Aus­tri­an men of a cer­tain age were auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­script­ed dur­ing World War Two). Fuelled by pro­pa­gan­da, peer pres­sure and fear, the oth­er res­i­dents quick­ly turn on them, prompt­ing Franz to agree to par­take in basic train­ing. But he knows he can’t go any fur­ther after this, that what he is being coerced into is wrong despite his neigh­bours and the church try­ing to con­vince him otherwise.

Sev­er­al years go by. By now Franz has joined oth­er con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in a mil­i­tary prison in Berlin. Back home, Fani con­tin­ues to work the land and look after the kids, who are grow­ing up fast. As more and more time pass­es – the chang­ing sea­sons cap­tured in crisp widescreen by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Jörg Wid­mer – their faith is test­ed and even­tu­al­ly their hope begins to fade. But the light nev­er goes out.

Indeed, even in the film’s dark­est moments, Mal­ick ensures that light floods every frame: it pours in through the stone-brick door­ways of Frantz and Fani’s farm­house; the stained glass win­dows of the church where she goes to seek coun­sel; and the sky­light of the cell­block where he dreams of the day they will meet again.

What a won­der­ful­ly poet­ic way of illus­trat­ing the eter­nal bond between two peo­ple. Of course, there is plen­ty of ele­gant prose to rein­force this feel­ing too. In voiceover we hear extracts from some of the let­ters the real-life Franz and Fani wrote to each oth­er dur­ing this ter­ri­ble peri­od of forced sep­a­ra­tion. It’s heart­break­ing but, com­ple­ment­ed by James New­ton Howard’s lush orches­tral score, pro­found­ly mov­ing in a way that only Mal­ick films seem capa­ble of. Per the title – lift­ed from the clos­ing pas­sage of George Eliot’s ​‘Mid­dle­march’ – their cor­re­spon­dence is a beau­ti­ful reminder of the impor­tance of stay­ing true to one’s principles.

Return­ing to Hitler, it’s curi­ous that the sec­ond time he appears in A Hid­den Life it’s in a more infor­mal set­ting; relaxed and smil­ing at his Eagle’s Nest retreat, high up in the moun­tains. What exact­ly are we sup­posed to infer from this? Well, there’s a line of dia­logue towards the end the film which I think may con­tain the answer.

Hav­ing been sen­tenced to death for fail­ing to pledge alle­giance to the Führer, Franz is told by his priest that God does not judge a man by what he says but what is in his heart. Hitler believed that the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by the Nazis were jus­ti­fied because he was being guid­ed by a high­er pow­er. But while he may have claimed to love anoth­er human being and evi­dent­ly enjoyed his down­time, his heart was irrefutably filled with hate.

Malick’s mes­sage is clear: van­quish­ing evil requires indi­vid­u­als to take a stand, to recog­nise what is right and what is wrong. So beware of false prophets; nev­er stop hold­ing on to love and hope; above all, don’t let hate in. For Franz and Fani, the path to sal­va­tion begins and ends in Rade­gund, high up in the moun­tains. Giv­en the uncer­tain, deeply polarised times we live in, what could be a more beau­ti­ful and poignant sen­ti­ment than that.