Lorenz Schwaninger: [Talking to his daughter Fani, who is also Franz Jägerstätter's wife, about Franz's imprisonment and the resultant mistreatment that the family is facing] Better to suffer injustice than to do it.
Closing Title Card: ...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. -George Eliot
Ohlendorf - The Painter: What we do, is just create... sympathy. We create-- We create admirers. We don't create followers. Christ's life is a demand. You don't want to be reminded of it. So we don't have to see what happens to the truth. A darker time is coming... when men will be more clever. They won't fight the truth, they'll just ignore it. I paint their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head. How can I show what I haven't lived? Someday I might have the courage to venture, not yet. Someday I'll... I'll paint the true Christ.
Fr. Fürthauer: Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth? Could it possibly please God? He wants us to have peace, happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves.
Captain Herder: There's a difference between the kind of suffering we can't avoid and a suffering we choose.
Captain Herder: We all have blood on our hands. No one is innocent. Crying, bloodshed, everywhere. He who created this world. He created evil. Conscious makes cowards of us all. Take care, my friend. The Antichrist is clever. He uses a man's virtues to mislead him.
Prisoner: Your God has no pity. He left us. Abandoned us. Like he did your Christ, His son.
Franz Jägerstätter: What comes next is seldom better.
Franz Jägerstätter: They seem to have more freedom, and to know more of peace and happiness, though they are only unreasoning animals, than we humans do. We who have the gift of understanding.
Waldland: The sun shines on good and evil the same.
Waldland: The more in chains the madder.
Waldland: I wish I'd had a wife. And a farm. And apple trees, and a cherry tree. And... Maybe some grapes. We should do our own wine: white wine and red wine. When red wine for the winter, and white wine for the summer.
Franz Jägerstätter: I don't know everything. A man may do wrong, and he can't get out of it to make his life clear. Maybe he'd like to go back, but he can't. But I have this feeling inside me, that I can't do what I believe is wrong.

Judge Lueben: Do you have a right to do this?

Franz Jägerstätter: Do I have a right not to?
Fr. Fürthauer: God doesn't care what you say. Only what's in your heart
Fani Jägerstätter: You said knock - it will be opened. Ask - it will be given.
[first lines]

Franz Jägerstätter: [narrating] I thought that we could build our nest high up, in the trees. Fly away, like birds - to the mountains.
Title Card: During World War II, every Austrian soldier called up for active duty was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.
Mayor Kraus: This is what happens when a world dies. Men survive. But their life is gone. Their life is gone! Their reason for living.
Franz Jägerstätter: [interal monologue] Once you never forgave anyone... judged people without mercy. Now you see your own weakness... so you can understand the weakness of others.

A Hidden Life Quotes

Extended Reading

A Hidden Life short comments

Sonia 2022-03-27 09:01:18

"Ask, and it will be given to you...Knock, and the door will be opened to you." This passage of the Bible in Hidden Life is so beautiful, Terrence Malik is constantly expanding the beauty of the movie, constantly resisting, Fighting against the mess of life, a humble and elegant person rare among contemporary filmmakers, picks up everything in nature and resists human forgetting. I can't help but ask myself again: Do you dare to be at any time, no matter what kind of danger you face, no matter what the sturdy high wall is behind you, no matter how many seemingly right voices you turn your back on, how many people you love and how many people you love The person who loves you, do you really dare to pay any responsibility you can for the truth, faith, morality and conscience you believe in, even at the cost of your life? I will always be responsible for what I say and do, say what I believe, I criticize, it's easy, the question is do you really dare, when you face death is the only way to achieve freedom when?
Elenora 2022-04-22 07:01:47

I found out that I have the super power to automatically fall into a coma halfway through watching a long and beautiful movie and thus get a better movie viewing experience. I often automatically log off when others are bored, and the movie can be better when I wake up! To reiterate the afterthought of "The Tree of Life", Malick's shots of animals and gods are not people (characters). The protagonist's decision seems to be political, but in fact it is more instinctive and religious, so there is no need to talk about utility and no need to debate, such as animal migration, saint sacrifice, narrative is only a few words, analysis is not necessary, only the most magnificent of the will itself is presented. Aesthetic is enough. In this film, this kind of tragic beauty is placed in the same place as idyll and primitive agriculture, and it is opposed to war, bureaucracy, and modernity. Modernity thus means the disintegration of divinity. Modern people do not ask whether morality is right or wrong. Useless. Is this Malick's answer to contemporary activists? Going back to the classics, acting like the old gods, instead of following the crowd like the new?