Exceeded word count...09/03/2020

Winona 2022-03-21 09:02:59

A peaceful and moving film about an ordinary person who insisted on fulfilling his beliefs in the torrent of history and was finally executed. While watching I couldn't help but wonder if I had the courage to make the same choice. The conclusion is that I can't do it. My heart is far from being strong enough to refuse lies like the protagonist, stick to my beliefs, and choose a more difficult path. Even if others don't understand, even if you can't be sure whether your judgment is correct, even if your behavior doesn't change much, even if you know that this choice is life and death, it will also affect your family. Has the protagonist experienced a struggle in his heart, and has he ever had a wave of faith? Although the director did not focus on expressing the male protagonist's mental journey, he still felt his pain, confusion, disappointment and anger in his contemplative back and in the words and expressions in conversation with others. Hope seemed so close, but God's miracle didn't come in the end. The lover called his name over and over again, and the peaceful and beautiful pastoral life in the past returned to the eyes, and the protagonist finally accepted the ending of his own death calmly. This is not a heroic feat, and martyrdom seems to be too majestic, just an ordinary person, who lived faithfully a hidden life, like a bucket of water that flows into an endless river, and finally merges with the land and mountains , exists for eternity. History is still moving forward, life has to go on, these ordinary people are just there quietly, waiting for us to meet them again.

View more about A Hidden Life reviews

Extended Reading

A Hidden Life quotes

  • 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