Terrence Malick's "Day in Heaven" is praised for its picturesque images and infectious music, but it has also been criticized for its inability to express emotions: although We have seen an explosion of passion in the fatal love triangle, but somehow, all emotions are like warm water, and they seem to be not strong enough. If you only consider what the adults did in the story, that is indeed the case. But when I re-watched this 1978 movie recently, an unprecedented belief hit me: This story told by a teenage girl is about her, and the theme is how the hope and joy in her heart are overwhelmed. . We can't feel all the passion in the adult's heart, because it does not belong to her: we can only observe those passions as phenomena from a certain distance, just like observing the weather or the locust plague that heralds the ending.
The film took place in the years before World War I. Outside of Chicago, Bill (Richard Gere [Richard Gere]) had a dispute with a foreman of a steel mill and killed him, and then he had a relationship with his lover Abby (Brooke Adams) and his sister Linda (Linda Manz [Linda Manz]) Hop on the train to Texas together. It was just in time for the harvest, and three people found work in the large wheat fields of the farmer (Sam Shepard). Bill tells the others that Abby is his sister.
Once, another worker on the farm hinted that the relationship between the two was more than that, and Bill had a fight with him.
The farmer fell in love with Abby and asked her to stay after the harvest. Bill overhears the conversation between the farmer and the doctor and discovers that the farmer may only have one year left. So he came up with an idea similar to "The Wings of the Dove" (1997), suggesting that Abby marry the farmer-after his death, the two will eventually get enough money to live. Good day. Linda’s voice confided on the soundtrack: “He’s tired of living like everyone else, arching his nose in the gutter like a pig.” But then she found that the farmer was “not sicker. But just keeping it as it is, the doctor must have given him some pills or something."
The farmer saw Bill and Abby behave too tenderly together. He felt that this was not the relationship between brothers and sisters, so he confronted Bill. Bill left in an aerial circus plane. Abby, the farmer, and Linda lived happily for a year, and as a result, Bill returned at harvest time. The question of burial surfaced once again, with biblical disasters as the background: locust plagues, wheat field fires, murder, loss, and exile.
"Day in Heaven" is first of all one of the most beautiful movies ever. Malik does not want to make the story a melodrama, his purpose is to show loss. The movie has an elegy atmosphere. He captured beauty and loneliness on the endless Texas prairie. There are hardly many interior scenes in the first hour of the film. The laborers of the farm camped under the stars and worked in the fields. Even the farmer was fascinated by the weather and clumsily patched the weather vane on the top of his Gothic villa. The movie puts the characters in a large background full of natural details, including sky, river, fields, horses, farmers and rabbits. Many of Malik's shots were taken at the "golden hour" close to dawn and dusk, with the shadows being diluted and the sky tones similar. Ennio Morricone's famous soundtrack emphasizes these images, citing the "Carnival of Animals" by Saint-Saëns. Music is full of longing and lost regrets: the atmosphere is a bit like the theme of "The Godfather", but not so gorgeous, more like a memorial to the past rather than an experience of the present. The voice of speaking is always at a certain distance, and there is also the rumble of thunder in the distance.
Against this background, the story is told in a very interesting way. We do see that certain segments between the three adult characters are emotional. (Bill advises Abby to accept the farmer’s proposal. When the two were together, Abby realized that he was starting to fall in love with him. Bill and the farmer also had a brief exchange, but no one talked about what was already obvious. Side.) But everything they said together couldn't be compared with Linda Manz's lingering voice-over.
Manz was 16 years old when the film was shot, a little older than the role he played. Her face sometimes looks thin and unremarkable, but other times it is amazingly beautiful (especially in a shot where her face is illuminated by firelight surrounded by darkness). Her voice tells us everything we need to know about her role (even about the actor herself, because it is so special). She has a calm tone, no emotion, a feeling of resignation, and a peculiar Eastern accent.
The whole story is told by Manz. But her words are not so much narrative as they are comments, supplementary notes and footnotes accompanying the event. We felt that her words were to rebuild what happened at that time many years later, and these things appeared before our eyes for the first time. She almost appeared in the narration at the beginning of the movie ("My brother used to tell people they are brothers and sisters", this sentence is more complicated than it seems). She was still there until the other characters disappeared. She is the teller of the story.
We learned that this child survived the difficult times. She has learned to protect herself, not to make a fuss even in the worst case. Her voice sounded completely believable, almost not like a performance. I still remember when I watched this movie for the first time, the few sentences she said at the end shocked me. The three men drifted on the river in a boat. The development of the situation was terrible, and the day of paradise was gone forever. She said: "You can see the people on the shore, but it's too far, you can't see what they are doing. They might be calling for help or something-or they might be burying someone or something."
This is the voice of the narrator, and it also explains why the choice of "Days in Heaven" is correct-Malik uses an indirect way to express the love triangle, and it seems that emotions are filtered out. Children know that adults will be seized by sudden passions between each other, but their first concern is how these passions affect themselves: Will I be safer because of these emotional changes? Will you receive more care?
Since its release, there have been more and more legends surrounding "Day in Heaven". Malek, who was born in 1943, filmed "Badlands" with newcomers Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen in 1973. Five years later, he filmed "Day in Heaven" and then faded out of people's sight. Because this movie is so unforgettable, Malik’s disappearance has a mystery similar to Salinger’s disappearance. People have heard that he lives in Paris, or San Francisco, or Montana, or Austin. I heard that he is dying, or is preparing for the next movie, or writing a novel, or a drama. In the late 1990s, Malik finally returned to work and produced "The Thin Red Line" (The Thin Red Line). Through the film’s narrative, meticulous depiction of the natural world, and the sadness of facing death, he regained his previous experience. The things of concern.
The great photography of "Heaven's Gate" brings up another mystery. The photographer for the subtitles was Nestor Almendros from Cuba. He won an Oscar for this film. "Day in Paradise" established his reputation in the United States. Later, he went further in the United States. A great success. There is also a line of subtitles at the end of the film: "Additional photography: Haskell Wexler". Wexler is also one of the greatest photographers. This subtitle has always irritated him, and once he wrote to me that he was sitting in the theater holding a stopwatch and trying to prove that more than half of the negatives were made by him. The reason why he could not be in the forefront of subtitles is not only personal, but also related to the studio’s policy, but this does not hinder the fact that two great photographers created this film together, and the picture will be Clearly stay in our memory.
What are the main points of "Day in Heaven"? ——Is it the climax part? Or is it the message it conveys? The director of a movie is someone who knows how something feels and how to evoke such feelings in the audience. This feeling came from a child who first did not have a stable life, then found a sense of security and happiness, and then lost all of them-but she held back her tears and said it was nothing.
Excerpt from "The Great Movie" [America] Roger Ebert
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