Days of Heaven , Film analysis

 

Terrence Malick’s 1978 film, Days of Heaven, is a visually driven film and a treat for the eyes. The film is shot in real-life locations instead of using CGI or artificial sets. The film makes a bold decision of having its majority component shot during the magic hour, which pays off as it gives the film a feeling of warmth. It’s highly dependent on the natural light of its surroundings rather than using artificial lights, which makes each frame look like a painting. It creates a visual experience that gives it a touch of timelessness and profoundness, which goes hand in hand with the themes explored in its narratives, simple yet profound and timeless. The visual style is not an isolated creative decision based on aesthetics but rather a tool that deepens the film’s exploration of subjects such as love, greed, betrayal, and especially the transient nature of human life. The film is shot with an emphasis on naturalism and intimacy. It makes use of wide shots which help the viewers appreciate the vast landscape of the countryside. The wide shots repeatedly capture the vastness of the Texas wheat fields, and at the same time, it dwarfs its characters by framing them as small, almost insignificant figures against the enormity of nature. This imagery evokes a sense of awe and isolation, reinforcing the themes of humanity’s vulnerability and the grandeur of the natural world. It symbolizes how small they are both literally and metaphorically, in the larger scheme of things. This technique of dwarfing characters is not limited to its cinematography and imagery but is further embedded by blending it with sound.

The sound design of the film is as carefully crafted as its visuals, creating a layered and immersive experience that draws the audience into its world. Sound in the film plays a dual role. It enhances the realism of the environment while also contributing to the poetic and emotional atmosphere. For instance, one way this is achieved is by having the sound of animals on the farm or the locust, which symbolizes catastrophe, as loud. But the dialogue is extremely low, almost quiet, which achieves both realism since it’s set on a huge farmland as well as complements the insignificance of its characters in its cinematography. Another place where we witness this blend of sound and visuals is in the film’s beginning. The film provides a contrast between industrial Chicago and the countryside by providing it gritty imagery, representing the cold and dirty city life that Bill runs away from after killing a man and escapes to the beautiful, warm, lush farmlands. This contrast is further deepened by the element of sound. The factory Bill worked in was extremely loud and unpleasant, whereas the countryside he escaped to was quiet and soothing. Just like the cinematography, the sound in the film is imperative for its narrative too.

The narrator of the story is Bill’s girlfriend’s younger sister, Linda. This is probably the reason behind the title of the film, “The Days of Heaven”. Since her days on the farmland were like days of heaven. Before that and after that is a struggle. Bill is a murderer and a greedy man who lies about his relationship and further convinces the woman he loves, Abby, to marry the sick and wealthy farmer to con him. And later on, he regrets his decision and ends up killing the farmer and getting caught. Abby, on the other hand, is conflicted by her decision of marrying the farmer and having to choose between the two, as well as faces a moral dilemma for the same. Coupled with the economic distress. In this situation, Linda is the only one who’s truly innocent and pure. While aware of her surroundings, since she was a child, she’s less distressed and overall enjoys her time with the animals, birds, and the scenic beauty of the farmland. In this manner, the narration by Linda presents the film through an introspective lens and gives it a dream-like state. Furthermore, the director flexes his technical prowess by blurring the lines between the diegetic and non-diegetic nature of this narration. The narration often feels like it comes from a grown-up/future version of Linda, reflecting on the events of her past with a mix of clarity and poetic abstraction. Although she is a child during the events of the film, her narration occasionally provides insights or observations she may not have fully understood at the time. The narration is often used to complement the film’s visual and emotional tone rather than directly interacting with the diegetic world. All of which makes the narration seem non-diegetic. However, the fact that Linda’s voice is deeply tied to her character and offers an intimate, subjective account of the story makes it seem as if she’s recounting the events and reflecting on them internally. Furthermore, the unpolished, conversational style of Linda’s narration gives it a naturalistic quality, making it feel like an organic part of the film’s world rather than being separated from it.

Even though the film was released in 1978, the Mise-en-scène along with some other cues tells the audience that it’s set in the backdrop of World War I. The film is roughly set in one year; there are several reasons for the same. For instance, the farmer is supposed to die in almost a year, but he doesn’t and instead gets better. A full agricultural cycle points to the same. We witness the characters arrive at the farm during planting season, experience the harvest, and witness its destruction by fire and locusts. This suggests that the film covers a period of at least one year. The film condenses all this time and several key elements into 90 minutes. It does so by omitting several chunks of time. This helps the narrative flesh out efficiently as well as creates ambiguity which the film benefits from. It omits chunks of time in a way that the viewer can’t tell how much time has passed and gives the plot uncertainty. For instance, in the ending, after Linda runs away from the boarding school, we don’t know how long this is after Bill’s death. The fact that we never witness the full progression of Abby and the farmer’s relationship, the film skips over large chunks, presenting only key interactions that suggest their deepening bond to the viewers. Similarly, we never witness all the arguments between Bill and Abby, but we feel the tension and longing growing in their interactions. These gaps in time allow the audience to fill in the blanks and engage more actively with the story. It also directs the audience’s attention to the emotional and symbolic core of the story. Similar to how Terrence Malick complements cinematography and sound to have the audience invest in the world of film more deeply, the same is done for editing and sound. These gaps in the storyline provide Linda’s narration a more realistic undertone since it’s similar to how humans recall events, in bits and pieces, focusing more on dramatic moments than ordinary life. It also blurs the line further of her narration being diegetic or non-diegetic.

No film neatly fits perfectly into the box of one particular genre, but it is especially tough to categorize a film like Days of Heaven since it blends its narrative so seamlessly with its cinematography and sound design. But in its purest form, Days of Heaven can be described as a visually driven film and an unconventional historical drama. Because it doesn’t focus on historical events such as World War I but rather on the simple lifestyle of people around that period of time. The imagery and background score often take precedence over the film while dialogue and explicit narratives take a backseat. The film possesses a biblical vibe to it since it explores themes such as greed, love, betrayal, and tragedy. We witness Bill kill a man, become a fugitive with Abby and her sister Linda, lie about his relationship, and in economic desperation convince Abby, the woman he loves, to marry the rich farmer. Only for it to tragically end in him feeling betrayed by Abby and killing the farmer and ending up as a fugitive yet again. The very thing he had run away from and to the countryside for. Eventually meeting the same fate he put two men through, death. Furthermore, the film also has emotional complexity to it which can place it in the category of art cinema because of its reliance on symbolism rather than explicit dialogues and scenes. The director’s bold decision of having shot the film using natural light to enhance its visual composition is yet again another hallmark of art cinema.

 To conclude, this could be another reason apart from Linda’s narration which explains the film’s title. Its biblical feel, the themes of morality, nature, and human insignificance, the beautiful imagery, and the contrast between heaven (the days Linda spent on the farm) and hell (the struggle both before and after that) overall symbolic of the fleeting nature of life makes the title “Days of Heaven” perfect for this film