Normally, watching a wheat field blow in the wind is as stimulating as watching cement settle, and yet it was simple images like this which earned Days of Heaven the award for Best Cinematography at the 1978 Academy Awards. Written and directed by Terrence Malick, Days of Heaven is the story about a couple traveling as migrant workers who become entangled with a wealthy land owner in the midst of the American industrial emergence. Working with cinematographer Nestor Almendros, they created one of the most visually notable motion pictures of its time. Despite its inability to capture a mass audience, its cinematic elements have rightfully earned it a spot on most film critics’ top lists.
Unmarried and yet very much in love, Richard Gere and Brook Adams play Bill and Abby who flee westward after Bill, in the heat of an argument, kills a man in a factory. His little sister, Linda, whose innocent yet straight forward voice narrates the film, travels along with them. Her voice-over of the past and unfolding events in the story creates an ironic juxtaposition with the overwhelming elements of violence and betrayal throughout.
Their journey takes them to a wheat farm where The Farmer (nameless aside from this title), played by Sam Shephard, soon falls in love with Abby, unaware of her relationship with Bill since they have told everyone they are siblings. For Bill, this appears to be an opportunity to get out of poverty since he has over heard that The Farmer is dying and will not last more than a year. However, this plan to gain an inheritance fails as The Farmer’s health does not decline, but improves.
As far as the cinematic elements, which are what make this film initially appealing, the cinematography and sound design are most prominent. The opening credits alone speak of the central role that images will have in the film. The gentle pan of the camera across still images expresses not a sense of nostalgia as much as a commentary on the lives of the lower class at the moment in American history when industry began to emerge as the predominate form of labor. The sequence ends with a final shot of the character that will come to be known as Linda. The image holds her dirt streaked face and pulls us into the story, which is only fitting as she becomes the predominant vocal perspective.
Most notably, this film visually captures the tenuous nature of life through the motif of light at dusk and dawn. In the March 1999 issue of American Cinematographer,
Almendros speaks of how he, and his then replacement Haskell Wexler, intentionally attempted this kind of camera work. “I decided to forgo the use of any artificial reflected light, and to split the difference between my reading for the sky and my reading for the shadows, resulting in faces being slightly underexposed, and the sky being slightly overexposed, thereby taking away the intensity of blue, yet not letting it burn white,” he said. This technique not only produces stimulating contrast and color, but it also thematically illustrates the tension and emotion of the characters. A scene that stands out in this regard occurs at the climax of the film as The Farmer begins to understand the deception to which he has been subject. As a plague of locust settles on the farm, The Farmer’s incited anger results in a long sequence of the land being set ablaze, causing an immensely sweeping wildfire. The flames, set against the black night, are a fierce sight that is only equaled by The Farmer’s rage against Bill and Abby.
In the sound design of Days of Heaven, silence is just as important as the music. Certain scenes are completely void of dialogue or score and are simply accompanied by the sounds of the environment, such as the din of the factory or the serene hum of the wilderness. Even dialogue is sparse beyond Linda’s narration and, when present, does not result in the kind of narrative causality most viewers have come to expect from the Hollywood style. The thematic content of the story is illustrated well through conversations between characters and long meandering shots of the landscape, which can momentarily seem pointless. In this hierarchy of sound the natural environment rises above dialogue and that only above musical score.
With stunning visuals and carefully constructed sound design, the viewer can all but feel the wind and smell the soil. This project, as with most of Malick’s work, holds the senses captive to nature. The plot itself is not unfamiliar; most moviegoers have probably seen tragic love triangle stories before. But emotive visual and audible elements turn this story into a delicate portrait of the human condition at its worst and simultaneously its best. Essentially, this is a “paradise lost” film; the decay of harmony for man with others, himself, and nature. Malick frames without solution the ideas of possession, love, betrayal, and all the things motivated by desire. The viewer is given only a sense of empathy and realism that pulls the heart into the moment when the sun burns at the place where the transcendence of the sky meets the reality of the ground. In many ways the gravity of this film’s honesty is hard to bear, but with so much beauty, it almost all seems worth it in the end.