A Hidden Life *** (2019, August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Maria Simon) – Movie Review

‘Better to suffer injustice than to do it.’

Writer-director Terrence Malick’s challenging A Hidden Life (2019) is a noble enterprise, an incredibly sincere spiritual film, told with austerity worthy of Robert Bresson or Maurice Pialat, but it is excruciating to sit through for three hours. Its uplifting ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ and religious devotional themes are perfectly placed and pitched, but after an hour and a half, it’s a cry of ‘enough already!’

Berlin-born August Diehl gives a first rate account as Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter, who refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War Two as a conscientious objector, and is reviled by his alpine village neighbours, and destroys the live of his wife Fani Jägerstätter (Valerie Pachner) and children. He gets carted off to Germany, is incarcerated, and then faced with the threat of execution for treason.

Doggedly, he will not sign the paper that would end his hell and allow him to return to his love and life. His unwavering faith in God and his love for his wife and children keep his spirit alive.

Malick’s scrupulous screenplay, highlighting faith and the plight of an unsung hero, is based on real events. The film is impeccably made, with beautiful cinematography by Jörg Widmer, a score by James Newton Howard incorporating  great classical works and glorious Production Design by Sebastian T Krawinkel.

[Spoiler alert] It is a done deal from the start that this film is not going to have a happy ending, not in this life at least. So there may be faith but there is no hope to keep us watching for three hours. If A Hidden Life is hard to sit though in a cinema, it must be even harder at home. But, apart from its length, it is a faultless film.

It is intriguing and moving that the production company is Germany’s Studio Babelsberg. It is released by Fox Searchlight Pictures (2019) (US) at the end of the era for the studio.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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