“I thought that we could build our nest high up – fly away like birds to the mountains…”
These are the first words that we hear in Terrence Malick’s new movie A Hidden Life. Shortly afterwards, we’re plunged into a world of startling beauty – the forested mountain slopes of Austria. Here, in the tiny village of St. Radegund, Franz and Fani Jagerstatter have labored for years to make a home for their family. Like others in their village, they scratch out a living by sowing and harvesting wheat, milking cows, weaving handmade fabrics, and selling vegetables. The work isn’t easy. However, for the young couple, the rhythms of family and community life are as fresh and life-giving as the land where they live.
But a storm is coming, and no paradise will remain untouched by it. The year is 1939. Adolf Hitler has risen to power. The Third Reich is beginning to exert its sinister reign of indoctrination and intimidation in Austria, and one by one the people of St. Radegund are falling prey to its influence. As a former soldier, Franz is ordered to show patriotism by serving in the Nazi military. However, as a follower of Jesus Christ, Franz harbors a deep conviction that Hitler’s regime is an evil one. As the allotted time for his service draws near, he is faced with an impossible choice: He can do what he believes is wrong to achieve security for himself and his family, or he can refuse to swear loyalty to Hitler and jeopardize the dream he and his wife have worked so hard to build. While others in the village are unsettled by Hitler’s rule, no one else has challenged the tide. If Franz and Fani take a stand, they will stand alone.
Over the years, I’ve seen many movies that I really enjoyed. I’ve seen other movies that have shaken me up in good ways, brought me to tears, or challenged me to ask important questions. Finally, I’ve seen only a small handful of movies that have spoken to me in a profound and deeply personal way. These are films that have prompted me to reflect on what matters most to me, and they are stories that I know I’ll be carrying with me for years to come. A Hidden Life falls into this third category. Not only that, but it’s at the top of the group. Without a doubt, it’s the most beautiful, emotionally resonant, and spiritually edifying movie that I’ve ever seen. This blog post is essentially a plea for you to hurry and see it before it leaves the theaters (it’s moving into the cheap seats now). You won’t be sorry that you did.
In a year that has turned out lots of great movies, it’s easy to see why A Hidden Life won’t be racking up Academy Awards, despite the fact that it’s based on a true story and despite the critical praise that it has received. While it’s set at the beginning of WWII, the film isn’t a typical war story. There are no battle scenes. The film is long (nearly 3 hours), slow-paced, and quiet. The conflict is primarily emotional and spiritual – one couple’s struggle to come to terms with what defying Hitler will mean for their family, their community, and their faith. While the film hints at the larger forces at work in Austria, it focuses on the impact that those forces had in one particular place.
And yet, despite these unusual features, the movie is riveting from start to finish. A big part of the credit is due to the actors who play Franz and Fani. While the film depicts a man’s crisis of faith, it’s also a love story – a movie about a husband and wife who choose, in a few big ways and many small ways, to honor and struggle alongside one another, come what may. The cast is uniformly excellent, but the relationship between these two characters is the story’s beating heart. The Jagerstatters aren’t extraordinary heroes. They’re simple, common people who are faced with difficult choices – people wrestling with the challenge of living out their faith in a harsh and hostile world. They’re people like us.
Another big part of the credit is due to director Terrence Malick. While most historical dramas focus on big events (like battles, strategies, arguments, protests, and court cases) and skip the stuff in between, A Hidden Life hones in on the moments between the big moments – the everyday rhythms of life and work where the Jagerstatters’ faith is lived out. Things like sowing seed, plowing soil, playing with children, greeting neighbors in town, or sitting together in silence are not deemed insignificant. Rather, they’re treated with reverence, because these are the moments that make up the majority our lives, and they’re anything but ordinary. No shot in the film is wasted; every scene is meaningful in the scope of the whole.
The film’s cinematography is also a wonder to behold. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it. Terrence Malick is well-known for his unusual camera work, whether it’s waiting days for the perfect lighting, shooting from unusual angles, or filming actors for long stretches of time and then using only a fragment of these shots (like a moment when the actors let down their guard and did something spontaneous). The images are incredibly rich, and I kept wanting to slow the film down even more to take in all of the details. It’s pretty remarkable that such a quiet story can be so gripping.
Finally, the lion’s share of the credit for the film goes to one person – Jesus Christ, whose story A Hidden Life is inspired by. Near the beginning of the movie, Franz talks with an elderly painter who is decorating the walls of St. Radegund’s cathedral. The painter reflects on the rising tide of Nazism, then tells Franz that he himself paints “the comfortable Christ” – the Jesus who St. Radegund’s villagers are used to seeing. He longs to paint “a true Christ,” but knows that the villagers aren’t ready to behold it yet. The reason, of course, is that the true Christ was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). The true Christ, who dared to take a stand against evil, was rejected by his community and executed by a tyrannical government. The true Christ lived a life of self-sacrificial love, and out of that love chose to walk the Via Dolorosa – the way of the cross. “Maybe someday,” the old painter muses to Franz, “I will have the courage to paint the true Christ.” Throughout the rest of the movie, Franz will struggle to come to terms with what it means to follow this Jesus – the wounded King who said these words: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
A Hidden Life is a film that asks a lot of questions. What do we do when holding true to our convictions means putting our life on the line? Where is God in the midst of our suffering? While refusing to offer easy answers to these questions, the movie isn’t purely a meditation on suffering. It’s also saturated with hope – specifically, with the deep, rich resurrection hope of the Gospel. It dares to explore not only the hardships of following Christ, but also the reality that healing and beauty can bloom from places of sorrow. It looks honestly at a broken world and chooses to believe in God’s promise to make all things new again. And that hope is the aspect of this film that I’ll carry with me for years to come, and the aspect which makes it the year’s best movie for me. Don’t miss it!
Words for Wayfarers 