Days of Heaven

I've been wanting to watch "The Tree of Life" for a while now but have kept putting it off to watch something else because of it's length and experimental nature. I tried watching it last night, but all of the websites that I use to completely legally watch free movies on the internet have been blocked by the school. So, I had to resort to watching Netflix instead.

I had not seen any Terrance Malick movies before, but I knew that they were very critically acclaimed and somewhat controversial for a number of reasons (mainly being overly stylized, not enough emphasis on story, etc.) and I love those kinds of movies. The only Malick movies that Netflix had were "Day of Heaven" and "To the Wonder," so I decided to watch the former as my introduction to his unique direction. What I found was one of the most beautifully shot films that I've ever seen.

As a fan of practical effects instead of gaudy CG backdrops, I really appreciated the amount of effort that Malick took in each shot. I read that most of the movie was filmed during the twilight hour, or the "magic hour" they called it, in order to get the beautiful gradient of the setting sun and the low, warm natural lighting. Almost no lighting rigs were used in the entire movie, and it amazed me that they were able to pull off some of these shots with almost no technical effects.

I could probably post a million stills from this movie. Some shots I wasn't even paying attention to the dialog because I was too busy marveling at some of the shots.

I do, however, understand that some critics may have not been interested in the story. It was pretty slow and  not very engaging at some points. However, I'm under the impression that Terrence Malick wants the viewer to feel the weight of his movies rather than watch them for the plot. I believe that instead of being entertained by the plot, we're supposed to allow the movie to affect us scene by scene and really involve ourselves with the struggles of each character.

That being said, I probably would not recommend this movie to anyone outside of DMA, but it's still a very personal and fascinating movie that asks to be experienced and not analyzed. I definitely look forward to seeing more of Malick's movies in the future.