Terrence Malick: Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven (Directed by Terrence Malick)

One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting films of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy ‘Days of Heaven’, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In 1910, a Chicago steelworker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor, and he, his girlfriend (Brooke Adams), and his little sister (Linda Manz) flee to the Texas panhandle, where they find work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire — Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating a timeless American idyll that is also a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor. (via criterion.com).

Where his debut feature Badlands was tightly scripted, Malick’s follow up film was a more loosely constructed affair. Malick allowed himself the latitude to film not just the principal actors but also on the earth, animals, and groups of extras. Malick took this method to higher and more experimental durations in his future films. This is a completely valid creative process that seeks – as in Wong Kar-wai or Jacques Rivette's cinema – to discover the film during its material production instead of in the 'abstract' stage in its writing. 

Writing remains, of course, crucial to Malick, an outstanding stylist of words. Days of Heaven's script isn't much like a final film—in many cases, complicated dialogue passages have been condensed into a sentence or two, a secret response shot and a cut off from some natural phenomena. The literary aspects of the concept are however already visible on the page: the elaborately stylized and poetic vernacular of speech, the expressive cycle of seasons and a fundamental line (in essence) gathered from many biblical sources. This early, mythical narrative, however, finishes as completely displaced in the New World as the mythology of John Smith and Pocahontas. It is scarcely surprising to find that Shepard, who is a beautifully frightening presence in the movie, believed he was playing someone who was less of a psychological flesh and blood than some sketch, shadow or ghost. 

The Australian reviewer, Meaghan Morris, previously stated that Heaven's Days is a picture in perpetual motion, in fact about all sorts of movement: human, natural, mechanical. Filmmaker Nestor Almendros — whose work on François Truffaut's "triangular" costume drama Two French Girls (1971) might have inspired Malick — likes to describe the form of the complex arrangements of the film: the camera tracking and dollying up and down in the farm house, the strange mansion in the middle of a huge field, while the different players enter and depart in the frame. Indeed, even the simplest shots have a trace of such structure: the layout of Days of Heaven aims less at fluid continuity in images or gestures — it is indeed a remarkably elliptical film— than it is when each filmic "unit" was created as a cell that nonlinearly refers to every other part of the film, through echos, comparisons, subtle flashbacks and flash-forwards. 

In May 1979, Terrence Malick candidly explained the origin of his ideas for Days of Heaven and how he went about making it happen. This interview was originally published in French and is sourced from the book Quinze Hommes Splendides by Yvonne Baby. 

It was in Austin, Texas that I had the idea for Days of Heaven. I found myself alone for a summer in the town I had left when I was a high school student. There were those green, undulating hills, and the very beautiful Colorado river. The place is inspired. It is inspiring, and there the film came to me all together.

I had not liked working at harvest time, I have a very good memory of it, of wheat, and the comings and goings in the fields, and of all the people I met. They were mostly petty criminals who were on their way to Phoenix, Arizona or Las Vegas for the rest of the year.

Like those of the film, these were not people of the soil, but urban dwellers who had abandoned their city, their factories. Rather than criminals, it would be fairer to say they lived on the margins of crime, fed by elusive hopes. At the time of the film, those who worked the seasons hated their jobs and the farmers did not trust them. They could not touch the machinery: if something was breaking, they had to signal by raising their hat on a stick. To distinguish themselves, they were always putting on their best clothes. I had noticed that myself when I was a teenager. To the farmers they were bringing – and this is still true – a piece of their homeland and of new horizons. And farmers sat down to listen – charmed – to hear the story of these workers. Already the farmers were almost nothing more than businessmen and they felt nostalgia for those days of yesteryear where they were themselves caretakers of their earthly riches. Workers and farmers were embodying people whose hopes were being destroyed, some more than others, by opulence or poverty. All were full of desires, dreams, and appetites, which I hope permeates the film. For these people, happiness comes and goes, they are fleeting moments. Why? They don’t know, just as they don’t know how to achieve happiness. If they see before them another season, another harvest, they feel unable to build a life.



Though this is familiar to a European, it may seem puzzling for Americans. Americans feel entitled to happiness, and once they manage to find it, they feel as if they own it. If they are deprived of it, they feel cheated. If they feel it has been taken away from them, they imagine they have been done wrong. This guilt I have felt from everyone I've known. It's a bit like a Dylan song: they have held the world in their hands and let it slip through their fingers.

As for the title, it is a feeling that a place exists that is within reach and where we will be safe. It is a place where a house will not rest on the sand, where you will not become crazier by fighting again and again against the impossible.

Linda [Manz], the teenage girl, is the heart of the film. She was a sort of street child we had discovered in a laundromat. For the role, she should have been younger, but as soon as I spoke to her, I found in her the maturity of a forty-year old woman. Non-judgmental and left to her own imagination, she had her own ideas [for the role] giving the impression of having actually lived this life instead of having to invent and play within another.

At first it was a bit frustrating to work with her. She couldn’t remember her lines, couldn’t be interrupted, and was difficult to photograph. Despite this, I started to love her and I believed in her more than anything else. She transformed the role. I am glad that she’s the narrator. Her personality shines through the film’s objectivity. Every time I gave her new lines, she interpreted it in her own way; when she refers to heaven and hell, she says that everyone is bursting into flames. It was her response to the film on the day when she saw the rushes. That comment was included in the final version. Linda said so many things that I despaired being unable to keep them… I feel like I have not been able to grasp a fraction of who she really is.

With Nestor Almendros, we decided to film without any artificial light. It wasn’t possible in the houses at night, but outside, we shot with natural light or with the fire. When the American team was saying, ‘This is not how we should proceed,’ Nestor Almendros, very courageously insisted. As we filmed, the team discovered that it was technically easier, and I was able to capture absolute reality. That was my wish: to prevent the appearance of any technique, and that the photography was to be processed to be visually beautiful and to ensure this beauty existed within the world I was trying to show, suggesting that which was lost, or what we were now losing. Because he is also a filmmaker, Nestor Almendros understood Days of Heaven in every way.

I wanted the omnipresence of sound, so I used the Dolby system. Dolby purifies sound and is able to record multiple audio tracks (e.g. wind, the rustle of corn stalks, the pulse of crickets). I wanted to remove any distance from the public. It was my secret intention; to make the film experience more concrete, more direct. And, for the audience, I am tempted to say, experience it like a walk in the countryside. You’ll probably be bored or have other things in mind, but perhaps you will be struck, suddenly, by a feeling, by an act, by a unique portrait of nature. That’s what I wanted, that is how the Dolby and technological developments improved our work.

It would be difficult for me to make a film about contemporary America today. We live in such dark times and we have gradually lost our open spaces. We always had hope, the illusion that there was a place where we could live, where one could emigrate and go even further. Wilderness, this is the place where everything seems possible, where solidarity exists – and justice – where the virtues are somehow linked to this justice. In the region where I grew up, everyone felt it in a very strong way. This sense of space disappearing, we nevertheless can find it in cinema, which will pass it on to us. There is so much to do: it’s as if we were on the Mississippi Territory, in the eighteenth century. For an hour, or for two days, or longer, these films can enable small changes of heart, changes that mean the same thing: to live better and to love more. And even an old movie in poor and beaten condition and can give us that. What else is there to ask for?

– An interview for Le Monde with Terrence Malick from 1979, translated by Hugues Fournier and Paul Maher Jr., from the book by Yvonne Baby, Quinze Hommes Splendides. Article available on Justin Wiemer’s blog here.

Ben Ripley: Writing And Sacrifice

Source Code (Directed by Duncan Jones)

Ben Ripley wrote the script for the sci-fi thriller Source Code while doing studio re-writes on horror movies. His initial pitches to studio executives left them baffled by the complex storyline. Eventually he had to put it on the page to make his case. 

The film is skilfully directed by Duncan Jones whose feature debut was the excellent Moon. Source Code is a thrilling and satisfying science fiction action-adventure story with nods to the films of Christopher Nolan and Hitchcock.

Source code ranges over a wide range of conspiracies and altered states, playfully unlikely but done with cool conviction. There is a resemblance with Christopher Nolan's Inception, which also focuses on altered states of minds,  time and spatial disruptions.

The film revolves around U.S. Army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), who has crash-landed in Afghanistan after running out of fuel. Upon regaining consciousness, he discovers himself onboard a busy commuter train in civilian clothing arriving in Chicago just in time for a beautiful summer day. Opposite sits Christina (Michelle Monaghan), who is seemingly unconcerned by their escalating flirtation but who grows increasingly disturbed as Colter becomes unstable and frantic. 

Once the 8-minute mark has passed, a cataclysmic event strikes, sending Colter back into a predicament that is at least as confusing. He is dressed in his military uniform, is hurt, and looks to be inside a damaged military aircraft. Is this the actual thing? Is it the train, or is it just our perception of it? He must now be able to speak with the lady who has replaced him as his commanding officer over a video display. Vera Farmiga's character, Goodwin, behaves in the same mysterious and unreadable manner that Kevin Spacey's android-like voice did with Sam Rockwell in Moon. 

Colter has been kidnapped and used against his will as a guinea pig in the application of future technology known as "source code" which forces him to replay the last eight minutes on a Chicago commuter train over and over again until he uncovers knowledge that can benefit society. Ripley and Jones, demonstrate how each metaphysically complex situation unlocks new information, with each resulting in Colter becoming more fond of Christina and making the possibility of losing her seem more painful. 

In a recent interview with Scriptshadow, Ben Ripley discussed his writing process:

‘Once I have an idea that I think works, my first step is to take pages and pages of notes, whatever comes into my head. Research is important. You need to steep yourself in whatever subculture you’re writing about, enough so that you develop a confidence to invent within it. Next I try to come up with some compelling central characters. This is always the hardest part for me to get right, but it’s a critical one. If your characters aren’t distinct, comprehensible and somewhat relatable, you’ll never hear the end of it from your readers. And it’s really about the hard work of understanding who these characters are and what makes them interesting.

‘I’m not much attracted to Everyman characters. I’m more intrigued with mysterious, unusual or even extraordinary characters. If you look at Stanley Kubrick’s films, most of his characters are compelling for who they are. They’re not ordinary people who depend on a movie situation to come alive in. The outline comes next, but I don’t get overly detailed with it. I like to leave some open spaces for discovery. Only when you get in there writing scenes, writing description and dialogue, will the best things about your script occur to you.

‘That said, I absolutely know what my three acts and midpoint are, even if they sometimes shift around during the writing. The more I write, the fewer pages per day I turn out. I wish I wrote faster, but I tend to consider pretty carefully each moment. I take my time with the language until it feels right. I never gloss over stuff. After that, I always go back and find material to remove. You can always say things with greater efficiency, always trim and tighten action. You look at any good film and you realize just how economical and propulsive the scenes are, especially in the first act as they work to set up the world. You can never get too good at that skill.

‘A midpoint is a plot turn that happens in the middle of a movie. The midpoint in Jaws is when Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss pile into the fishing boat and head out to the open ocean to hunt the shark. The midpoint of the original Star Wars is when the Millenium Falcon reaches the Death Star in order to rescue the princess. It’s the point to which the action of the first half of the story is ending and, as a result, sends the second half of the story in a new – or at least more focused – direction. A good midpoint turn will differentiate the action between the first and second half of the movie and keep things from seeming monotonous. The post-midpoint portion of the second act (pages 60-90) is often where you get much closer to the story’s real themes and you’re not as much focused on straightforward action.

‘The reason I’m a screenwriter today is that I believed in my talent and made the sustained sacrifices to become one. I eschewed other career paths. I worked day jobs to support myself. I wrote on weekends when maybe I would have had more fun at the beach. I started and finished scripts and then started new ones that were better. I kept at it. There are no shortcuts. The dues-paying process can be bewildering and lonely, but its job is to separate out the professionals from the merely curious, and when it’s over, you’re oddly thankful for having asked a lot of yourself…

‘I remember being so impatient for my difficult, outsiders life to stop and for my ’real’ life as a working writer to start. It’s easy for professional writers to be benignly nostalgic about their early days coming up, forgetting that those days often felt tedious, frustrating and unsustainable. But your life shouldn’t depend on getting an agent within the next month. If it does, there’s something wrong.

‘You should never let your life get to the point where you look at screenwriting as a lottery ticket that’s going to save you. What saves you is your belief in yourself and your commitment to getting better at your craft, regardless of when that craft is rewarded. And a decent script probably won’t get you an agent. If you’re still at the point where you’re writing “decent” scripts – as opposed to great scripts – you’re not ready for an agent. But the magic of Hollywood is that the appetite for great scripts far exceeds the supply of great scripts. So when and if you finally write that great script, word will get out. People will ask you to read it, not the other way around. Stay optimistic. Stay focused. Write well and the agents – and the success – will come.’

- Ben Ripley