MovieChat Forums > Days of Heaven (1978) Discussion > Pretentious, boring and a chore to watch

Pretentious, boring and a chore to watch

posted 14 years ago by MaelstromA
60 replies | jump to latest

I know I'm going to be told that I don't understand Terrence Malick's genius or some such, but I'll try to comment on what I didn't like about this film:

a) Choppy editing. One scene almost always fades into the other randomly, you never know when it's going to happen, but it does when you least expect it.

b) It seems like a whole bunch of clips glued together. As soon as a scene starts to look interesting, it suddenly just fades out and moves on to another one. I prime example of this would be when Bill is looking around the house, spots a pitcher of wine and a picture and the scene suddenly fades out as soon as your imagination kicks in.

c) 'Pretty' imagery which bloats up the film and gives it a sense of disjointedness. For example, a scene will be going on and it'll suddenly pan into ducks, horses, wheat or the sky. What drugs was the director on, really? At times I felt like I was watching a National Geographic montage than a film with a storyline.

d) Horrible sense of timing and pacing. The time line isn't evident at all, there's no indicator of when something happened or how much time went by. It just goes into the standard fade out and fade in transition into another scene.

e) Literally no character development. It's more like 'Meet Bill', hot tempered, caring. Next! I blame the pretty imagery for this. It spreads the film out way too much to grasp what each character is all about.

f) I'll add more comments when I finish the film, which will probably take me about a month because it puts me to sleep every ten minutes.

[–] ktowny 12 years ago

Wow, the one time on IMDB when someone makes some thoughtful comments about why they don't like a movie and they STILL get grief for it.

Love's turned to lust and blood's turned to dust in my heart.

[–] tpupkin 12 years ago

I don't really agree with the OP. I don't find the movie boring or pretentious, or a chore to watch, but I do find it disappointing and ultimately unsuccessful on its own terms.

While Days of Heaven is obviously beautifully photographed, with wonderful music, the story is a complete mess, with no consistency to its narrative point-of-view and a complete failure to stage a few of its major events better than a middle school drama production. While the locust scene is terrific, the final confrontation between Gere and Shephard is laughably inept, and the poor staging of Gere's demise neuters what should be a very emotional moment.

I'm not a Malick-hater. I dislike Thin Red Line, but find a lot to like in his other movies, including The New World, which is maybe my 2nd favorite of his movies after Bandlands. I would rate DoH along with Tree of Life: I like a lot of both of them, but really dislike major parts of each, as well.

I think his main asset is also his biggest problem: he is a visual poet who flourishes in montages and dreamy voiceovers, but as a result he often fumbles through any scene that is supposed to advance the narrative with dialog or requires some coherent staging of an action. It may be that he is disinterested in that kind of filmmaking, but in that case he should simply stop including those scenes in films, or hand them over to his 2nd unit team, because he is a mess at them, and they drag his movies down.

The screenplay is a disaster. Its narrator is weirdly detached (echoing Malick, of course) from a melodrama that should have a profound emotional impact on a girl her age who is not a sociopath. Malick ditches her POV whenever convenient with no rhyme or reason, and even drops her from the story completely for long stretches. For example, when Gere leaves the farm -- essentially abandoning his little sister, we get nothing from her. This is a time when pretty pictures alone do not suffice to tell a story. The characters are abandoned by the director!

The ending is also so poorly realized -- perhaps because Linda is such a cipher, and so inconsequential to the overall movie -- that it seems as if Malick had simply run out of film and called it quits. It's abrupt and confusing. It's interesting to see that other thread in which the the screenplay's ending was posted. It's so different, one wonders if Malick cared at all about anything other than the photography.

There's a lot of merit to parts of Days of Heaven, and it deserves its prominent place in 1000 Vimeo montages of great movie images, but if anyone holds narrative integrity in equal measure to visual production, it balances out to being little better than mediocre. But still nice to look at.

[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

Perhaps just easily confused? The ending is about the most beautiful and poetic that I have seen in any film - and the story seems as clear and pure as it gets, quite the opposite of a "mess". Also, the "melodrama" is so emotionally powerful precisely because of the detached nature of ManzÂ´s narration; gives everything an ethereal feel rarely encountered anywhere else in cinema.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] xgorexpolicex 12 years ago

I agree with this assessment 100%. This film is intriguing in that it is such a visual masterpiece, yet leaves so much to be desired as a story. The ending left much to be desired. This film would have been more powerful if it simply ended after Gere's character was shot.

[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

No, it couldn`t have ended there. The life, the story goes on - that`s the point. Especially considering it as a Biblical allegory - an expulsion from the garden of Eden (days of heaven) occurs and now the sinned must spend a lifetime wandering, atoning for their deeds. The ending has a sorrowful sense of timelessness, impermanence about it, with the protagonists still having decades of lifetime ahead of them, beautifully implied by both the narration as well as a character setting out to depart down the road.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

Yeah, assigning each film a particular rank when we`re speaking of about 50 items and beyond, is way too much of a pointless hassle (I barely get it done with top tens as in the yearly polls on Film General). Of course, it`s fine if someone enjoys such stuff (Mr Eva Jimbo sure seems to) - after all, I once used to compile a top 100 list of best football players each year for more than 10 years... And I should also note that the list in my bio is selected on the basis of rewatchability first of all. Don`t see much point in trying to be as "objective" as I possibly can - because one can never really be that, anyways.

As for Days Of Heaven, the final words uttered by Manz - "this girl, she didn`t know where she was goin or what she was gonna do. She didn`t have any money on her. Maybe she`d meet up with a character. I was hoping things would work out for her; she was a good friend of mine" - make for some of the most beautiful closing lines of all cinema. The endings of Badlands & The Thin Red Line ain`t no slouches, either. Too bad for the terrible, ridiculous final sequence of The Tree Of Life, though.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] franzkabuki 11 years ago

I don`t believe in guilty pleasures and I can`t really think of a single film about which I`d be much apologetic - although, from my list, the two Bond movies are the ones I`d bother to defend with the least amount of effort. Nothing embarrassing about them though.

As for `your` list, there`s a surprising amount of directors I`ve never even heard of - and several of them apparently from India; didn`t you just complain, in your exchange with Jimbo, that Indian cinema tends to be piss poor or something? And what`s with the Wong Karwai fetish?

To The Wonder? I still haven`t decided if I even want to see that. From the few reviews I`ve read, I probably have a pretty good idea what it`s like and I`m not so sure I can take all the twirling around and frolicking in the grass that seems to be in store. On the other hand though, for a long time I was sure I wasn`t gonna see Django Unchained, either, but against all odds, it turned out pretty okay.

I have read this Village Voice article on Manz before - and I think that it`s a bit exxagerated perhaps in crediting her for all the voiceover; I have a feeling that quite likely, some of the stuff was indeed scripted - or at least guided, prompted by Malick in rather specific terms.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] Don-the-Lamplighter 9 years ago

This. Exactly this. Well said, tpupkin.

[–] jdkraus 12 years ago

Everything you just described is trademark of a Terrence Malick film.

[–] dnitzer-465-412648 9 years ago

I won't disagree with you since those are your reactions, but maybe you can consider your reactions from another point of view:

a) Choppy editing. One scene almost always fades into the other randomly...
b) It seems like a whole bunch of clips glued together.
c) 'Pretty' imagery which bloats up the film and gives it a sense of disjointedness.
d) Horrible sense of timing and pacing. The time line isn't evident at all...
e) Literally no character development.

a) Some movies spoon-feed you scene-by-scene every step of the way. Some movies leave it up to you to fit the scenes together. Some movies rely on more than narrative to get the story across. In some movies, other components supplement the plot. In this case, I'd say if you're watching it to get "the plot," you're going to miss the movie.

b) All movies are a bunch of clips glued together.

c) If that's your honest reaction, then so be it. But rather than give up on it, try to figure out why director, editor and a creative team chose to present the scenes they did. Rather than assume they were on drugs, assume they made their choices consciously and for a reason, and put yourself inside their heads for an hour and a half and try to hear them in their language.

d) Maybe the timeline isn't supposed to be evident. Do you remember every significant incident from your past in precise, moment-by-moment detail? Or are they more like a faded montage, and you have to piece them together to find the story of your childhood?

e) That might be one of the points of the movie: these characters don't learn, don't develop, keep making mistakes, and yet they pick themselves up and find a way to go on living despite the pain and the damage.

The tone of the girl's narration IS the movie, I think. Why does she sound so flat, so disconnected, so emotionless given all the violence and destruction she is relating? If Malick didn't want that effect, he could have gone in a different direction, so let's assume this is what he wanted. Then what is her flat affect telling us? Not that she's bored, but that she's been hurt and betrayed, and is trying to make sense of it. The adults she trusted to protect her and keep her safe either kill each other or die or abandon her, because of their inability to control their passions, and she's too young to understand that. If she lets that in, it will overwhelm her. She's been robbed of innocence and joy and days of heaven, at a much too early age. She can't allow herself to feel anything because she's just going to get hurt again.

The ending lines tell the tragedy; "This girl, she didn't know what she was doing or where she was going, she didn't have any money, maybe she'd meet up with a character, I was hoping things would work out for her..." She's talking about herself there - notice how she turns one last time to look backwards for just a moment, then turns around to go forward and catch up with her friend. She's summarizing her own story in those last lines, but displacing those feelings and concerns and care onto her friend, because she can't risk feeling them for herself. That's about as tragic, but human, as it gets.