It's difficult to describe a movie that is mostly image, like a living, breathing painting. Terrence Malick's 1978 film
Days of Heaven is like this. I've always heard that Malick isn't a filmmaker - he is an artist, a poet, a philosopher. I read this story about him online, from the set of
The Thin Red Line (which I saw a long time ago, when I was not mature enough to understand it). Someone described that they were about to set off a huge explosion for a big scene, and there were airplanes taking off, trucks everywhere, and they were ready to go. Suddenly, Malick saw a hawk in the sky. Everything stopped. "Oh, look it's a red tail hawk. Look, John, John, get the camera, there it is." They sat around, holding off the big scene, so they could film the hawk. He didn't care about the script as much as he did the images of the movie. I thought of that story while I was watching
Days of Heaven. The plot is held at a distance from the viewer, and we are left with mostly images. It was truly a beautiful work of art. Had I had any money left from buying Blu-rays earlier today, the Criterion edition of this would be on its way to me already.
