Movie: The Hidden Life
Genre: Drama, Biography, War
Directed by: Terrence Malik
Starring: Auguste Dich, Valerie Pachner
Release date: May 19, 2019
Awards: 91st National Critics Association Awards Top 10 Independent Films of the Year, etc
Part of the growth of good in the world depends on those insignificant deeds, and what happens to you and me is not only so tragic, but also half of it is due to those who do not seek to be heard, spend their lives faithfully, and then rest in peace in the grave of no one to hang.
—George Eliot, Middlemarkt
"The Hidden Life" is a film full of stagnant, lonely, and desperate emotions that reflect the theme of World War II. In the past, many films that reflected the theme of war mostly showed that war, such as the "meat grinder", made the invaded people live in the depths of the water, so as to reflect the cruelty of war, and also showed that an individual among the aggressors was dissatisfied with the war and helped the invaded as much as possible. The novelty of the film is to show the price paid by ordinary individuals who are sober in war to resist the hypnosis of the collective will, and the price to be paid for the struggle for justice between the individual and the collective.
The plot itself is not complicated, it tells the story of the Austrian town of Franz and his wife Franziska family living a peaceful life, after the outbreak of World War II, Franz enlisted in the army, all soldiers must swear allegiance to the Nazis, training and ideological shock in the barracks made him deeply doubt the essential purpose of the war, he returned to his hometown. Franz began to express his attitude to local officials and priests, refusing to participate in the war, which caused strong rebukes and exclusions from the locals, who could hardly gain a foothold in the town. Meanwhile, Franz was again forced to return to the barracks, preferring to be punished rather than in training until he was thrown into prison and sentenced to death by a Nazi court.
The main characters in the film live in picturesque Austrian towns, where the once beautiful fairytale kingdom has been overcast and the shadow of war has captured the hearts of the people here, which is extremely out of proportion to the blue sky and green space here. Together, war is a battlefield everywhere, and no one can escape the ravages of war, because war not only destroys people's flesh and homes, but also a spiritual poison, which silently spreads to places where there is no smoke of gunfire, triggering a nuclear explosion at the spiritual level, so the negative impact of war is far more serious and long-lasting than people think.
Farmer Franz and his wife work in the fields, full of strength and strength, but also represent the tenacity in their bones, but the war has twisted their bones and souls. In the film, ordinary people like Franz no longer act as a background board for the big times, but have their own thinking, afraid of being dragged down by the nightmare after human choice, so to say, people who can think will be painful, Franz knows that he "can't", he would rather rebel alone in his own way than live like the people around him, an awakened person can only wake up forever, he must face life in the most painful way, this is his fate.
Through Franz's discussion of the topic of "pain" and "loneliness", "The Hidden Life" is full of philosophical thinking about life, like people's whispering reverie, intercepting the most intense and abstract body expression language, giving a strong uneasy and anxious emotional color through the shaking lens, showing the original sin worn by people because of war.
The "pain" of the characters in the film comes from the confrontation between the individual and the collective, the confrontation between good and evil, the confrontation between individual justice and collective evil, and the individual's wisdom, self-esteem, and independence have been challenged as never before. The slow pace of the film lengthens everyone's suffering and shows the protracted, especially little-known, spiritual devastation that the war has brought to people.
"Loneliness" comes from the unwillingness of free thoughts to be dusted. In contrast to the Nazi clique's urgent plans for aggression, the characters in this story are slowly thinking, expressing, and making choices, considering their choices in the war, how to discern and align themselves with the position of justice, no matter what the cost. When people resist the will of others, they especially want "divine help", but a very small number of people get what they want, so who is in charge of the fate of ordinary people and ordinary people who hold the totalitarian power and the supreme God?
The film intersperses the inner monologues of Franz and Franziska to each other in a voice-over manner in fragments of separated lives, reflecting the reflection of the characters in the field of religious philosophy, Franz finds in prison life that people without the ability to think logically are more free and peaceful, and Franziska finds that these people have developed uncontrolled and indistinguishable evil, and they all hope to jump out of this cycle, but "the good and the evil share a piece of sunshine", and history can not get its wish.
In addition, the film is very good at using the interactive relationship between people and the natural and social environment to express the inner world of the characters, and integrates with the body, expression and language of the characters, and the picture structure and light are exquisite, which is very impactful and slow-release.
Franz was sentenced to death for upholding justice in his heart, and even as the war drew to an end, he did not accept any compromise compromise. It turns out that many people only believe in God when He is useful, and pursue profit when it is useless, and does the justice that individuals insist on must be collectively certified to be effective? So what is the connotation and scope of application of justice?
The movie "The Hidden Life" is a personal heroic epic set in World War II, some people died to uphold the truth, and they deserve to leave their names.