![]() Franz’s stance is a deeply moral one, but his morality is based on his religious precepts. It has a powerful sense of the immanence of life. The Monitor’s critic looks at what sets the film apart from others in the rare, religious-themed movie genre.ĭespite its faults – a glacial three-hour running time and Malick’s overuse of oracular voice-overs to express his characters’ inner thoughts – the film does indeed succeed in being a species of religious experience. “A Hidden Life” explores how one man refused, based on his faith, to take an oath to Hitler. (Says one sympathizer: “God doesn’t care what you say, only what is in your heart.”) Ultimately it is Fani’s father who speaks for the filmmaker: “Better to suffer injustice than to do it.” Malick does not dismiss lightly the philosophical arguments encouraging Franz to relent and sign the oath. ![]() The villagers, branding him a traitor, turn against the family. Their three little daughters are kept in the dark. (He was beatified by the Vatican in 2007.) His wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner), is torn by his stance but stands by him. ![]() Radegund who refuses to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and ultimately is executed. It’s about Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a peasant farmer and devout Roman Catholic in the Alpine-ringed Austrian village of St. It’s an attempt to make the movie itself function as a religious experience. Writer-director Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” is the antithesis of those epics. Most of the famous religious-themed Hollywood movies – from “The Ten Commandments” to “The Greatest Story Ever Told” – are biblical epics functioning as star-studded illustrated guidebooks to sacred texts. ![]()
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