A Hidden Life - Review

A Hidden Life

“A Hidden Life” (formerly titled “Radegund”) is a 2019 historical true event drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, and Matthias Schoenaerts with both Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz (Downfall) in their final performances. The film depicts in the early 1940’s the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. The film had its world premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival winning the François Chalais Prize (a film dedicated to the values of life affirmation and of journalism) and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (a Christian award that honors works of artistic qualities which witnesses the revelation of the mysterious depths of human feeling and hope).

PLOT: Austria, 1939 peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), born and bred in the small village of St. Radegund. He is working his land when war breaks out. Married to Franziska (Fani) (Valerie Pachner), the couple with their three young daughters are important members of the tight-knit rural agrarian community - they live a simple life. One day a letter arrives where Franz is called up to basic training that takes him away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he is sent back from training. With his mother and sister-in-law Resie (Maria Simon), he and his wife farm the land and raise their children amid the mountains and valleys of upper Austria.

As the war goes on, Jägerstätter and the other able-bodied men in the village are eventually called up to fight. Their first requirement is to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Despite pressure from his neighbors, who ostracize him and his family, Jägerstätter refuses. He wrestles with the knowledge that his decision will eventually mean arrest and even death.

REVIEW: I love true films where the triumph of the human will conquers all, especially when the story is rooted in someone standing tall against popular tide for higher principles of decency and good. And while Franz Jägerstätter did in deed sacrifice much through months of brutal incarceration, family humiliation and subsequent sentencing to death by guillotine, I could not find it within me to feel completely sympathetic to his choice of leaving his family and small children behind just for his faith. I was not looking for any sentimentalizing of his story but I wanted to believe his faith emanated from some key seminal moment in his earlier life that gave rise to his profound faith now. Instead I saw him sweeping the floor of the church he attended and taking long walks to reflect on his inner thoughts of the decision he was about to make, but nothing else.

I kept waiting and awaiting for his “Joan of Arc” ascension to pure spirituality for me the viewer to have a basic sense of his deeper higher calling of taking a stand against fascist tyranny. Instead I saw with a running time of three hours was a story about a relatively obscure man that was way too long, filled with way too much cloud gazing cinematography vistas (however Austria is very beautiful though), too many conversations that felt repetitive and already covered and too often spontaneously injected German language scenes without any translating English subtitles, though I easily surmise when Austrian’s raised their voices to speak in German they were expressing the fact they were not happy.  

The final 30 minutes is very powerful as you see Franz and his wife reunite after months of incarceration. Their loving acceptance of his faith and fate is moving though he had an easy out to his fate by serving in the military at a hospital as an orderly if he would just signed his oath to old Uncle Adolph; yet, he still refused. The actual final minutes seeing him struggle whether or not he was doing the right thing and yet also knowing his death was imminent was emotionally unnerving for me.

There is a much better film here to be made by someone having the vision and discipline to tightening its structure by initially just deciding to pare it down to about 1:45 minutes. This Director Terence Malik latest effort was far easier to comprehend than his totally confusing, oddly constructed and utterly baffling 2011 Palme d'Or winning effort “Tree of Life” which was hailed and proclaimed as a masterpiece by some critics;………… not by me.  Instead, while his latest “Hidden” has a more palatable entertaining and worthwhile subject to enjoy, it is still is a film that is burdensomely riddled with editing mistakes, an unconvincing martyrdom as its lead and too much technical displays of national geographic cinematography and nature sounds that over time offered no real added emotional value.

‘Fundamentally speaking, "A Hidden Life” is watchable but overall misses its mark of portraying a simply man’s compelling giant of a humanistic story. The final 40 minutes does make up for its previous two hour plus shortcomings by reminding and reflecting on this man's solemn journey. A journey initially etched in the observance of Franz's family's warmth and loving embrace. A middle transitional journey of Franz taking a moral stand against the tides of hatred and bigotry. A finale journey that included many offered opportunities to continue to living his meaningful life by disavowing his actions, but was still the inevitably journey of his own choosing by making the ultimate sacrifice as a solitary deep internal act of his faith in God.

2.50 Stars