Mark Reviews Movies: A HIDDEN LIFE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2019

For some time, Terrence Malick has been one of our most overtly religious filmmakers. That trend seems to continue with A Hidden Life, a biographical narrative about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who became a conscientious objector when the Nazis rose to power and enlisted him for their war effort. Jägerstätter was beatified as a martyr by the Catholic Church in 2007, which might explain why this ordinary man, tested by extraordinary circumstances, would appeal to Malick in his cinematic quest for greater meaning in this world and beyond it.

What's fascinating about Malick's film is that it seems less concerned with the beyond than some of his more recent ones, even though this material and this protagonist almost appear to demand an explicitly religious and saintly approach. Certainly, the Jägerstätter of this film, as well as other characters within it, pray and discuss the nature, will, and role of God in a world that seems to have lost all senses of rightness, decency, and sanity. The film's voice-overs—a common staple of Malick's films, typically allowing the characters to address some higher power—aren't prayers, though. They're reserved almost exclusively for the words of letters between a husband and a wife (taken from real ones between Jägerstätter and his wife), because this story exists in the here and now—not beyond.

Despite the occasional talk of God and religion, the only thing that really matters in this film is this world, and that makes this story all the more challenging, thought-provoking, and emotionally devastating. Malick may see his protagonist as a symbol of the best of what human beings can do and be, but more importantly, he does not give the man a guarantee of any reward beyond the suffering his life becomes.

In this telling, Franz, played by August Diehl, stands up to a power structure that he believes to be inherently evil, is imprisoned away from his family, and must decide if his moral belief is worth the cost of his life. Because Malick keeps the story grounded in the mortal realm, Franz is wholly alone in his suffering. The price of his misery is the total of everything Franz has known and could know.

That includes his wife Fani, whom Malick writes and Valerie Pachner portrays as at least Franz's equal in terms of her strength and sacrifices—possibly even his greater in terms of her compassion (She retains her dignity and her desire to help others in need, despite constant abuse). In the first act of Malick's screenplay, the husband, the wife, and their three daughters live an idyllic life on their farm just outside a small village (Jörg Widmer's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the mountains and the fields, is gorgeous but in a decidedly tactile way).

Austria has been annexed by Germany, and while most of the villagers believe that the Nazis and their leader will return greatness to the land against the influence of "foreigners," Franz remains silent. After going through military training and witnessing what has become of his neighbors, he becomes increasingly vocal in his opposition.

Malick is infinitely patient in his approach to this tale. The first act delves into Franz's comfortable life and how it's upturned by fanaticism, and it all puts forth a simple but impossible question: What can one person of sound conscience do in the face of evil? Beyond showing how easily people are caught up in or kowtowed to the political fervor of this time and place, the film also repeatedly asserts how frail Franz's fight is within his community and the bigger picture of history. Surely, one man, who cannot even change or embolden the mind of a single neighbor, cannot change the course of a country or a war.

Franz is a religious man, to be sure. The first act, though, essentially eliminates the Church as any arbiter of or righteous voice for morality in this world.

They are complicit, from the local priest (played by Tobias Moretti), who tells Franz that he should go along with whatever the Nazis want from him, to the bishop (played by the late Michael Nyqvist) of Franz's diocese, who so fears the possibility of a spy that he refuses to say what he knows to be right. One of the film's most powerful scenes (which also puts forth Malick's thesis in telling this story) has a painter (played by Johan Leysen), who knows he cannot accurately communicate the reality of the suffering for one's beliefs, putting into simple words what the priest and bishop cannot or will not.

These church officials are not bad men, and neither are any of Franz's neighbors, who mostly support the Nazis and the party's leader. Their reasons for silence or overt support are questionable or cruel, to be sure—fear, selfishness, xenophobia, and racism, to name the most common ones.

The sticking point for Franz is that any military service, either volunteer (which he wouldn't do) or conscripted (which becomes inevitable as the war turns against the Nazis), comes with the requirement of swearing an oath to Adolf Hitler—a notion the farmer refuses to even entertain, let alone perform. Instead of running away when his notice arrives, Franz reports to the nearby military base. While others raise their hands and recite the oath, he keeps his arms to his side and his mouth shut. He's immediately detained and spends the rest of his short life in various prisons.

Franz, who sacrifices his reputation and his freedom and his family and ultimately his life, is simply good, and part of his goodness is that he does not believe himself to be better than others. When a Nazi judge (played by the late Bruno Ganz), who holds the power to condemn or save Franz, suggests that the man's beliefs are born entirely of some form of judgmental narcissism, Franz refuses to denounce the judge. After all, he is no position, either in this world or any that might exist beyond it, to do so. Malick could simply dismiss these ancillary characters once their roles in the story are complete, but instead, he gives them some time alone—wrestling with their own doubts and moral turmoil after confronting a man as pure and certain as Franz.

Pain after pain is inflicted. Doubt after doubt comes. Opportunity after opportunity is presented for Franz to save himself. Franz accepts the pain. He suffers the doubts. He refuses the opportunities.

Malick's goal with A Hidden Life is not to present a saint. It is to present a man, ordinary in every way except in his commitment to his faith. That faith is not necessarily in a deity and especially not in some religious structure. It is, simply and powerfully, in the beliefs that there is right, there is wrong, and there is some force—either from here or beyond—that tells us which is which. It is up to us and us alone to decide what to do with that knowledge.

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