The film-making in the beginning of _A Hidden Life_ is so pure it
brings tears to your eyes. It opens with Franz's soliloquy, wishing
to be up in the mountains, free as a bird. A plane is shown flying
over the clouds, in black-and-white. But the bird-eye's view
of the streets reveals a Nazi parade. In close-up, Hitler salutes
his troops. The next time we (and Fani) hear the rumble of a plane
engine, it is Beckett's great roaring machines of war we think of,
not birds. In fact I don't think there is a single bird in the film
(and Malick is fond of filming migratory birds). Franz mentions
seeing a black bird outside his prison cell -- more of a bad omen
than a symbol of freedom. At the very end, after his execution,
Fani ruminates about meeting Franz again, up in the mountains. The
film ends on this grace note that harkens back to its beginning,
instead of telling us Franz was ultimately declared a martyr by
Pope Benedict, his life no longer hidden. Malick makes Franz
more quixotic and obscure than he was. Of Fani and her children,
little information is available. I wish we learn more about them.

Compared to the glorious outdoor scenes (the specter of van Gogh
is present in the many farming sequences, just like in so many
recent Malick work), the prison scenes are long and taxing. But
ultimately they are critical, affording a glimpse of other souls,
in other locked cells. Those prisoners suffering through plights
similar to our hero's, but they bear their crosses in different
ways.

=======================================================================

Manohla Dargis, one of my favorite critics, complained about the lack
of mention of Jewish victims in _A Hidden Life_. I certainly cannot
agree with that. Gypsies were victims too and I assume some of the
migrant workers depicted, as well as the person living like an animal
in the woods hiding from Nazi society, are Gypsies. German Nazis hated
the Slavic people. The atrocities they committed in Russian (Ukraine
in particular) were astonishing. Furthermore, of the six million Soviet
Union soldiers taken prisoners; only half survived the war. In turn,
German prisoners were treated savagely. Of the ninety thousand who
surrendered at Stalingrad, maybe 5000 returned to Germany in the 1950s,
I think. (One of them was depicted in Fassbinder's _The Marriage of
Maria Braun_, needless to say.)

That sad background is a useful reference when discussing the moral
and theological content of _A Hidden Life_. Franz doggedly refuses
to swear the oath to Hitler, condemning himself to death and Fani
and the children to hardship. (They are also ostracized by their
community.) Is his behavior justified? But more important than that
-- why does Malick choose to highlight this specific act of passive
resistance, in the face of the sheer multitude of sacrifice made
to defeat Fascism in WWII? I just rewatched _Aimee and Jaguar_ and
_A Man Escaped_ -- not even the Catholic priest in the Bresson
film was against resistance, and lying/killing in its service.
The prologue in _A Hidden Life_ cites George Eliot to suggest that
Franz is one of the every-men whose quiet resistance helped lessen
the carnage. But there is very little that is common, or even
comprehensible, about the stubbornly devout and principled Franz.

Perhaps the key to reading this uniquely thought-provoking film is that
point that the two questions are the same.

Before marriage Franz is said to be a wild youth who rides motor bikes.
His tough-minded wife is apparently the one who has planted his religious faith, but even she initially doubts his cause. From his initial decision
to resist, through prison, and impending execution, he is bombarded
with counterarguments dissuading his doomed stance -- from his wife,
priests, lawyer, and judges. Their *are* persuasive -- perhaps a bit
like the Devil tempting this Christ-like figure in the mental desert
of his own choosing, turning the other cheek to insults and humiliation, refusing to strike a blow. (One of the early scenes also has him sowing
seeds in the field, like something out of Jesus' parables.) Time and
again he is shown following Christ' example.

But unlike Jesus he has little to say. It is not as though he has been
a theology scholar. (Malick's characters are never intellectuals.)
But two key dialogues help illuminate his core belief. One concerns
free will; the other, in front of Ganz' magistrate, the pronouncement
that he doesn't know if he is right, but he cannot choose what is wrong.

These must be the philosophical possibilities that drew Malick to
the story. The ex-Rhodes Scholar translated Heidegger before making
films, and negation/nothingness is part and parcel of Heidegger's
"German Existentialism." His brilliant but famously obscure ideas
were anti-rationalist and fiercely solipsistic. (I can barely grasp
his most basic tenets.) Freedom and negative are even more central to
Sartre's philosophy enunciated in _Being and Nothingness_, derived (bastardized, depending on your point of view) from Heidegger, the most important philosopher of the 20th century. After all, Sartre's starting
point is Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." From that axiom about
pure subjectivity springs forth a brilliant treatise about the universe
-- perhaps the last of its kind (philosophers who came later focused
on more narrow subjects). But unsurprisingly these philosophical
frameworks struggle to deal with the interaction between the subjective
mind and the physical world, and the interaction between minds too.
Part of the fascination with existentialism tomes is to find out
how these circles are squared.

Heidegger famously joined the Nazi party while Sartre flirted with
Communism and Maoism. The tension between the purely subjective and
the collective must similarly weigh on Malick, whom as Heideggerian
scholar may even feel a private moral weight. _The Hidden Life_
may be the perfect vehicle for starting that individual/collective
debate. It pits personal integrity and salvation against social
consequences. However, it should be a beginning rather than the
last word on this subject from our most essential filmmaker. I
certainly hope so. For this reason, I don't rank the film among
his top three films of the last decade.

(A stark contrast can be drawn with _The Thin Red Line_, which has
aged really well. One can claim it embodies everything about wars.
The film features stark contrasts and dialectic debates on the
nature of war between common soldiers: Sean Penn's cynic vs. Jim
Caviezel's idealist; Ben Chapman's devoted husband vs. Dash Mihok's cadaver-robbing ghoul; Elias Koteas' humanistic lawyer vs. Nick Nolte's
glory hound; and above all, the peaceful natives vs. the carnage of
war. Nolte's Colonel Tall is typically taken as the villain, but in
truth, after the initial check of his advance, his tactics are
spot on. Sending volunteers to knock out the machinegun bunker
leads to victory. As for pushing the infantrymen onwards without
water until they pass out -- great military feats often require
great sacrifices. Hannibal drove elephants across the Alps to
surprise the Romans. Napoleon too, not with elephants, but his
cannons were just as unwieldy. Winning his great victory at
Austerlitz (still studied in war colleges today) required Davout
to force march his III corps 70 miles in 3 days to save Legrand's
division arrayed as bait on the Goldbach, outnumbered perhaps 6:1.
History never recorded how many Frenchman passed out during that
march, but enough arrived in time and the battle ended the war.
Until the next year, when they invaded Prussia.)

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