A Hidden Life – an anti-war film, and more
■ If even a minute of Malick’s film were cut, a piece of its lyrical beauty is lost
On Cannes’ main boulevard, the Croisette, more than 7,000 kms away from Lutyens’ Delhi where Prime Minister Narendra Modi lives but has designated other residents of the area as being against him and thus, anti-national, the few Indians lining up to watch films on Sunday evening were also, simultaneously, glued to their phones.
All stared at their screens, either smiling or retching, depending on which side of the divide they stood. Exit polls often get it wrong, yet they have managed to inspire Sensex and depress those whose faith in India being a secular republic has been under constant challenge since 2014.
Exactly at that point, as the forecast was sinking in, Terence Malick's A Hidden Life had its world
premiere at Festival de Cannes, as if in response to those losing hope and wondering if the India they grew up in was now truly dead.
Usually, it’s not easy getting into a Terrence Malick film. If not right at the beginning, like he did in The Tree of Life (2011), his film will pause for his camera and background score to wax lyrical - quite literally - and challenge you to stay with him.
In an age when both our tastes and patience have been sharpened and reduced to focus on pacy plots and hyper dialoguebaazi, this can be taxing, fatiguing, annoying even.
Malick’s A Hidden Life opens with real, black and white footage of Hitler indoctrinating and organising Germany as the Third Reich – official Nazi designation for Germany from January 1933 to May
1945, it means ‘Third Realm’ or ‘Third Empire’, the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (8001806) and the German Empire (1871-1918) - as well as the famous Nuremberg rally in 1938. Everyone is hailing Hitler, the soldiers with the bayonets of their rifles on fire.
And then A Hidden Life announces that it is going to tell us a story based on true events.
That’s the story of an Austrian farmer, Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) who live on a small farm in St. Radegund with their three young daughters, Franz's sister and mother. Franz and Fani work together and are gloriously in love with each other of course, but also their life, their farm, their family.
Around 1938, after Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany), Franz is called for military training. He returns home eventually, to Fani who seemed lost without him, but something has changed - both Franz, and the village.
The villagers, including the mayor, are now enthusiastically aligned with Hitler and his agenda, believing that things were bad before him. We see Franz's unease at this talk, and then we hear him speak of how unjust the war is.
Franz refuses to donate to the war and won't accept family allowance that is due to him. And in 1943, during World War II, when he is called for active duty, he tells Fani that he just can't get himself to kill innocent people on behalf of Hitler.
Both Franz and Fani know the consequences of his actions, and so he asks the local priest what one should do "if our leaders are evil…" "I want to save our lives, but not through lies," he says.
Franz is willing to serve as a paramedic, but when he is standing in line with other soldiers and refuses to take the Hitler oath, the "conscientious objector" is accused of We hr kraftze rs etzung (undermining military morale), and jailed.
A Hidden Life is an antiwar film, of course. But it is more, much more than that. The "conscientious objector" was eventually put to death in August 1943, at the age of 36, and in 2007, the Pope declared him a martyr.