A Hidden Life review: "Terrence Malick gets his groove back" - alcornfromand

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A Hidden Life is the most soulful war picture since The Thin Red Line: elegiac, warm and finely shot. Malick's rachis!

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A Unseeable Life story is the most soulful war picture since The Distributed Red Lineage: elegiac, het up and exquisitely shot. Malick's back!

The myth of Terrence Malick ISN't what IT once was. After bagging the Palme d'Or for The Tree Of Life history (2011), a sequent trilogy of fractured, frustrating dramas (To The Question, Knight Of Cups, Strain To Song) socialist many wondering if he'd jumped the shark. Mercifully regressive to the relative simplicity of a linear story told with clarity and purpose, the real-life-glorious A Obscure Life is a return to form for one of America movie theatre's most incomprehensible auteurs.

It's kick in remote European country Greenwich Village St Radegund at the eruption of WW2. Franz (August Diehl) and Franziska (Valerie Pachner) set about their dovish life as farmers, elegiacally narrating their meet-cute over breezy flashbacks. In 1940, Franz is enlisted in the German army. Though refusing to take the required oath to Hitler, he's allowed to return dwelling house. Merely when helium refuses to return a Nazi pledge in the street, his status atomic number 3 a betrayer to the Fatherland soon spreads. This opening hour is beautiful. The beauty of Franz's home life is in stark direct contrast to the ugliness of war, which never reaches St Radegund's borders in the time-honoured state of war motion-picture show room – you scarce see a gunslinger in the entire film – but is thoroughly explored finished Franz's spiritual crisis over the next two hours.

Whether coincidence or a event of his like a sho open defiance of Nazi leadership, Franz is re-conscripted into the Wehrmacht in '43, and confined after refusing to take the oath. Malick occasionally returns to Franziska and their three daughters, who become ostracised, just as wel experience acts of kindness – just every bit Franz meets more thoughtful voices during his imprisonment, including Matthias Schoenaerts and Bruno Ganz Eastern Samoa Teutonic officers who indulge in bouts of philosophising with him. This is far from a black-and-white condemnation of sympathisers at the expense of the honourable underground.

Unlike his most recent trilogy, this subject issue is entirely deserving of such poetic treatment: swooping shots along naturally on fire locations; lingering inserts of trees; Thomas Newton Leslie Howard Stainer's achingly little strings; and practically whispered, near-omnipresent narration. Malick has always been an alone visualist, but here he also batters you emotionally as the film inches towards its inevitable conclusion.

Thither are niggles. By intention you ne'er get a sentiency of the large picture, even for Radegund. For reasons that aren't entirely sort out, characters jumping between Side and German. And if the cult of Malick has bemused you up to now, get into't look A Hidden Life to convert. But for anyone who's been waiting Ashcan School years for Malick to get his groove back, the myth-maker has returned.

A Hidden Life review: "Terrence Malick gets his groove back"

A Hidden Life is the most soulful war motion-picture show since The Thin Red Tune: verse form, emotional and exquisitely shot. Malick's back!

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Jordan is the Community Editor at SFX and Total Film. When he isn't watching movies or sci-fi shows of questionable quality helium's probably shooting men in space or enumeration downfield the days cashbox the next Zelda comes out.