Quote of the Day

"Wasn't no harm in him. You'd give him a flower, he'd keep it forever. "

Linda Manz as Linda in Days of Heaven (1978)

This movie has haunted me since I first saw it in the early 80s. The story tells of a pair of lovers (a young Richard Gere and Brooke Adams) in the early 1900s, who - posing as brother and sister - travel to Texas to work as harvesters for a rich farmer, Sam Shepard. Néstor Almendros won an Oscar for his photography. Drumheller, Alberta, stood in for the Texas panhandle and did it proud. There are so many unforgettable images: the wind tossing the sheafs of wheat in the sunset; time-lapse photography of the wheat growing underground; the great threshers during harvesting; the faces of the actors - Shepard, Gere, Adams, Linda Manz - in still, silent moments; the buffalo on the snow-covered prairie; an underwater shot of a trout swimming by a discarded, ornate wine glass. The sound is beautifully used too. Long moments of silence... the wind in the wheat, the slamming of wooden screen door, and the eerie use of Saint-Saëns "The Aquarium" from Carnival of the Animals in the opening credits, against sepia-toned vintage photography of the period.

It was Terrence Malick's second film and it's been hailed as the first art film to come out of the U.S.A., whatever that means. He wasn't to make another movie for 20 years. I can't say enough about this film. I couldn't bear to not see it on a regular basis so it was one of the first DVDs I bought.