DAYS OF HEAVEN

Days of Heaven is a tragic romance and slo-mo melodrama which established Malick’s most recognisable authorial signature: his reverence for the fading, deepening sunlight of dusk which made him virtually the high priest of the “golden hour”.

It is set in 1916, with some of the US feverishly excited about the fortunes still to be made in the vast swathes of still unexploited farmland and also aware of the looming inevitability of getting involved in the European war. Three drifters from Chicago arrive in the Texas panhandle in the north of the state, hoping to get seasonal farm labouring work. Abby (Brooke Adams), is a beautiful, quiet young woman with a kid sister Linda (Linda Manz), an annoying, entertaining chatterbox who is also watchful and slightly scared by how vulnerable they are; she is the film’s deadpan narrator, coolly accepting their hardship and survival stratagems. With them is Abby’s lover, the brooding and hot-tempered Bill (Richard Gere), who has fled the city after killing a factory foreman and is now posing as Abby’s brother…

(Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)