A Hidden Life

Die wahren Heldentaten sind oft die, die im Stillen vollbracht werden. So die These von Terrence Malicks aktuellem Film, der das Leben von Franz Jägerstätter ins Licht holt, eines 1907 in Oberösterreich geborenen Bauernsohns, der den Nazis den Kriegsdienst verweigerte und dafür wegen "Wehrkraftzersetzung" zum Tode verurteilt wurde. August Diehl verkörpert den Gewissensmann mit großer Intensität, während Malick um ihn herum ein szenisches Panorama webt aus atmosphärischen Bildern eines Bauernlebens, Dialogfetzen aus dem Off und untermalender Musik. Eine Elegie für einen wenig besungenen Helden. (Barbara Schweizerhof)

With A HIDDEN LIFE, Terrence Malick returns to historical material for the first time since A NEW WORLD, once again setting the boundlessness of nature against the restrictions of human life. His subject this time is Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who remained steadfast in his refusal to swear allegiance to Hitler, which robbed him first of his freedom and later of his life.
Structured by Jägerstätter’s impressions in voiceover together with those of his wife Franziska, the film crafts a suitably allenveloping portrait of the rural idyll the family inhabit, not least to make the contrast with the stations of Franz’s subsequent fate reverberate all the louder. Rolling mountain pastures gradually give way to claustrophobic interiors, the rushing wind and babbling streams are replaced by barked commands, and warmth and community recede into cheerless solitude; for all Malick’s talent at creating beauty, he’s equally adept at capturing the ugliness of the Nazi regime. Yet A HIDDEN LIFE is ultimately about both existing side by side, one offering solace against the other: a monument forged of light and air to a man who believed, never to be pulled down to earth. (James Lattimer)