FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Stephen Bird I'm sorry, I'm so-so sorry but as the title suggested I'm pointing this down to my younger age, I didn't enjoy Days of Heaven and I found it a challenge to keep invested in. I understand that it is a beautiful, well crafted film, almost poetic in a way, but it wasn't properly speaking to me on an individual level, no sir. Maybe one day, when I'm considerably older I will revisit Days of Heaven and get an altogether different more positive experience, but until then...Richard Gere is a quality actor and I've always admired him, his performance as young farm boy Bill was top notch, making me understand now why he secured bigger and better roles as his career advanced..., the same can be said about Brooke Adams, just a shame that she didn't find the same levels of success that her co-star did. Visually the film was fine, the whole cinematography, right down to the simplest piece of mise-en-scene, was perfect, almost anal..., overly simple, giving the best impression of what the rural Texan panhandle must have been like in the 1900's, when the final frontier was still just about a thing.Technically the film was excellent, hence it's high rating on the website, sadly my overall experience was poor and the enjoyment levels weren't there, hence my much lower score.

JuliaGarnerFans 'Days of Heaven' (1978) Earlier today I told someone that they had given me inspiration to write movies again, through their stunning artwork, so I thought I would in turn write a review on one of the most beautiful looking movies of all time.Days of Heaven is different to almost all of my other favourite movies. It decides not to focus its sights heavily on the screenplay, or the characters, or even dialogue, with Malick's sights primarily on the style and the atmosphere created. Set in 1915, Days of Heaven follows Bill, a labourer, his young sister Linda (The narrator of the story) and his girlfriend Abby. Running from the factory where he worked after accidentally killing the mill operator, Bill and Abby end up working for a kind and rich but slowly dying farmer. Posing as brother and sister, to avoid people talking about them, it isn't long before Abby catches the farmer's eye, and Bill sees an opportunity to escape their poverty stricken lives by getting her to marry the farmer.The beauty of days of Heaven doesn't come from the relatively simple plot though. Every shot in the film looks like a painting, taken with precision, while it was shot using all natural light and predominantly filmed in the 'Magic hour' of sunlight. The choice of using voice over narration by Linda Manz over heavy use of dialogue also gives if an almost poetic feel, that no other director but Malick can obtain. The childlike innocence/naivety of Manz' narration gives it an almost other worldly feel, and as if she is looking back at happier memories. "This farmer, he didn't know when he first saw her, or what it was about her that caught his eye. Maybe it was the way the wind blew through her hair." The casual narration and elegance of the plot makes it timeless.Only the 2nd film directed by Terrence Malick before taking a 20 year hiatus from making movies (Also escaping the public eye, becoming an almost mythological film God in the process), Days of Heaven was the film in which he would use to create his signature voice overs, shots of nature and the style in his later films. The beautiful cinematography (Which won an Oscar), the outstanding score by Ennio Morrocone, the sights of nature vs the destructive nature of people, and the astute vision of Malick all culminate in a true '70's classic. A real auteur that creates true art.

Lee Eisenberg Terrence Malick burst onto the movie scene with 1973's "Badlands", about a teenage couple on a crime spree. A well-directed, well-shot movie, it suggested that Malick would be one of the new upstanding directors emerging at the time (Spielberg, DePalma, Coppola, etc).His next effort, 1978's "Days of Heaven", was a worthy effort but no masterpiece. The first few minutes of the movie are the best part. Had the movie kept its focus there, it probably would have been as much of a masterpiece as "Badlands" was. Instead, it's a so-so look at the tensions arising from a love triangle. I will say that the locust scene is pretty impressive, though.Malick took a twenty-year break from directing after this, returning with "The Thin Red Line". It was also a worthy effort but had too narrow of a focus to amount to something that was worth watching. His next effort was "The New World", which was too long and too slow (seriously, had they trimmed half an hour it might have managed to be mediocre). I didn't see "The Tree of Life" but my parents told me that it sucked. Basically, Malick gets progressively worse as a director.The visuals in "Days of Heaven" get a lot of praise. I'm sorry, but visuals without a solid plot serve no purpose (contrast that with Todd Haynes's movies, wherein the visuals emphasize the lie that the women are living). In short, I'll call this movie Malick's last movie that's really worth seeing. After this, his work turned into pseudo-intellectual, Oscar bait wannabe.

sharky_55 What Malick intended of Days of Heaven was something a bit more expository. After about a year of cutting and re-dubbing he came to this; most of the main actor's dialogues were removed, and Linda Manz's quiet, almost removed narration provides its own parallel running commentary to the bigger and more complex events that her child perspective does not afford her understanding. Her filter takes its cues from Malick's debut, Badlands, where Sissy Spacek's voice-over was as much naive as they come; wondering, reminiscing, dreaming of better things. And here Manz provides the same role; her butchered lower- class accent addresses the emotional upheavals of the adults of this world with a carefree irreverence. She interrupts a year long absence between lovers, silent in its unresolved tension, by running up and yelling and hugging. When the days of heaven are long gone, and Abby has resigned themselves to wealth and civilisation, she has a natural urge to return to that world once more. There is a specific pain to the events of the film, but there is also a universality in the way Abby approaches it; see the cut from Bill's death to the faraway shore where women and children are more or less unconcerned with this ending. The final shot of Abby wandering away from her school and into the wilderness undercuts all that has happened, as if it was just a chapter in her brief life, and suggesting there is a lot more left to come. Opposing this we have the speech of the adults which is clipped and minimal. It matters not what they say, because more can be gleamed in their pained and yearning faces. The opening argument which sets this whole 'adventure', as Abby would refer to it, is drowned out by the droning of the steel mills. We do not know what caused the argument, only that it results in the group having to flee to the Texas farm. Later, Malick replicates this method with the farmer; his reaction shot to Bill and Abby being a little too touchy feely is silent in its agony, but the whirring of the windspire in the backgrounds gradually builds to resemble his racing heart. And see how the editing reveals to us Bill's desire to kill the farmer and reclaim his woman; following Gere as he practically stalks the farmer like a hunter to a deer, swapping tense closeups of a trigger finger with the movement of the birds, and then with a composition that quickly paints him as guilty so that he has to swing his gun away. The film has been praised for its gorgeous cinematography, and deservedly so. Paradoxically, Malick films at golden hour so that the sun is hidden away yet the last remnants of sunlight fill the background with a romantic glow that seems at all odds with the affairs at the farm. Almendros and Wexler's compositions are remarkable, depicting the Edward Hopper style mansion with a lonesome, dreamlike presence on the horizon. Tiny dark figures will intersect carefully along the golden fields, silhouetted by the waning sun. While conventional landscape shots might have the sky and land evenly share the frame, they tend to use a lopsided ratio to emphasise the natural beauty; once while an immense stormcloud hovers over the diminished plains, threatening with rain, and to showcase the green hills that seem to go on and on and push the sky out of focus. A tiny slight involves the photography being a little too pretty at times where the mood might suggest something more chaotic - when the locus swarm descends upon the crops, everyone panics and tries to swat them out, but the camera points serenely at a single insect in shallow focus and in close up, as if it were a tourist capturing the perfect shot. Lone bushels of wheat, swaying ever so slightly in the wind are also given this treatment at times. The way Malick channels the power of nature foretells The Tree of Life. Here, he relies on it to empower the emotions felt in our characters. The serenity and peace of a sneaky night-time affair is characterised by the river rushing over pebbles. The wind whips up a frenzy within the farmer as he slowly realises that he has been conned. Instead of depicting the nervous wedding night consummation, he shoots a single trembling leaf, wet with dew. Some of these images resonant deeply, while others are less convincing. Combined with what is a common criticism of this film, the stilted characterisation and dialogue, it makes for an interesting if not slightly off-putting mix. Treat it as a sort of Terrence Malick litmus test.