Days of Heaven (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With Days of Heaven (1978), Terrence Malick wanted to tell a story mostly through artistic pictures, and without a doubt the film is superbly shot.  But the writing is a reality too, and here Malick greatly disappoints.

The “little people” of pre-World War I America are sinners too (the film makes clear).  Life, however, is ferociously demanding, and a man like Richard Gere‘s Bill might, or will, shun moral duty in fighting against it.  There is no profundity in the movie beyond this, and much of the narrative detail is feeble.  Still, it is absorbing to watch a plague of locusts, often in closeup, eat away at far-reaching crops and uniformed policemen in the early 20th century ride vigorously their horses through the woods.

John Simon spoke the truth when he said that Thelma and Louise (1991) glorifies violence (including the violence of profane words). Further, eventually I couldn’t stand the character played by Geena Davis—Thelma. She becomes irritating in her foolishness and gullibility.

Not a triumph.

I am not the first to say it: Men and women behave strictly according to their physical and psychological needs, whether positive or negative. This is how Olga is behaving in the 2002 novel, The Days of Abandonment, after her husband leaves her for another woman. A writer with two children living in Italy, Olga becomes frantic, impatient, less of a suitable mother, self-alienated (“It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted”).

Days was written by the elusive Italian author, Elena Ferrante, and translated into English (seemingly very well) by Ann Goldstein. It is clear-eyed and searing, and accurately called unsentimental. Ferrante has a distinguished character in Olga. I am glad Italian readers turned the book into a best-seller.

“She was born to be bad”?  (The Gloria Grahame character, that is.)

Well, maybe.  But both spouses in the Fritz Lang film, Human Desire (1954), are very morally flawed, which makes for a more interesting thriller than it would otherwise be.  It’s raw from start to finish, with sentimentality miles away.  Lang seems to respect that it’s based on a Zola novel, creating some of the force and grimness of European cinema old and more recent.  And the sapid cast is not shy about the realization.

Human Desire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)