![]() Others, such as the town’s dime-store-führer mayor (played with dizzying, spittle-flecked fury by veteran Austrian actor Karl Markovics), find themselves liberated by the racism and hate swirling all around. Some in his village are ambivalent about war and have no use for the Nazis, but they are also afraid to stand up. Franz sees and detests what’s happening around him. It’s not just the loyalty oath that disturbs him. (He does something similar in the opening scenes of Tree of Life, where the image of a child casually stepping into the shadows behind a tree foretells his subsequent death as a teenager.) An instance of play becomes an intimation of apocalypse.Ī Hidden Life is based on the very real story of Franz Jägerstätter, a devout Austrian farmer who, upon being called to serve in the army, refused to pledge loyalty to Hitler, and was imprisoned and executed as a result. ![]() It’s a subtle layer of meaning over a glimpse of the everyday, and it offers a fine example of the director’s uniquely cinematic ability to take the most unexpected, throwaway moment and give it a new emotional valence. But the way Malick shoots this little game, we feel the unease gathering: The camera is just a little too low, the lens just a little too wide, the silence - punctuated by gently rattling cans - ever so ominous. By this point, we’ve only heard vague rumblings of the war that will pry Franz away from a happily secluded existence in the mountains with his young daughters and his wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner). Playing a game, a blindfolded Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) tries to find his wife and kids, who circle around him dangling little cans and trying not to get caught. ![]() Quite early on in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, we see what should be a carefree moment for an Austrian farming family. August Diehl as Franz Jägerstätter in A Hidden Life. ![]()
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