A Hidden Life Isn’t Good, But It’s Important

There’s an inherent nostalgia to the end of the year that always makes me want to watch something moody and slow. Watching the trailer for A Hidden Life, it was clearly what I was looking for : the true story of an Austrian man who chose to die rather than betray his beliefs and swear loyalty to Hitler. It’s the first film by Terrence Malick that I’ve watched, though, so I was unfortunately not prepared for the long, somewhat tedious pacing of the film. Still, though, the film wasn’t completely pointless, especially in how it made me reconsider the relationship between the quality and the value of a film.

The biggest issue with the film, at least for me, was how long it was. I’m not afraid of a film with a three-hour runtime, but it has to be used well, and I feel like A Hidden Life didn’t achieve that. From what I’ve read, Terrence Malick is known for lingering on shots of nature and random moments, so I can accept that as part of his style. The real problem was with the pacing of the story, especially when the main character who refuses to join the Nazis, Franz, is imprisoned. The film makes the audience sit with Franz in his prison cell and amble around the prison yard next to him in what I can only assume is an attempt to make viewers empathise with his struggles. It works, I guess, since the sequences feel like a torturously long jail sentence, but it made me want to stop watching more than it made me feel sorry for Franz's suffering. Showing the time passing far too quickly and skipping over weeks or months would have felt far more powerful, highlighting the emptiness of the experience and how much Franz is missing in his life - alas, this was not Malick's vision.

At the same time, I understand the poeticism of making the film such a slog to watch to a certain degree. After all, the title is A Hidden Life, so the whole point is highlighting a story that would otherwise be ignored; forcing the audience to suffer with Franz and giving him the time and attention that he never got in life feels justified in many ways. It might be borderline unwatchable, but it lends weight to the film that makes it far more emotional and impactful in the end.

Speaking of the poeticism of the film, though, brings me to my next complaint : the film’s dialogue. It’s beautiful in the way poetry is, with characters talking about how “even if it rains, the sun is shining" (a metaphor for God existing even in terrible times) and how it’s “better to suffer injustice than to do it”. Half of the dialogue in this film is basically characters philosophising at each other, and it feels too perfect to be realistic. Not all dialogue has to be realistic, of course, but if your dialogue style is basically poetic philosophy, it might be worth considering what is too much. After all, one of the virtues of poetry is the ability to capture and idea of a feeling succinctly - repeating the same ideas over and over throughout a film only cheapens them, lessening their impact each time and making it feel like the film is slowly collapsing rather than building to some spectacular moment.

All of this isn’t to say that A Hidden Life is a bad film, though. I didn’t enjoy watching it, it’s true, but I still saw a lot of the beauty in it. It explores themes of faith and conviction in interesting ways, and contrasting the human drama with the seemingly uncaring and unchanging environment poses interesting questions. Nature seems to be a representation of God in the film, so how does it not reflect to the trauma of the people? It’s a very basic question, one that many spiritual people ask themselves in their times of pain, and Malick doesn'’t seem to give us an answer. After all, who could? We do see, though, how the characters seem to be inspired by nature’s lack of change, its consistent beauty and goodness, and in doing so, it offers us comfort in a cruel world.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything A Hidden Life seems to say. There’s an inevitably preachy feeling to it, seemingly telling the audience that they, too, should be like Franz, sacrificing himself and his family for the sake of his spiritual self. It almost feels like it’s shaming the audience for not being Christ-like figures themselves, holding them to an impossible standard of faith and conviction - and yet, it’s a true story. It reminds us that firm belief, in religion or anything else, is possible, that we can always choose to pursue what we believe is true and good if we just accept the pain that may come with it. I don’t know how I feel about the glorification of suffering, but I at least like the idea of the idea Malick is trying to convey.

In the end, would I recommend this film to others? It really depends. If you’re looking for entertainment, A Hidden Life is absolutely the wrong film. But if you’re looking for something to think about and don’t really care if the film is “good” in the traditional sense of the word, its message is too important to miss. Despite how unwatchable I found the film to be, it at least offers an interesting perspective on the purpose of films, whether they're inherently meant to entertain or if they can put that aside to be something more than that. Whether I agree with the idea is still up for question, but it's at least worth considering.