A Hidden Life (2019)
Terrence Malick’s latest is a three-hour march to the executioner’s chair for protagonist Franz Jägerstätter (played with conviction by August Diehl). Jägerstätter is a simple but noble farmer, whose steadfast refusal to swear an oath to Hitler comes at great expense to him and everyone he loves.
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The closing postscript is a line from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. If A Hidden Life‘s long lead up to this fateful endnote isn’t enough to induce waterworks in you as a viewer, then this closing line (which reveals the title’s origins) should push you over. If it’s still no, then I sincerely worry about you.
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