Last month I watched Terrence Malick’s latest film, A Hidden Life, and the impact continues to reverberate like a soft surf nudging the edge of my shore even now. Almost thirteen years ago I wrote a long winding review of his masterpiece, The Tree of Life. My daughter was three and my son had just been born when that movie came out. I was awed by the majesty and beauty of the cinematography, the whispered voice overs of existential despair, and the vision of a world portrayed as a fine balance (battle? war?) between the way of nature and the way of grace. That the way of nature was there from the beginning of deep time with the formation of the universe, the cooling into galaxies and planets, the eventual rise of life and the battle for domination and supremacy. While the way of grace only shows her face intermittently, in tiny flashes of sun against a baby’s feet, the soft touch of a wife’s hands against her husband’s chest, the elusive fluttering of a butterfly just out of reach. That the way of grace is so dazzlingly luminous, only small snatches of it are necessary to perfectly balance the cold, calculated struggle of the way of nature. The vision of a heaven at the end has never been more beguilingly portrayed on film, both redemptive and bittersweet, joyous and inarticulate. If you are in a certain receptive state of mind, it is the kind of cinema that recalibrates the way you see yourself in this world, regardless of religious upbringing, personal faith or nagging skepticism. It says no to both your certainty and your doubt. To this day, my initial viewing of the picture remains a deeply cherished spiritual experience.
A Hidden Life is a different kind of film. A more demanding one, I would say. Narratively it is based on the real historical figure of Franz Jägerstätter, a farmer in the small Austrian community of St Radegund in the high Alps with his wife and three daughters during the Anschluss of Nazi Germany. It is very much a Terrence Malick film— yes, there are voice overs and plenty of long lingering shots of pastoral farm life above the clouds, Tyrian blue sunsets and swatches of early morning light flashing through windows in dark stables, the sound of scythes shushing through long grasses, and the silent granite faces of the mountains in the background, standing as ramparts to keep iniquity and wickedness out. But the evil of Nazism is ineluctable. It comes even to idyllic hamlets in the Alps, far above and beyond the brutish calculus of domination and power. The town gets swept up in the rhetoric of hatred, blame and demonization. Franz at first keeps his distance. Pushes back gently in conversations with the town priest and the frothing ravings of the mayor. When he is summoned for basic training, he heeds the call of the Fatherland but the reality of fascist militarism steels his resolve. It is not, nor will it ever be his way. After France surrenders in 1941 he returns home and resumes his simple life in the mountains with his family but the townspeople have become strangers to him. Nazi ideology has metastasized throughout the body politic, seeping down into the roots and bones of the heartland. Beyond any possibility of curative intervention. Within this cancer ridden carcass, the Jägerstätters are ostracized for Franz’s intransigence. He refuses to swear fealty to Hitler. He speaks ill of the entire National Socialist project and the town turns against him. When he is called up again for active duty he refuses to recite the oath to Hitler and is immediately thrown into prison. The rest of the movie is a slow denouement toward the inevitable. Franz holds his ground, having made his one true choice, despite entreaties from local villagers, chaplains and priests, even from his loving wife Fani. Your sacrifice would benefit no one, he is told. God knows what’s in your heart. It matters not what you say or do. The only thing that matters is between you and God. But Franz is unswayed. He has moved beyond rationalizations for compromise. He only knows right and wrong, how it gets sealed into eternity with a single leap of faith. He fully knows that his intransigence means his children will grow up without a father, that Fani will be forced to bear a much greater burden, both physically and emotionally, in his absence. But for him, it isn’t a choice so much as it is acceptance of a fate chosen for him by his God. Even when offered a way out— pledge loyalty to Hitler and be assigned a non combatant role— he demurs.
There’s an important scene about halfway through the movie where Franz visits a local painter who has scratched out a living painting murals on the walls and ceilings of the parish church of prophets and the triumphant Christ with brilliant halo over his head, resplendent in all His glory. The painter rues his inability to give them the “true Christ”, the suffering servant who died to save a world. He gives parishioners a comforting lie— a Christ one can sympathize with, one they can admire from afar but aren't expected to follow. He paints their comfortable Christ because he lacks the courage to paint the truth. It is here where Franz fully accepts his Cross and bears it until the moment the guillotine comes down on his neck. He embodies the Kierkegaardian ideal of both the Tragic Hero from Either/Or and the Knight of Faith from Fear and Trembling. Sometimes it is easy to resist evil, to say no to that which is clearly wrong. We don’t steal from people. We try to be true to our word. We share what we can. We wish no one any harm. But what happens when the necessary resistance comes at great pain and cost, not only to yourself, but to those you most love? What happens to those little girls when their daddy never comes home? Who will be there to wipe their tears, mend their wounds, shield them from the darkness of the world when he is gone? My wife had an initial visceral distaste for Franz’s journey toward his own doom. Christ is his exemplar, I said. He is simply living his faith as truthfully as he can. But Christ never had kids, she said. Could you do what he did? Could you really? Leave your little girl and little boy behind for a principle? Even if it changes nothing? Would you leave them alone?
This is difficult, demanding stuff for a 21st century suburban American person to digest and reckon with. Something dark has come to our shores over the past 20 years, slowly infesting the minds and habits of average, god fearing, hard working Americans and now it threatens to corrupt our collective soul. We have become mean spirited, crude, and incurious. Anger and spite filters through any discussion of how best to distribute the fruits of our incredible bounty. Kindness is Marxist or Communist or, to use the current term, wokeness. Our culture has withered away to a barren wasteland devoid of wonder or beauty. We have drilled and fracked and rutted and exploited our lands and wildernesses to the breaking point. Great wealth has settled into fewer and fewer hands as our cities and towns have been hollowed out and cannibalized by the logic of unfettered capitalism. A ravenous hunger has arisen, exacerbated by loneliness and precarity, a hunger that now gets fed with only the scantiest of victuals, mass produced on the cheap at great profit to conglomerate entities. There is no community—only markets and producers. Winners and losers. Entrepreneurs and lazy dependents. John Galts and “suckers” like Tom Joad and John McCain. Even its religion has been debased. This strain of American evangelicalism, with its prosperity gospel and emphasis on self-empowerment, will go down as one of history’s great heresies. We now celebrate bravado and pompous boasting. Liars and truth twisters are cheered on by people who attained unfathomable worldly success within the parameters of the very same status quo they hope to overturn and destroy. Pulling up ladders now that they occupy the highest tiers of society. What happened to us? How long have we been marinating in the brine of our own decadence?
Like all good Generation X boys I have made good use of ironic detachment to maintain the fiction of unaccountability, exploiting the opportunities our broken society affords without feeling any sense of responsibility for its failings. When we decided at the turn of the century that it was ok to wage aggressive war under false pretenses, that it was ok to torture enemy captives and that the fomenters of such evils would not only go unpunished, but elevated to academic professorships and sinecure positions in influential institutions, I disengaged. I disavowed it and focused my efforts on my own sphere of influence. I work hard, do my surgeries, come in late at night when called upon to assist those in great pain. I give what I can, support the ones who depend on me. I am not showy or frivolous. I drive a Ford Edge. I vacation sensibly. Post my messages on social media signaling alignment with worthy causes. But my fingers remain tightly clutched around the life I have arbitrarily carved for myself. I put nothing to chance. I operate within the confines of a world that has no inkling of my presence. I embrace it with every ironic fiber of my being. No, I am not a religious man. I don’t depend on the notion of a Savior to ensure my perpetuity in an afterlife. I don’t even think the historical Christ was concerned about such matters. Building a world religion wasn’t his aim. The Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t something to come; it has always been here, right now, visible to anyone with eyes to see. Christ knew. As did Hui-neng and Nagarjuna. The Essenes. And Meister Eckhart and Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Like all mystical traditions— Sufism, Kabbalah, Advaita Vedanta, Zen moksha— it exists beyond the scope of words. Sunyata. Shantih. Om. Love. Whatever you choose to call it. Even the letters of the words fall away like scales from your eyes. By the apophatic method it is not this, not that, not anything until you have stripped away all conceptual notions of what remains, leaving only a small fire that burns in the heart of all darknesses.
The final scenes are incredibly moving. Fani visits him one last time in the prison and makes her peace with his decision. Do you understand? he asks her. She squeezes his hands and looks him resolutely in the eye. I love you. Whatever you do. Whatever comes. I’m with you. Always. Do what is right.... And then the stirring execution scene set to the soaring music of St Matthew’s Passion. Franz in the prison yard waiting his turn to be called. They are all given a sheet of paper and a pencil. All my dear ones, don’t forget me in your prayers. I’ll pray for you from the other side…. And then he’s marched into what appears to be an old theater, a theater of the absurd, with black curtains and a dimly lit backstage, staffed by suited men in top hats and bowlers. But his thoughts return to the past, to the day he rode his motorcycle into town and saw for the first time the woman who would become the love of his life.
By all metrics I am an exceedingly mediocre modern man. The world is no worse, nor no better for my existence. I do my best not to harm anyone intentionally. I face my failings and try to learn how not to repeat them. But I am anonymous and unknown. There is nothing special about me. Nothing inherent in my upbringing or genetic make-up that would be predictive of what I would do in Franz’s situation. Nobody can ever know until the day comes. Even Christ himself was uncertain. Someone taps you on the shoulder. Or you find yourself in an inescapable position demanding an act of self abnegation. I tell my wife I am not sure what I would do. It all depends on the moment. On how well I had prepared myself. I hope it never comes to that. I hope our world can find a way to heal itself, can find compassion and mercy and decency again. So that such drastic actions won't be asked of anyone. But I tell her that every once in a while it is necessary for a nameless man to die for the Good to keep the flame burning. And by this light, the rest of us may find the way.
2/23/25
