A Hidden Life

The final movie in my winter break marathon (and my final movie for 2019) was A Hidden Life which I saw on New Year's Eve.  It tells the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian conscientious objector during World War II.  It is emotionally exhausting to watch but it is also beautiful and elegiac (and one of Terrence Malick's most linear narratives).  The movie begins by showing Franz (August Diehl), his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner), and their three daughters enjoying their simple life as hard-working farmers in a valley in the Austrian mountains.  Their idyllic life is shattered when they hear the rumblings of fighter planes overhead and Franz is called up for basic training.  He is horrified by what he sees (in the clever use of black and white archival footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis) but, after France is occupied and the war is presumed over, he is sent home.  But as the war rages on, he lives in fear that he will be called up again every time he sees a bicycle bringing a telegraph go by.  He is tormented by the fact that he will have to swear an oath to Hitler.  He knows that he cannot do something that is against his beliefs but he fears for what will happen to his wife and children if he is condemned as a traitor.  As a devout Catholic, he consults his priest and then the bishop, but they urge him to consider his family.  He ultimately refuses to take the oath, is put in prison in Berlin where he is routinely mistreated, and condemned by a military tribunal while Fani endures hostility from the people in her village.  A lawyer tells Franz that if he takes a non-combat role in the army the charges will be dropped but he will still have to take the oath.  Fani comes to visit him in prison and gives him the strength to do what he feels he must.  Jagerstatter is a man who refuses to take part in the evil he sees all around him so I found his story to be particularly salient for these troubled times and I was very invested in its outcome.  I also found it to be a profoundly spiritual exploration of free will.  However, the narrative moves very slowly (albeit with some beautiful shots of the Austrian mountains and valleys) so not everyone is going to enjoy it.  Both Diehl and Pachner give emotional performances and I also enjoyed Matthias Schoenaerts as a soldier who interrogates Franz and Bruno Ganz (in his final role) as a judge in the military tribunal who tries to understand his motives.  It was sometimes a difficult movie to watch but I would highly recommend it.