Days of Heaven (1978)

Terrence Malick is one of those directors who looms large—his filmography, good and bad, feels like a mountain, daunting to climb but impossible to ignore. A friend called me as I was leaving the theater and asked what I’d seen. When I told him Days of Heaven—my first Malick film—he congratulated me, saying I’d picked a good place to start.

I’d have to agree. Seeing it as a matinee at the Vista was nothing short of sublime. I went in knowing only that it was beautifully shot. It is that—and so much more. A true American epic, from the struggle to the scenery, to the quiet ache of its ending. I felt the brutal punch of a bygone era that echoes its tragedy into these modern days.

What struck me most was how odd and layered the characters are, how the film refuses to hand you easy moral answers. It gives you space to just sit with the weight of it all, to absorb the drama like a slow drink of water.

The climax sneaks up on you—you don’t realize you’ve arrived until you’re fully submerged. And when it hits, it feels inevitable. Our conflicts don’t unfold in a vacuum. They build, piece by piece, from choices and circumstances beyond our control. Days of Heaven understands this in a way that feels stark, relentless, and deeply, deeply human.