A Hidden Life: Reflecting on Terrance Malick’s latest film

“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”  George Eliot “Middlemarch“

So ends the last frame of Terrence Malick’s newest film “A Hidden LIfe    

We all love stories of those who do great things.Yet, some heroes provide nothing more than moral modeling

“A Hidden Life” is the story of Fanz and Fani Jägerstätter, a young couple with three children–devout  Austrian Catholics who refuse allegiance to the Third Reich at the outset of WWII— with devastating consequences.

Franz  saw Adolph Hitler as an immoral dictator executing an immoral war. It is Franz’ Catholic faith that teaches him that his informed conscience is the supreme quality of a moral being. This unwavering faithfulness to his conscience leads him deeper and deeper into his conflict with the Third Reich. His decision brings upon himself and his family of six (his wife Fani, their three daughters, a sister-in-law, and his mother) unimaginable emotional and physical suffering.

Franz could have continued living a peaceful life if he’d simply ignored what was happening in his homeland and been willing to raise his arm to the Third Reich.

But though it will bring certain hardship to his family and supreme punishments to himself, he simply cannot join the cause. The question A Hidden Life forces us to contemplate is profound: Does our decision to follow our conscience matter?

Franz is no household name, and his life was unspectacular, save for the way he swam against the current. He is cruelly reminded by all those around him, neighbors, friends, officials, that his resistance will mean nothing. No one will ever know or care.

If it were not for the happy accidental research of Gordon Zahn in 1964, Franz would still be an unknown, and this film would not have been made. And still, the message of his life is to act on your conscience, whether or not anyone else will know or care.

Zahn stumbled on some obscure letters between Franz and Fani, and followed up with further research to write his book “Solitary Witness”. As a direct result of Zahn’s work, in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI declared Franz a martyr. He was beatified on October 26 of that year, perhaps partly in contrition for the Church’s failure to oppose the Nazis.

Their have been many religious stories told since motion pictures became possible. Most of the famous religious-themed Hollywood movies – from “The Ten Commandments” to “The Greatest Story Ever Told” to “The King of Kings” – are biblical epics functioning as star-studded illustrated guidebooks to sacred texts.

But Malicks movie is one of those rare moments of cinema that do much more than tell a story.

Like some of its “Non-Hollywood” predecessors; Silence, Unbroken, Shindlers List, The Hiding Place, The Passion of Joan of Arc, A Man For All Seasons, and A Diary of A Young Priest,  A Hidden Life’s objective is to make the movie itself function as a spiritual experience.

It worked. It has been a week since I sat under its spell. I am still haunted by the ominous nature of the gradual transformation of Franz and Fani from their  idyllic pastoral life in the Austrian Alps, where hard manual farm labor is liberally mixed with familial playfulness and joy and intimacy–to the sober reality of being caught in the teeth of the juggernaut of the German Fatherland Hysteria.

But this is not a “Hitler is the Anti-Christ” movie. I’ve seen those. This is much more universal.

Instead, A Hidden Life dares us to imagine that the a life of quiet goodness and fidelity to conscience is at least as important as dramatic heroism — and who knows. maybe more so.

In one scene, an artist painting images in the nearby church tells Franz, “I paint their comfortable Christ, with a halo on his head … Someday I’ll paint the true Christ.” Christians in Germany at the time went along. Not one Cleric supported Franz or Fani in their stance. Franz said to Fani   “They have made immorality moral and morality immoral”

In another scene, a church painter, looking up  at the pictures on the church’s ceiling says “ we like to imagine that if we lived in Christ’s time, we wouldn’t have done what the others did” — This becomes the question the film asks me today–What will I do(sacrifice) today in the face of immorality and injustice?

The story belongs as much to his wife Fani as to Franz. She must go through her own inner struggle with her conscience. Is her husband right? Does he realize what his decision will cost not just him, but her and their children as well? How can she go on without him? In the face of all those who urge her to influence  her husband simply to go along, she refuses. And together they hold on to their faith, their conscience, and each other as their world crumbles down around them.

Day after day, over a period of a year, conditions deteriorate. Neighbors move from distancing, to shunning, to outright hostilities. They stand alone in a village that is their home.

Yet, they are silent–almost annoyingly so. I wanted to scream out loud in the theater–“Tell them Why!” Yet, like Jesus before Pilot, Franz and Fani refuse to elaborate their reasons. Day after day, they are asked “Why?”

Silence is their reply. They have no message for others. They respect others choices–but have even more respect for their own.

Along the way, moments of grace do enter. Fani’s father commends his son-in-laws courage. Fani struggles alone at the market place with a broken down cart, and is helped on her way by an elderly woman. Kindness is not yet dead. It is hidden in pockets and only the brave bring it out into the light.

Franz voluntarily reports to duty, committed to resisting the requirement of allegiance, knowing because of this, he may never see his family and farm again.  Fani’s father gives to Franz a parting message, serving as the central message of the film– “Better to suffer injustice than to do it.”  

The camera swings back and forth between the lush Austrian countryside of his farmland to the monotoned sterility of prison. The sounds of birds and farm animals and water wheels trade places with the clanging metal doors, the sounds of batons banging on bars, and the howls of pain and suffering from beaten prisoners.

The farm, as beautiful as it always was, now takes on its own suffering. Nothing was very easy with Franz, but without him all work for Fani and her sister becomes despairingly difficult.

All Franz need do is sign the allegiance and he will be given a purely medical assistance role. A simple signature would make it all go away, and no one would blame him.  Silence is his response.

Mallick pulls no punches. Franz is no Mel Gibson on the torture rack, bravely and stoically facing his end shouting out “FREEDOM” to the praise of his men. Separated from all he loves in life, Franz is entirely alone in his suffering.

Franz desperately wants to live, to return to Fani and his children, to his joyful former life. He is terrified with the prospect of his execution. He is a simple man–one of us.

I am reminded as I witness on the screen Franz struggle between terror and faith of another man, on his knees in the middle of the night in a garden outside Jerusalem as he awaited his fate. Neither wanted this fate, yet neither retreats from the path their conscience has led.

Many times during this almost three hour movie, I felt I was in the presence of prayer. When the final frame presented the Eliot quote, I was not yet ready to enter back into my world–a sure sign of a spiritual experience. I prayed it would linger, and I prayed that in some way I had changed.

I am glad to be more aware that there has always been men and women like Franz and Fani, hidden, unknown to us, living and dying with the freedom of a clear conscience.

Kind Regards,

Bob