Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

thomaspietsch Quite a lovely film, a great American life film. But it's hard to really fall in love with it.

heffman-43578 I saw this movie on my birthday in 2014, and I'll say, it was probably one of the best movies I have ever seen. I was wanting to watch it for a while, because I had heard that it was one of the most beautifully shot films ever made. I saw many pictures of it online, but of course, nothing can compare to actually watching it.When they say this movie is one of the most beautifully shot in history, they're not lying. There are so many scenes in the movie that are just plain gorgeous, that the story doesn't even matter.If you are looking for a movie to just sit back and admire they beauty of the cinematography, then Days of Heaven is the perfect movie for you.

FairlyAnonymous Days of Heaven is one of those strange movies that could a masterpiece of cinema if only it knew what to do. Don't get me wrong, it is a good film, but there are a lot of problems with the storytelling.Let's talk about the pros first:This movie is beautiful. It is hard to imagine this film was shot in the 70s, because it looks absolutely gorgeous. There were a lot of smart decisions on how to shoot this film, and almost all of the shots help drive the story and what is happening. This movie could be told quite easily without any dialogue or noise. This is all good, if it weren't for the voice-overs...The voice-overs in this movie are bad... not quite Thief and the Cobbler bad, but getting there. For a movie that is so obviously supposed to be told almost completely through visuals and without much dialogue, it is rather painful whenever there is a voice-over explaining to us what is happening. This movie forgets that the audience isn't "dumb".However, then this brings up some issues with the cinematography and storytelling. There were a couple of noticeable scenes where the cinematography got bad and it was always during dialogue. In one scene, our two protagonists are walking down a river together, but the camera switches from long shots, to close-ups, to mid-shots, the 180 rule gets broken multiple times, the actors start looking directly into the camera, the lighting changes, and sometimes in one shot they will start an action but then in the next shot they will be doing something completely different.For a movie with such great cinematography, it also has some really bad moments as well. Then there is the storytelling: This movie is... unique... to say the least, in how it is told. Most people find this to be the biggest flaw of this film, and I agree. The story isn't very interesting and we never really connect with the characters. In all honesty, by the end of the film I did not know the names of a single character in the film. This could have been intentional, but I thought it was most likely due to the poor audio quality whenever people are talking. Days of Heaven is strange in how it goes about because its pacing gets crazy at times and feels disjointed. Just when you think the film is about to end, you realize it has 30 more minutes left.All in all, Days of Heaven is beautiful to look at and I'm glad I watched it. For a movie released in 1978, it has aged very well (except for audio). The look of the film is the only real reason why you should be watching it. Is there a story here? Yes, but that is the film's weakest point.On a super nit-picky note, the movie frequently uses an excerpt from Saint Saens' Carnival of the animals: Aquarium, and it never really fits. Maybe to people who don't know this piece, but the piece is describing fish swimming around in an aquarium; which never really matches the scenery of open plains with romantic drama :P

sharky_55 What Malick intended of Days of Heaven was something a bit more expository. After about a year of cutting and re-dubbing he came to this; most of the main actor's dialogues were removed, and Linda Manz's quiet, almost removed narration provides its own parallel running commentary to the bigger and more complex events that her child perspective does not afford her understanding. Her filter takes its cues from Malick's debut, Badlands, where Sissy Spacek's voice-over was as much naive as they come; wondering, reminiscing, dreaming of better things. And here Manz provides the same role; her butchered lower- class accent addresses the emotional upheavals of the adults of this world with a carefree irreverence. She interrupts a year long absence between lovers, silent in its unresolved tension, by running up and yelling and hugging. When the days of heaven are long gone, and Abby has resigned themselves to wealth and civilisation, she has a natural urge to return to that world once more. There is a specific pain to the events of the film, but there is also a universality in the way Abby approaches it; see the cut from Bill's death to the faraway shore where women and children are more or less unconcerned with this ending. The final shot of Abby wandering away from her school and into the wilderness undercuts all that has happened, as if it was just a chapter in her brief life, and suggesting there is a lot more left to come. Opposing this we have the speech of the adults which is clipped and minimal. It matters not what they say, because more can be gleamed in their pained and yearning faces. The opening argument which sets this whole 'adventure', as Abby would refer to it, is drowned out by the droning of the steel mills. We do not know what caused the argument, only that it results in the group having to flee to the Texas farm. Later, Malick replicates this method with the farmer; his reaction shot to Bill and Abby being a little too touchy feely is silent in its agony, but the whirring of the windspire in the backgrounds gradually builds to resemble his racing heart. And see how the editing reveals to us Bill's desire to kill the farmer and reclaim his woman; following Gere as he practically stalks the farmer like a hunter to a deer, swapping tense closeups of a trigger finger with the movement of the birds, and then with a composition that quickly paints him as guilty so that he has to swing his gun away. The film has been praised for its gorgeous cinematography, and deservedly so. Paradoxically, Malick films at golden hour so that the sun is hidden away yet the last remnants of sunlight fill the background with a romantic glow that seems at all odds with the affairs at the farm. Almendros and Wexler's compositions are remarkable, depicting the Edward Hopper style mansion with a lonesome, dreamlike presence on the horizon. Tiny dark figures will intersect carefully along the golden fields, silhouetted by the waning sun. While conventional landscape shots might have the sky and land evenly share the frame, they tend to use a lopsided ratio to emphasise the natural beauty; once while an immense stormcloud hovers over the diminished plains, threatening with rain, and to showcase the green hills that seem to go on and on and push the sky out of focus. A tiny slight involves the photography being a little too pretty at times where the mood might suggest something more chaotic - when the locus swarm descends upon the crops, everyone panics and tries to swat them out, but the camera points serenely at a single insect in shallow focus and in close up, as if it were a tourist capturing the perfect shot. Lone bushels of wheat, swaying ever so slightly in the wind are also given this treatment at times. The way Malick channels the power of nature foretells The Tree of Life. Here, he relies on it to empower the emotions felt in our characters. The serenity and peace of a sneaky night-time affair is characterised by the river rushing over pebbles. The wind whips up a frenzy within the farmer as he slowly realises that he has been conned. Instead of depicting the nervous wedding night consummation, he shoots a single trembling leaf, wet with dew. Some of these images resonant deeply, while others are less convincing. Combined with what is a common criticism of this film, the stilted characterisation and dialogue, it makes for an interesting if not slightly off-putting mix. Treat it as a sort of Terrence Malick litmus test.