Days<\/em> was her film debut, a factoid somehow both astonishing and unsurprising. It\u2019s hard to believe in light of the tremendous accomplishment of her performance; there are screen actors who’ve spent their entire careers trying to capture the kind of lived-in naturalism that Manz puts across off-handedly. But it\u2019s also all of a piece with the been-there, done-that nature of the character, someone who has, in her 15 years, already seen it all. The duality of her performance is further manifested by her iconic narration, in which we hear Malick\u2019s earthy poetry from a voice both youthful and weathered. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important to remember that Terrence Malick was not yet TERRENCE MALICK when he made Days of Heaven<\/em>, and his dreamy, borderline-disconnected voice-overs and distinctive visual style were still a work in progress. He famously spent something like two years editing the film, and that fastidiousness is fascinating in light of how casual the product is, particularly at its onset; he ambles into this story sideways, with no buildup and no throat-clearing, almost like a preempted program that we\u2019re joining in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll three of us been goin\u2019 places, lookin\u2019 for things, searchin\u2019 for things\u2026 goin\u2019 on adventures.\u201d That\u2019s how Linda (Manz) explains it; the other two members of that \u201cthree of us\u201d are her older brother Bill (Richard Gere) and Bill\u2019s girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams). The time is 1916, and as the trio travels from place to place looking for work, Bill and Abby pretend to be siblings themselves, a lie that seems doomed for failure. And it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They land in the Texas Panhandle, where they go to work for a farmer (Sam Shepard). Malick is a patient enough filmmaker to linger on the physical hardship of this labor; \u201cFrom the time the sun went up till the time the sun went down,\u201d Linda says, \u201cthey was workin\u2019 all the time.\u201d But he gives equal attention to their occasional breaks of pleasure, reveling most memorably in the freewheeling spirit of a bonfire hoedown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is there that the farmer (he\u2019s never called by his name) takes note of Abby\u2019s dark good looks, and is taken by them. Bill, in the meantime, has overheard a conversation between the farmer and his doctor, seeming to indicate that a grave illness (\u201cHow long would you reckon I have?\u201d \u201cA year\u201d), so when the farmer makes his intentions towards Abby known, Bill thinks he\u2019s got it all figured out: she\u2019ll marry the farmer for the brief amount of life he has left, and then they\u2019ll inherit his money and live happily ever after. Easy breezy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, it\u2019s not. Abby\u2019s feelings towards Bill change, almost immediately, when she makes the compromise he\u2019s proposed, and to further complicate matters, she soon feels genuine love for her husband, who \u201cdidn\u2019t get sicker. He just stayed the same.\u201d It\u2019s a no-win situation for Bill, and one that becomes increasingly hopeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was Gere\u2019s first leading role, and while it\u2019s fiercely physical \u2013 this is not a man who hesitates to throw hands \u2013 that physicality is also a clever cover for the internalized pain of his performance. He knows he\u2019s blown it, almost immediately, and that feeling is beautifully conveyed by the hesitation and regret on his face as he watches his lover and her new husband drive away from him. Adams, an actor who\u2019s never really been given her due, has a less showy role, but finds the quiet truth of the character; when she explains how \u201cthis is not so bad,\u201d an entire matter-of-fact worldview comes across in a few carefully chosen words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Words are not in abundance in Malick\u2019s script. As in many of his films to come, there are scenes where we don\u2019t hear any dialogue at all (boldly enough, the film\u2019s inciting incident is drowned out by the noise of a factory), which is fine, because frankly, the specifics don\u2019t matter. But this is also not to say that the dialogue isn\u2019t worth hearing; there\u2019s a special kind of Texas honey in a line like \u201cMan\u2019s got one foot on a banana peel, the other on a roller skate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s mostly a sensory experience. The cinematography \u2013 by Nestor Almendros with Haskell Wexler \u2013 deserves its outsized reputation. It\u2019s gorgeous, a swirling dance of light, shadow, and sunlight, and the compositions (most of them either up-tight, intimate close-ups or stunning wides) are breathtaking. But what\u2019s most striking about Days of Heaven<\/em>, this far on, is how in spite of decades of canonization, it doesn\u2019t feel like an Important Movie; it\u2019s free, and fleeting (93 minutes), and vulnerable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t do anything to me,\u201d Bill tells Abby late in the film, when he\u2019s lost her, and he knows it, and she does too. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what I had with you\u2026 I\u2019ve got nobody to blame but myself.\u201d That kind of directness and openness is, frankly, what\u2019s too often missing from Malick\u2019s more recent works. Or maybe he just learned, in the decades of inactivity after Days of Heaven<\/em>, what his characters did: that emotions generally (and passion specifically) can be nothing but trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/days-of-heaven2-1024x570.jpg\")
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