A Hidden Life (2019)
Directed by Terrence Malick
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
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5 films that influenced A Hidden Life
What critics say influenced A Hidden Life
Jorg Widmer is the cinematographer; the visuals recall “The Sound of Music” with tougher, more existential stakes.
Austria’s stunning vistas get a visual treatment from cinematographer Jörg Widmer that rivals (the similarly positioned in history) The Sound of Music .
The cinematography is stunning (think The Sound of Music, except much sadder and with more violence and less singing), and August Diehl’s performance keeps the movie from becoming repetitive.
This is The Sound of Music country, but the Jägerstätter family couldn’t be more unlike the privileged Von Trapps.
Thanks to the German annexation of Austria in 1938 (quick, remember the timeline of The Sound of Music!), Austrian men were called upon to fight for Nazi Germany’s military.
In real life, Jägerstätter was a rangy, semiliterate bad boy who made waves with the first motorcycle in his tiny Alpine village, which looks like something from The Sound of Music .
The film centers on Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl, Inglourious Basterds), a hard-working, patriotic Austrian farmer who refused to join the Nazi Party or fight for the Germans in World War II because he wouldn’t swear an allegiance to Hitler.
Malick’s new film, A Hidden Life , tells the WWII-era story of real-life Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (played by Inglourious Basterds ’ August Diehl), and is filled with the kind of gorgeous imagery the director is known for.
Jägerstätter is played by August Diehl (“Inglourious Basterds”), whose noble, earthbound leanness calls to mind the young Henry Fonda.
But of course, war comes calling in 1940, and Franz — played with a powerful, quiet dignity by August Diehl, whom most viewers will recognize as the basement-tavern Nazi officer from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds — must ship off to basic training.
Based on a true story, A Hidden Life revolves around Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl of Inglourious Basterds), who refused to fight for Nazi Germany.
Franz, played by August Diehl of “The Command” and “Allied” and “Inglourious Basterds,” is an Alpine farmer who, with his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) has made a life in in their village, Radegund.
La cinta de tres horas de duración explora temas similares a los de “Hacksaw Ridge”, del director Mel Gibson.
In Hacksaw Ridge (2016), he played a soldier that refused to fire a weapon and instead worked as a medic rescuing injured comrades.
Mel Gibson dramatized this dilemma better in Hacksaw Ridge .
The latest from the Snowpiercer and Okja filmmaker follows two families: the affluent Parks, who live in a luxurious home encased in glass walls, and the Kims, an unemployed clan who fold pizza boxes for money inside a cramped basement apartment.
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If Franz finds a true friend in Waldlan ("Transit's" Franz Rogowski), another Berlin prisoner, Fani is ostracized by all by the town’s miller (Johannes Krisch, "A Cure for Wellness") and the farm animals she lovingly cares for.