‘A Hidden Life’: New Photos of Terrence Malick’s Cannes Bound WWII Drama Reveal A Spiritual Struggle

The always elusive, Terrence Malick has been on quite the tear there the last few years. Between, 2011 and 2017, he release five films—” The Tree of Life” (2011) “To the Wonder” (2012) “Knight of Cups” (2015) “Voyage of Time” (2016) and ” Song to Song” (2017)—and you could consider it seven if you count the second version of “Voyage Of Time” and the new Criterion Collection recut and extended edition of “The Tree of Life.” For a man who went missing for twenty years, Terrence Malick appears to be making up for lost time. He’s got another film in the can too, this one called, “A Hidden Life.”

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Originally titled ” Radegund,” the new film is a World War II-set film, but don’t expect a war picture in the vein of “The Thin Red Line.” “A Hidden Life” is about the real-life Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector, who refused to fight for the Third Reich in World War II and was executed by them in 1943. He was later declared a martyr and beatified by the Catholic Church.

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August Diehl, known to American audiences from Quentin Tarantino‘s “Inglourious Basterds,” stars as Jägerstätter, an Austrian actress Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska Jägerstätter. The drama also possesses the final performances from legendary European actors Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz, both of whom died shortly after filming. Matthias Schoenaerts, Ulrich Matthes, Maria Simon, and many more European character actors co-star.

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Malick’s last few films have been incredibly elliptical and opaque, which has led many of his most ardent fans to lose faith. But the director, recently said that he has “repented and gone back to working with a much tighter script.”

Apparently, we’re headed for a more structured narrative than Malick’s previous works. He echoed the same sentiment in 2017, “Lately – I keep insisting, only very lately – have I been working without a script and I’ve lately repented the idea. The last picture we shot, and we’re now cutting, went back to a script that was very well ordered.”

The irony? “A Hidden Life” is three hours long, but hell, let the legendary filmmaker have his fun, he’s a treasure even if all of the recent films haven’t been as resplendent. “A Hidden Life” was shot by cinematographer Jörg Widmer, a DP and camera operator who has worked on several of Malick’s films including “The Tree Of Life,” “Song To Song” and “Knight of Cups. The score was composed by James Newton Howard. Malick wrote the script, naturally and the movie will world premiere in competition at Cannes next week, so stay tuned for all our coverage from the festival.