YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

juneebuggy Yes, very beautiful but holy hell was this boring. I think the director forgot about a decent story and just threw a jumpy plot together to fill the spaces between each gorgeous shot. Zero character development, bad fight scenes, no love scenes and about an hour dedicated to the harvester, harvesting wheat, bugs on the wheat, hands running through the wheat, sunset on the wheat or playing in the wheat. The story (as it were) follows a young Richard Gere as a migrant farm worker on a Texas farm in 1916. Posing as brother and sister he travels with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) from Chicago to Texas where they land a job on a rich mans what farm. Life is hard, the hours gruelling but (Sam Shepard) the boss has taken a liking to his sister/girlfriend. When Gere overhears the doctor telling the boss man that he may only have a year to live he convinces his girlfriend/sister to marry the boss so they can claim his fortune. The whole movie is narrated by a young boy... or girl, not sure who this is meant to be actually but it's so the viewer can understand what the hell is going on between each frame of cinemagraphic beauty

JuliaGarnerFans 'Days of Heaven' (1978) Earlier today I told someone that they had given me inspiration to write movies again, through their stunning artwork, so I thought I would in turn write a review on one of the most beautiful looking movies of all time.Days of Heaven is different to almost all of my other favourite movies. It decides not to focus its sights heavily on the screenplay, or the characters, or even dialogue, with Malick's sights primarily on the style and the atmosphere created. Set in 1915, Days of Heaven follows Bill, a labourer, his young sister Linda (The narrator of the story) and his girlfriend Abby. Running from the factory where he worked after accidentally killing the mill operator, Bill and Abby end up working for a kind and rich but slowly dying farmer. Posing as brother and sister, to avoid people talking about them, it isn't long before Abby catches the farmer's eye, and Bill sees an opportunity to escape their poverty stricken lives by getting her to marry the farmer.The beauty of days of Heaven doesn't come from the relatively simple plot though. Every shot in the film looks like a painting, taken with precision, while it was shot using all natural light and predominantly filmed in the 'Magic hour' of sunlight. The choice of using voice over narration by Linda Manz over heavy use of dialogue also gives if an almost poetic feel, that no other director but Malick can obtain. The childlike innocence/naivety of Manz' narration gives it an almost other worldly feel, and as if she is looking back at happier memories. "This farmer, he didn't know when he first saw her, or what it was about her that caught his eye. Maybe it was the way the wind blew through her hair." The casual narration and elegance of the plot makes it timeless.Only the 2nd film directed by Terrence Malick before taking a 20 year hiatus from making movies (Also escaping the public eye, becoming an almost mythological film God in the process), Days of Heaven was the film in which he would use to create his signature voice overs, shots of nature and the style in his later films. The beautiful cinematography (Which won an Oscar), the outstanding score by Ennio Morrocone, the sights of nature vs the destructive nature of people, and the astute vision of Malick all culminate in a true '70's classic. A real auteur that creates true art.

jedwiant2 Told from the point of view of a 13 year old girl, this film provides an uncertainty and mystery of the feelings of its characters. Malick's second film one-ups his earlier film Badlands, where some of the themes drawn from it are present in Days of Heaven. Malick's recurring directorial style is most prominent in this film, where he masters all of his elements. Easily the best director when it comes to romanticism, Malick seems to make his characters and their surroundings a work of art. Their feelings are most often shown not through their dialogue, but the beauty and sometimes the happenings of their surroundings. Take Bill for example. At the beginning of the film he is shown in a completely red and fiery surrounding, which personalizes him as both passionate and hot-tempered(this is his demonstrated by his attack of his co-worker). Another example of this is when Bill drops his wine glass in the water while sneaking out with Abby. The camera then shows this glass laying up against a rock under water, unable to flow with the current. This is Malick brilliantly showing that Bill's relationship with Abby is coming to an end and that his "Days of Heaven" are over with. The farmer, who is close to death and his wealthier than any other character shown in the film, evidently will not die of his disease, but by something else. The possession of money means nothing to him when nearing death, so he looks for something more, and he falls in love with Abby. Aimlessly the farmer lives(shown by the wind often blowing his hair), but with a fire and passion shown in Bill that leads to his attempted murder of Bill. A literal fire breaks out on his farm after it is infested by locusts, and this foreshadows(through fire) the death of both male characters(Bill and The Farmer). All female characters (Abby, Linda, and Linda's friend) are mostly shown on screen during the most beautiful times of the day around water. The constant flow of water represents their spontaneous behavior centered around happiness and hopefulness, even after despair. All three experience loss, Linda'a being the worse because of her young age. All three's optimism is shown even after losing everything. Their days of heaven live on because they are still on this beautiful earth that Malick brings to the screen.Easily the most original, creative, and heart-touching piece of cinema shown in such a short period of time (1 hour and 34 minutes). Overshadows every large budget film with its beauty. This story plays as an epic and is deserving of significantly more praise and notoriety than is has been given. Timeless film. -2016

Lee Eisenberg Terrence Malick burst onto the movie scene with 1973's "Badlands", about a teenage couple on a crime spree. A well-directed, well-shot movie, it suggested that Malick would be one of the new upstanding directors emerging at the time (Spielberg, DePalma, Coppola, etc).His next effort, 1978's "Days of Heaven", was a worthy effort but no masterpiece. The first few minutes of the movie are the best part. Had the movie kept its focus there, it probably would have been as much of a masterpiece as "Badlands" was. Instead, it's a so-so look at the tensions arising from a love triangle. I will say that the locust scene is pretty impressive, though.Malick took a twenty-year break from directing after this, returning with "The Thin Red Line". It was also a worthy effort but had too narrow of a focus to amount to something that was worth watching. His next effort was "The New World", which was too long and too slow (seriously, had they trimmed half an hour it might have managed to be mediocre). I didn't see "The Tree of Life" but my parents told me that it sucked. Basically, Malick gets progressively worse as a director.The visuals in "Days of Heaven" get a lot of praise. I'm sorry, but visuals without a solid plot serve no purpose (contrast that with Todd Haynes's movies, wherein the visuals emphasize the lie that the women are living). In short, I'll call this movie Malick's last movie that's really worth seeing. After this, his work turned into pseudo-intellectual, Oscar bait wannabe.