The excellent video essayist, Tom of Like Stories of Old, recently wrote in his newsletter about a moment from Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life that has stuck with him:
It’s a scene that’s stuck with me as well. Tom proposes (and I agree) that Malick is using a conversation between Franz and the painter in the church to break the fourth wall and talk about his own role as a filmmaker. If you want a more thorough breakdown you can read it in Tom’s newsletter.
Not only is Malick questioning his role as a filmmaker- but I think he’s clearly laying out the film’s central theme. Franz, in the film, is a Christ figure of sorts, and the story takes on an almost allegorical quality.
I can’t help but connect this scene to one from Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece The Seventh Seal:
Here, in a strikingly similar fashion, Bergman uses a conversation between a character and a painter in a church, to directly address not just the themes of the film (in Bergman’s case death, as opposed to the life of Christ in Malick’s), but Bergman also seems to be directly addressing his role as the artist/storyteller in telling this story.
JONS: Why do you paint such nonsense?
PAINTER: To remind people of death.
JONS: Well, it’s not going to make them feel any happier.
PAINTER: Why should one always make people happy? It might not be a bad idea to scare them a little once in a while.
JONS: Then they’ll close their eyes and refuse to look at your painting.
PAINTER: Oh, they’ll look. A skull is almost more interesting than a naked woman.
JONS: If you do scare them …
PAINTER: They’ll think.
JONS: And if they think …
PAINTER: They’ll become still more scared.
JONS: And then they’ll run right into the arms of the priests.
PAINTER: That’s not my business.
JONS: You’re only painting your Dance of Death.
PAINTER: I’m only painting things as they are. Everyone else can do as he likes.
JONS: Just think how some people will curse you.
PAINTER: Maybe. But then I’ll paint something amusing for them to look at. I have to make a living — at least until the plague takes me.
Both filmmakers are preoccupied with the meaning and purpose of their work. Malick contemplates pointing the audience towards Christ, and questions his ability to do that when he isn’t living his own stories himself. Bergman seems comfortable leaving the soul saving to the priests, content himself to just depict reality as he sees it, leaving any spiritual responsibility to the audience and the priests they may run to.
It’s a striking dialogue spanning over 60 years. *I love film.