Twenty-one years ago, a spectacular film was made by an incredible director of the
highly acclaimed film, “Badlands”. The movie, “Days of Heaven” directed by Terrence
Malick is a movie that shows the confusion of one woman, trying to figure out whom
she loves. The movie stars Richard Gere as Bill and Sam Shepard as a rich, handsome,
Texan farmer, the two men Brooke Adams as Abby falls in love with. Linda Manz plays
Linda, Bill’s sister and the narrator, in the story.
Terrence Malick was born in Waco, Texas, which probably influenced him to make his
first two films, “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven”. Both share a theme of pariahs in the
mid American wilderness, who are on the run from the law.
The late seventies and early eighties were about getting ahead, however you could, no
matter whom you had to step on, never worrying that you could get caught. This is
reflected when Bill wants Abby to pretend that she is in love with the farmer. When
Abby marries the farmer, Bill and Linda move in with them. Linda says “The rich got it all
figured out”. She means that when she was poor, she was considered replaceable and
unimportant. When working in the fields, she says “If you don’t work, they’ll ship you
right out of there; they don’t need you; they can always find someone else.” As a rich
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Quentin Tarentino Throughout the many years the film industry has grown, a certain type of filmmaker immerged, known as an auteur. An auteur, usually a director, has a strong personal style and exercises creative control over his or her works. Quentin Tarentino, for example, has proven himself to be an auteur in various ways. Quentin Tarentino worked for four years as a clerk in a Los Angeles ...
person, and a part of the upper class, she has fun with her life, and doesn’t worry
about what is going on.
“Days of Heaven” is about getting into a higher class. It starts when Bill punches his
boss and needs to get a new job. He, his younger sister, Linda, and his lover, Abby,
become sharecroppers on a farm in Texas, owned by a handsome young man. Bill and
Abby pretend to be brother and sister, because they don’t want people to know. Linda
says “They told everyone they were brother and sister… You know how people are…
you tell them something, they start talking”. Bill is accused by a fellow sharecropper of
being to close with his “sister” and they got into a fight because Bill was very defensive
about that. Linda makes a friend with an older woman on the farm and they play in the
fields. Bill overhears a doctor diagnose the handsome young farmer with a disease and
one year to live. Bill, Abby, and Linda believe that “you’re only on this earth once” so
you should make it as worthwhile as possible. Since the farmer likes Abby, Bill coaxes
Abby to pretend to be in love with the farmer. They get married and Bill and Linda move
in with Abby and the farmer, to live the easy, upper class life. This ties in with the
feelings of the “Me” era, where everyone was trying to get ahead, when you were able
to. One day the farmer sees Abby and Bill kissing and he gets upset. Abby assures him
that Bill is only her brother and while he believes her, suspicion arises. Abby soon falls
in love with the farmer but is still in love with Bill. The farmer’s foreman warns the
farmer about Bill and Abby because he thinks they are con artists. The farmer fires the
foreman because he doesn’t want anyone saying that about the woman he loves. Bill
leaves because of the suspicion. When he returns, there is a plague of locusts that eat
all the crops. The farmer again catches Bill and Abby kissing, and gets very jealous. At
The Essay on Problems of farmers in present day of Life
We think of farms as always being there. Food will always be grown. Our countryside will be full of cows and crops just like it always has been. The fact is that this may not be true. Farmers are faced with the growing costs to run their farms. These costs include taxes, insurance, and regular farm costs. When we visited a farm, the farmer said that this was one of his main concerns…. and ...
night, when the people are trying to kill the locusts to preserve the crops, a fight
breaks out between Bill and the farmer, and a lantern spills, setting the field on fire.
The next day, the farmer gets a gun to kill Bill. Abby sees him and tries to stop him. He
ties Abby up so that she can’t warn Bill. Before the farmer can shoot Bill, Bill stabs the
farmer with a dagger. Bill, Abby, and Linda are on the run from the law, because Bill
murdered the farmer. The ex-foreman gets the police looking for Bill. Bill is in the woods
and the police are chasing him. Then the police shoot him and he dies. Abby cries over
his body. Abby then has to care for Linda, so she drops her off at an orphanage.
Linda’s old friend from the farm picks her up and they go off into the night.
This movie doesn’t really have a definitive ending. It leaves you wondering… “Now,
what?” This movie can be compare with the movie “The Graduate”. Like in “Days of
Heaven” when Linda and her friend ran off into the night, in “The Graduate”, a woman
named Elaine Robinson is about to marry a man, when the man she really loves shows
up and they run away on a bus. “Now, what?” is what many people ask. This is a
strange but somewhat common style of ending a movie. It leaves the audience to
imagine what happens afterward.
“Days of Heaven” showed that it was tough to be a woman during that time. Her lover
pushed her into marrying the rich farmer because that was the easy way out. By
marrying him, Bill, Linda, and she, could live an easy life. Many women throughout time
have been forced to do things that they didn’t want to do because they lived in a male
dominated society. In the seventies, many women’s groups spoke out frequently.
The movie “Days of Heaven” is not an accurate depiction of America. America is
sometimes called the “melting pot”. This refers to the diversity of our country. A melting
pot takes different things and melts them down as one. America is made up of many
different cultures, which together form our great country. This movie only shows white
The Essay on Days Of Heaven Movie Good Film
... Gere as Bill - Brooke Adams as Abby - Sam Shepard as The Farmer - Linda Many as Linda - Robert J. Wilke as The Farmer Foremen Days of Heaven Is ... wile. The farmer falls for Abby. Bill sees this as an opportunity for a better life. This is where the movie goes through ... have some patience and a good appreciation for movies, to real enjoy the movie. One would need to really pay attention to ...
people in the upper and lower classes. There aren’t any African Americans, Asians,
Hispanic, or other races. Also, there are no middle class people. You were either poor
and trying to get rich, or rich and could take it easy. This film leaves out much of the
American population, only showing a small portion.
Documented Sources
Days of Heaven. Dir. Terrence Malick. With Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam
Shepard, Paramount Pictures, 1978.
The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. With Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, and Katherine
Ross. Polygram Video,1967.
Colored Reflections (1997): n. pag. http://net4tv.com/color/70/70About.htm.internet.
20 February 1999.
Film Vault (1995-99): n. pag.
http://desert.net/filmvault/austin/d/daysofheaven1.html.internet 20 February 1999.
Internet Movie Database. (1990-99): n. pag.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?Days+of+Heaven+(1978).internet 20 February 1999.
