Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.
Terrence Malick's meditative biography of conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter is elevated enormously by August Diehl and Valerie Pachner's deeply felt performances and Emmanuel Lubezki's breathtaking alpine and prison cinematography — among the most visually ravishing war-era films ever made. The plot, however, is deliberately elliptical and repetitive in Malick's signature style, which some find transcendent and others find ponderous; the narrative arc is largely predetermined by history and offers little dramatic surprise. Novelty sits in a middle zone: Malick's voice is unmistakable and the film is singular in its spiritual register, but it reuses his established grammar of whispered voiceover, nature imagery, and fragmented domesticity, making it feel like a continuation rather than a breakthrough. The ending, though historically faithful and quietly devastating, lands with a muted inevitability rather than a dramatic crescendo, which is thematically appropriate but somewhat emotionally distancing.