Tip: Always give Malick films a second chance. I learned my lesson first with Badlands, and now again with Days of Heaven.

I really don’t know how to explain myself.

Each frame looks like it was painstakingly painted; painted by a man who had seen the afterlife. Perhaps by a man who knew for certain that there was no afterlife, and that this was the ultimate beauty man would ever witness - that these were truly their only ‘days of Heaven.’

Each line of dialogue feels like it could’ve been torn from the subconscious of any person; the poetry buried deep inside of all of us. The insoluble disparity between our limited words and our incomprehensibly vast emotions is miraculously expressed by these characters.

The score feels as if it could reach into any American, no matter how jaded, and make them feel a bond with the land; a sort of pride and nostalgia for all of its history. It’s the kind of music that touches that ancestral part of you. Makes you feel old in some strange sort of way.

“Sometimes I'd feel very old, like my whole life is over, like I'm not around no more.”

P.S. (to follow up on my last review of Paris, Texas)
Sam Shepard, you were one of the finest men to ever live.