"She always does that...she just wanders away..." Housekeeping 1987

Yep a quote from another movie. The ending of Housekeeping is what I was reminded of here - two female figures disappearing down the railroad tracks to an uncertain future. I can live with endings like that. There was hope and freedom and friendship. Sure the men died...but ..you know..whatever.
So much to love here.
The voice-over makes it -the film becomes a lived experience - the little girl is a witness and yet not a bystander. She was having her own story. "I've been thinking what to do with my future. I could be a mud doctor...checking out the earth underneath".
We watch the love triangle and it feels at a remove - they are just beautiful creatures in thrall to their desires. The unfolding of their story was like watching the grass in the wind - it blew this way and that - and it all seemed perfectly natural. And then we get the locusts chewing away at possibility and the fire sweeping everything away.
And it was all so very beautiful. The magic hour. The black silhouettes against sunsets, the dancing legs against the fire, and my fav - the farm foreman's face -blackened by smoke - his rivers of wrinkles highlighted in the fading sun -simply magic.
plenty of stars
for the workers
for the exchanges drowned out by machinery
for the beautiful faces of Richard Gere, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams
for Malick's labour of love
for women moving on to another chapter