Edwin Arnaudin: Once famously on hiatus for 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick made five narrative features in the 2010s — on par with the prolific Taika Waititi — plus the IMAX documentary Voyage of Time: Life's Journey. His latest drama, A Hidden Life, has earned him his best reviews since his masterpiece, The Tree of Life (2011), but even for a Malick stan like me, this 170-minute exercise is a rough, repetitive slog. Were you likewise relieved when it finally wrapped up?

Bruce Steele: It was beautiful torture. So many lovely images to look at, so little plot and character to chew on. I have to be honest here: I found The Tree of Life almost as excruciating. I still think of Days of Heaven as his masterpiece and haven't connected much with anything since. I don't want to spark a debate about Malick's odd career here, but I feel like I should be honest about my apprehension going into A Hidden Life. The film lived up (or down) to my expectations: beautifully shot but much too in love with its own meaningfulness. Were you at least moved by the narrative?

Edwin: I was at the beginning. Amidst the gorgeous Italian countryside (standing in for Austria) and cued to beautiful classical music, Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl, Inglourious Basterds) and his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) craft an idyllic agrarian life — one that, along with his conscience, he doesn’t wish to compromise by swearing an oath of allegiance to Hitler. It’s a strong set-up, but then his disapproving neighbors chastise the Jägerstätter family for a good hour, a bizarre stretch that tested my patience to its limit and had me thinking, “OK, Terry — we get it!” throughout the monotonous nagging.

Bruce: Right. Nothing wrong with the performances: Diehl and Pachner delve deeply into their characters' pride, despair, and determination. But the pacing is awful and the context minimal. Why are the villagers all so mean? What's happening with the war? Where is this prison or that prison? No clue. At one point I thought about a year had passed in the story, only to learn it was just a month. The fact is, I don't think Malick is making movies with any real audience in mind anymore. I think he makes movies that meet his own standards of lyrical visuals and archetypal characters and has no real sense of connecting with viewers.

Edwin: His films are distinct and everything post-Tree of Life — To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song — has similarly utilized that film’s combination of beautiful visuals, orchestral music, and introspective voiceover narration to create moving portraits of people yearning for love and connections. I figured this style would be a terrific fit for what sounded like his most psychologically-rich film yet, and it very well might be if he had an editor willing to talk him back from this ridiculous runtime. There’s a brilliant 90-minute film hiding in this mess, which is about all the material can sustain.

Bruce: Maybe a 20-minute short. The thing is, I don't think the film is psychologically rich. Either you admire Franz for putting his life at risk over his refusal to sign a document, or you think he's a solipsistic martyr with no interest in taking real action to save his wife or his country as long as he remains true to his idea of what's moral. I was not an admirer, and I don't think this fact-based story justifies the weight Malick tries to give it. In the context of a war in which millions died while actually fighting evil, in battle or covertly, the notion that Franz's unheralded ("hidden") stubbornness is somehow heroic doesn't cut it. Did you find Franz heroic?

Edwin: Yes, he goes to extreme lengths for his noble beliefs, far beyond what I feel I could do (especially considering the consequences he faces) — but Malick does his damnedest to numb me into feeling nothing and pretty much succeeds. Perhaps the point of A Hidden Life is to bore viewers and cinematically put them through a few hours of suffering (and wishing to be elsewhere), thereby giving us a taste of what Franz experiences.

Bruce: Well, that's one theory to explain this film's unconscionable length and torpitude. I think it's more likely that Malick has simply lost touch with any kind of real audience outside of his own head. This movie, with its gorgeous cinematography and selective subtitling — some of the German speakers aren't translated; some are — says more about its director than it does about the Jägerstätters. If people want to learn about Franz, I recommend Wikipedia, where I learned that the Catholic Church has declared him a saint — so much for being "hidden" — and other interesting factoids. But if people want a glimpse inside Malick's mind, feel free to see the movie. I give it a D.

Edwin: The seemingly random subtitles are problematic, and their absence in the neighbors’ hectoring leaves their words as merely angry, indecipherable, and tedious noise instead of providing insight into their admonitions. Clarity doesn't improve as Franz is imprisoned and slowly nears his tragic fate, and while stunning visual moments occasionally yield powerful emotions, the film remains an endurance test. Not even brief appearances by Matthias Schoenaerts (Far from the Madding Crowd), Bruno Ganz, and, in his final role, the late Michael Nyqvist (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) do much to liven things up.

I get why many viewers aren’t on board with Malick’s post-Days of Heaven style, but I think he remains one of our most gifted filmmakers. However, his inability to reign in his impulses earns A Hidden Life the notorious stamp of being self-indulgent — one of my least favorite critical phrases, and one reserved for only the most esoteric, impenetrable works. That brilliant 90-minute cut is in there somewhere, but the version that he decided to share with audiences made for my most frustrating viewing experience of 2019. The best I can give it is a C-minus.

Grade: D-plus. Rated PG-13. Stars Jan. 17 at Grail Moviehouse

(Photos by Reiner Bajo/Twentieth Century Fox)