Movie · 1978 · Drama, Romance · 1h 34m · PG · English
Curator score: 9.1/10 (241.3K ratings)
She gave her hand to one man, but her heart to another.
Overview
In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.1/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Letterboxd: 4.09/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 94
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
Terrence Malick
Production
Paramount Pictures
Cast
Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz, Robert J. Wilke, Jackie Shultis, Stuart Margolin, Timothy Scott, Gene Bell, Doug Kershaw, Richard Libertini, Frenchie Lemond, Sahbra Markus, Bob Wilson, Muriel Jolliffe, John Wilkinson, King Cole, Terrence Malick
Curator Review
Verdict
A ravishing, melancholy American fable where the landscape is as emotionally charged as the people moving through it. The story is spare, but the images, sound, and mood build a devastating sense of beauty slipping into ruin.
Best for
Viewers who value visual poetry and atmosphere over plot mechanics
Fans of lyrical period dramas and tragic romances
People interested in American frontier myths and class tension
Audiences open to a slow, contemplative pace
Skip if
You want a tightly plotted, dialogue-heavy drama
You prefer emotionally direct or conventional romance
You get impatient with elliptical storytelling
You dislike films that prioritize mood and imagery over character exposition
Overview
Days of Heaven is one of the great examples of cinema as weather, light, and memory. Terrence Malick turns a simple triangle of love, jealousy, and survival into something mythic, where every field, silhouette, and sunset feels charged with fate. The film’s visual beauty is not decorative; it deepens the tragedy by making the world seem almost too lovely to hold the characters’ pain.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is the tension between its formal grace and its emotional austerity. Malick gives you fragments rather than explanations, yet the characters become hauntingly vivid through gesture, voiceover, and the pressure of circumstance. It’s a film about longing for innocence, and about how quickly innocence is consumed by labor, desire, and deception.
Bottom line
Even now, it feels singular: a period drama that is also a meditation on transience, class, and the fragility of human connection. If you’re willing to surrender to its rhythm, it offers one of the most unforgettable viewing experiences in American cinema.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Patrick Willems (4.5★) · 6158 likes
Shooting this movie for only 20 minutes a day to get the perfect light is insane but also totally worth it
brendan o'hare (4.5★) · 4968 likes
Good idea to make every frame of a movie the most beautiful image of all time
Lucy (3.5★) · 3296 likes
you ever fuck around and shoot a whole film only during the magic hour?
SilentDawn (5★) · 1720 likes
92
"Wasn't no harm in him. You'd give him a flower, he'd keep it forever."
Paradise lost.
PTAbro (3.5★) · 1505 likes
As much as I want to love Days of Heaven more (and don't get me wrong, it is arguably the most visually breathtaking film in Malick's catalogue), I can't help but feel the choppiness played out behind the scenes - literal years of editing and postproduction - manifest itself in the pacing. There's an odd mix of in media res sequences coupled with the now-traditional meditative abstract breaks that effectively cause a jerkiness and stuttering in the narrative progression. It… more As much as I want to love Days of Heaven more (and don't get me wrong, it is arguably the most visually breathtaking film in Malick's catalogue), I can't help but feel the choppiness played out behind the scenes - literal years of editing and postproduction - manifest itself in the pacing. There's an odd mix of in media res sequences coupled with the now-traditional meditative abstract breaks that effectively cause a jerkiness and stuttering in the narrative progression. It… more