Director Watch Podcast Ep. 60 – ‘Days of Heaven’ (Terrence Malick, 1978)

Welcome to Director Watch! On this AwardsWatch podcast, co-hosts Ryan McQuade and Jay Ledbetter attempt to breakdown, analyze, and ultimately, get inside the mind of some of cinema’s greatest auteurs. In doing so, they will look at their filmographies, explore what drives them artistically and what makes their decision making process so fascinating. Add in a few silly tangents and a fun game at the end of the episode and you’ve got yourself a podcast we truly hope you love. On episode 60 of the Director Watch Podcast, the boys are joined by AwardsWatch Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello to discuss the next film in their Terrence Malick series, Days of Heaven (1978).

Five years after delivering one of the best debut films of all time, Terrence Malick returned with an essential piece of art within his filmography, and one of the best films of the 1970s, Days of Heaven. Shot mostly in Alberta, Canada, Malick’s epic follows lovers who travel to the Texas Panhandle for work harvesting crops for a wealthy grain farmer, only for the three of them to turn into a love triangle of biblical, spiritual proportions. While the shoot and edit of the film ran so long that additional editors and crew members had to be added to the film in order to get the film to the finish line, Malick was able to deliver a mesmerizing, lyrical cautionary tale about love, lust, greed, anger, desire, and finding your sense of freedom in a new world forming around. In other words, a masterpiece. Ryan, Jay, and Sophia breakdown their relationship with the film, the beautiful house built by Jack Fisk, the logistics of the locus scene, the film’s incredible performances led by Richard Gere, Sam Shepard, and Brooke Adams, the troubled production of the film, the director’s relationship with water, the insightful narration, if Malick’s career relates to any other modern director, and how the film’s ending full encapsulates all the themes suggested or mentioned throughout the film.

You can listen to the Director Watch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

This podcast runs 2h16m. The guys will be back next week to continue their series on the films of Terrence Malick with a review of his next film, The Thin Red Line. You can rent it via iTunes and Amazon Prime rental in preparation for the next episode of Director Watch. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: MUSICALIFE, from Pond5 (intro) and “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro)