“Until we recognize a grandeur in the beatings of the heart” – William Wordsworth
Days of Heaven is a languid summer evening tale; a slow burning candle casting light as the horizon dims and the night grows cool. We are lulled in and suspended in a spell of quiet anticipation, captivated by the mood and demands of that place, that time. It is a visual lullaby and a sordid love potion. We can imagine the scent of wild flowers hovering delicately in the air.
In Days of Heaven we are held captive in a liminal space of constant dusk. The day begs to linger on, to unravel its diffuse light for just a moment longer. The night remains on the margin, watchful and patient, as it coaxes evening out of the hesitant sky. The illusion of fixity is revealed with a delicate hand to be a mirage as we are swept asunder by a latent mood of desperate impermanence. Days of Heaven is like a half remembered dream, host to all of the longing and grasping of a forgotten reverie.
Sam Shepard is electric, captivating with a blistering sensuality and a tense, erotic sensitivity. He reflects back to us a kind of primordial yearning, a restlessness that will never find repose. He luxuriates in his days, numbered though they are, and he casts a patina of elegance onto the little world he has created. Meanwhile, Abby, the object of his affection, pierces through his defenses and her calculated penetration into elite sociability is fraught with a heartrending tension.
The beauty of the film is that it could be cast as a morality tale, but isn’t. The usual rules are put aside so we can focus on something more interesting: the tangled and mournful beating heart behind the lived experience. The soothing hit we seek from tales of closure, karmic retribution, and heavenly judgement is foreclosed upon in Days of Heaven and we are exposed instead to the indifference of both the natural world and the arrow of time as they come up against human agency.
Days of Heaven lingers on, its spell of impermanence inviting us to chart new emotional terrain with each reflection. The films restrained emotional alchemy gives us pause, inviting us to encounter our own personal dusk hour in all its psychic restraint and intimate complexity.
