A Hidden Life

I've waited a long time to review this movie. I didn't want to make the same mistake I did some years ago when I carelessly dismissed The Tree of Life as an aesthetically majestic but ultimately vacuous work. Malick had the last laugh, of course: his masterpiece is today perhaps my favorite movie of all time.

I learned not to approach a Terrence Malick movie as I would any other. His films require a kind of commitment and focus that a society absorbed in instant gratification and endless shallow possibilities has disaccustomed us from. The reward for those who persevere is however immense, as Malick creates a cinematic experience that makes most other movies feel so, so insignificant.

Behind the gorgeous cinematography and idiosyncratic style, there's always a theme, an idea, that sustains and breathes life into the movie. Malick takes inspiration from his faith obviously, but his approach to any particular theme is less religious than it is philosophical, I think. It makes perfect sense, as his background is in philosophy: he got his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard and started a BPhil, also in philosophy, at Oxford before leaving without a degree following a disagreement with his advisor over his thesis (a display of the same quiet rebellion that defines many of the characters in his movies). He even taught philosophy at MIT briefly before becoming a full-time filmmaker.

The kernel of a Malick's movie is invariably a deep, complex, philosophical theme that the film doesn't try to extricate, but simply display in its purest form, in a way that makes it impossible for the audience to turn away from, or worse, ignore. While The Tree of Life dealt with the problem of evil (especially in the context of the Christian faith), A Hidden Life deals with morality, and its central question: what does it mean to do good?

Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
-Saint Augustine-

A Hidden Life takes a hard stance on this. Its vision is uncompromising, as uncompromising is the message of the gospels. We follow the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who stays true to his faith, and consequently refuses to take the Hitler oath when he is drafted into the German army during WWII. His reasons are simple: killing innocent people, raiding other countries, preying on the weak is wrong, and no moral person should do it, no matter the reason. There are no excuses for Franz, no mitigating circumstances that would make this a less hideous crime.

Franz's choice is hardly met with love. He is accused of being a traitor by his community, and when he seeks comfort in the Church he trusts and loves, the priest tells him that his first duty is to the fatherland, while Franz firmly believes it is to God. This opening chapter of Franz's tragedy shows simply and unequivocally that the Christian faith, when taken seriously, is always a danger to any system of power, because its values seldom (never?) align with those of hierarchical and predatory institutions that demand blind obedience and moral flexibility.

Franz recognizes one authority: God. Whatever authority lies outside that domain is ultimately illegitimate, and can only be justified insofar it pursues moral goals. When it stops doing that, when "the leaders are evil", our obedience to them ceases, and the act of rebellion is not merely discretional but a categorical imperative.

The mayor of the village tries to convince Franz to reconsider with typical utilitarian logic: this act of disobedience, what will it accomplish? You will be tried, convicted and executed (what in fact will happen), your wife will lose a husband and your children a father, to what avail? Your sacrifice will not stop the war, nor the Reich, and you will have died completely in vain. Better to swear loyalty to Hitler, and fight his war as a paramedic, if you really don't want to kill. In that way you would keep your values and your life.

From the point of view of a utilitarian, this makes perfect sense. We should only be concerned with the consequences of our actions, and seek to maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. This is what defines the moral worth of an action. Franz's sacrifice will hurt his family and seemingly benefit no one, while his obedience will not directly affect anyone, as he will be allowed to not bear arms in war. What is there to lose?

Utilitarianism can be used to justify great evils. If morality is all about maximizing a utility function, human beings are just pawn on a chessboard that can be moved around to reach that goal. They have no intrinsic value, they are "soulless", as Franz would certainly agree. For him, any complicity with the Nazi regime would be a sin against Man and God. His family will suffer, sure, but Franz is giving (his children especially) an example to follow: things can only change when we fight for what we believe is right, even if the consequences are dire. This is the spirit that guided the liberation movements throughout Europe after the rise of Nazi-Fascism, and the same spirit breathes in the many liberation movements that still exists today.

Christian morality is not utilitarian. It doesn't focus on consequences, but on human beings. An action is wrong because it's wrong, and right because it's right. The concept of right and wrong doesn't depend on externalities, such as the cause or the effect of the action, but on the action itself. This type of morality is called deontological (from Greek, 'obligation', 'duty'), and demands that one treats humanity "whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end" (Immanuel Kant, one of the main advocates of this ethical theory). We can find this idea in many religions. The Quran, to name another major religious text, says: "whoever kills an innocent life it is as if he has killed the whole of humankind".

The moral obligation may arise from a variety of sources, external (such as God in the divine command theory) or internal (such as a set of rules inherent to the universe or our species). A man of faith, like Franz, would of course believe that the obligation comes from God. I am not a man of faith: I believe that the source is internal to our biology as members of the human species, but it hardly matters for the purpose of this discussion. The point is that, like Franz and Terrence, I believe that the moral obligation exists, and it alone defines what is right and what is wrong, and killing innocent people (to pick a simple example) is wrong. Always.

Better to suffer injustice than to do it.
-Socrates-

The quote above is spoken directly by Franz in the movie, and it might be used to sum up the whole story. It is better to suffer injustice than to do it, because evil inevitably corrupts us, and makes us worse, less noble, less deserving. Let it be said that, while it is easy for me to agree with this, it is much more difficult to put it into practice. Franz's example, just like the Christ's, is a difficult one to follow, but it is precisely because of this difficulty that we believe it. Truth and beauty always come at a cost, and they are difficult to attain.

"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." These words from the Critique of Pure Reason are engraved on Kant's tomb in Kaliningrad. If the moral law is truly inside us, there is no legitimate authority on earth to which we must submit, no code of law that can claim dominion on the human soul. It's up to each individual person to explore the shared moral landscape and come up with solutions to ethical problems. When the problem is complex, it requires open discussion with other moral agents, but there's no central authority in the debate that can unilaterally decide what the answer is, because the ultimate right and only real authority (the moral law) resides within each person.

This idea is shared by apparently very different philosophical traditions, like the Enlightenment, Anarchism, and of course Christianity. While very different in detail, these doctrines spring from the same root: that man is created free and with some inalienable rights, and that any earthly authority always bears the burden of justification. If it cannot be justified, based on shared moral laws and ideas, it should be resisted or dismantled. In this case Christianity, as exemplified in the story of Franz Jägerstätter, opts for nonviolent resistance as the only method that can bring about real change, and I tend to agree. Leo Tolstoj wrote a beautiful essay summarizing these ideas with a suggestive title: The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Franz doesn't do this because he wants recognition, or fame, but simply because it is the right thing to do. He lives faithfully a hidden life (Malick's choice of title and start quote cannot be a coincidence, as he is famously reclusive), and doesn't expect nor want prizes because he already has the biggest of all: a clean conscience and the love of the God he believes in.

I will end with a clip from the movie that is worth a thousand words. One of the comments says: "I can't even begin to describe how beautiful this is". Me neither, so I'll let the images speak.