Even having seen a couple of Malick's other films, The Thin Red Line and The New World, Days of Heaven - his second feature, from the 70s (but on at the Nova) - is startling. For me, it's driven by the visuals and the cinematography - the hazily pearlescent beauty of every shot - but it's all of a piece with the elliptical narrative and voice-over narration. It's a film that seems to both invite and resist a thematic reading; it's at the level of experience that it most strikes me.
