DAYS OF HEAVEN

“Days of Heaven” with Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams The name itself evokes something wistfully remembered. Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978) follows a doe-eyed Richard Gere, his girl (Brooke Adams) and his kid sister (Linda Manz) as they hop a train from Chicago to Texas in search of work in 1916. They find a meal ticket in the fields of a rich, lonely landowner (Sam Shepard, above, with Adams). This is the story of a love triangle, but also of hard times and moments of grace. Malick shot much of it in natural light at the “magic hour” of sunrise or sunset: the landscape shimmers and the interiors glow like Vermeers. Time has enhanced the lustre of this spare and unpretentious film.