film

Three big-screen outings for Terrence Malick’s majestic 1978 masterpiece here – we're not ruling out the possibility of going to all three, such is the beauty of this work, which is less conventional film and more visual parable that privileges mood, light and moral intuition over plot mechanics. Shot largely during “magic hour” in the Texas Panhandle by cinematographers Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler, Days of Heaven makes a luminous visual feast out of fields of wheat, farming machinery and the area's legendarily big, open skies.

Set in the 1910s, the film follows a drifting love triangle between Bill (Richard Gere), Abby (Brooke Adams) and a wealthy, dying farmer (Sam Shepard). The story is kept deliberately spare, however – Days of Heaven is intended as a sensory experience more than anything, and Malick realises this aim with exquisite skill and tenderness.