A Hidden Life of Love and Sacrifice

“Cinematographic Philosophy” of Terrence Malick

The relationship between love and sacrifice is undoubtedly the axial theme of Malick’s most recent work A Hidden Life, an artistic depiction of the imprisonment and execution of Franz Jörgerstädter, an Austrian who refused to pledge allegiance to Adolph Hitler and chose to die instead. Malick’s original contribution to the understanding of love and sacrifice—the eminent philosophical, theological, and existential concepts—can be best interpreted on the background of the Kierkegaardian and (post)Heideggerian existential phenomenology. 

My paper begins with untangling the relationship of Franz and Franziska Jägerstätter within the Kierkegaardian exposition of self-denying and sacrificial love which I suggest interpreting as a hermeneutical key to Franz’s sacrifice. I will continue unveiling Franz’s sacrifice as a revelatory and transformative event that breaks with the pernicious ‘enframing’ of human life, and thus as a unique act of freedom and truthfulness of the individual which might not change anything in the present moment but changes everything in the long run: the so-called sacrifice for no-thing (Heidegger, Patočka). I will close my paper by arguing (i) that not despite but because of true love was Franz able to die rather than help the evil, (ii) that Malick in his interpretation overcomes Kierkegaard by proving that not only neighbourly but also preferential love can be self-denial and sacrificial with the revelatory and transformative potential, and (iii) that even though Franziska also has her share (she has to live, raise children and farm the land facing the hostility of her neighbours), her sacrifice goes rather unnoticed, even in Malick’s cinematographic philosophy.