THE ASTOR REVIEW

Set in the early 1900s amongst the midwestern wheat harvests of the USA, this is a finely realised mood piece about an unstable love triangle. Beautifully shot with glowing colours of sweat and toil, love and sexual tension. Terrence Malick’s triumph in a directorial career of only five films. Second in our complete Malick retrospective.

IMDB SYNOPSIS

Bill and Abby, a young couple who to the outside world pretend to be brother and sister are living and working in Chicago at the beginning of the century. They want to escape the poverty and hard labour of the city and travel south. Together with the girl Linda (who acts as the narrator in the movie) they find employment on a farm in the Panhandle, Texas. When the harvest is over the young, rich and handsome farmer invites them to stay because he has fallen in love with Abby. When Bill and Abby discover that the farmer is seriously ill and has only got a year left to live they decide that Abby will accept his wedding proposal in order to make some benefit out of the situation. When the expected death fails to come, jealousy and impatience are slowly setting in and accidents become eventually inevitable.