Nearly a decade after his Oscar-nominated The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick is returning to World War II in a biopic about Franz Jagerstatter, a conscientious objector executed by the Nazis.
German star August Diehl (Inglourious Basterds) is attached to star as Jagerstatter in Malick's new film, titled Radegund, named after the small Austrian village where Jagerstatter was born. The village, in turn, was named for a sixth-century Catholic saint.
When the German troops arrived in 1938, Jagerstatter was the only one in his village to vote against the Anschluss with Hitler's Germany. He continued to oppose the regime and refused to fight for the Axis in WWII. In 1943, he was arrested, sentenced to death and executed.
In 2007, the Pope declared Jagerstatter a martyr and he was beatified by the Catholic Church.
Austrian actress Valerie Pachner (Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) is also attached to star in the film. German film subsidy body Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg has backed Radegund with $451,000 (€400,000) in production funding.
Malick's latest feature, Knight of Cups starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman premiered last year at the Berlin Film Festival before hitting theaters in the U.S. earlier this year.
The reclusive auteur recently wrapped on Austin-set drama Weightless starring Portman, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling. The Voyage of Time, a documentary on the “birth and death of the known universe,” which Malick has been working on for years, is set to hit Imax theaters this October.
Filming has been completed. Also, interesting to note that Lubezki didn't work on this. An almost entirely German crew worked on the film. And in a rare appearance the myth himself spoke at a Q&A recently. He states that his gravitating back to his earlier work. A tightly written script and a pre-planned production rather than his more recent improvisational style. The change of personnel and him going back to proper filmmaking makes me very hopeful for this film. This whole spontaneous tendency with capturing moments of beauty on the spot has been a great experiment but it's time to end it.
Also, the cinematographer replacing Lubezki is Jörg Widmer. He has worked with Malick since The New World as camera operator and has also worked with Haneke and Bela Tarr.
I don't know why, used to be his big supporter, but nowadays every time I see the name 'Terrence Malick' I automatically want to let out the widest yawn ever, it's like a reflex thing.
