August Diehl

In A Hidden Life (2019), August Diehl and Valerie Pachner make farm work feel like part of a marriage. Their ease together gives Franz and Fani Jägerstätter a shared life beyond the farmer’s refusal to compromise his conscience. We were moved by their tenderness, because the prospect of separation hurts more when two people seem so accustomed to one another. Diehl’s physical assurance matters here: he makes the conviction credible without needing to announce it. Terrence Malick gets a performance worth watching through the film’s repetitions.

He began with a lead, playing Karl Koch in 23 (1998). International notice came through The Counterfeiters (2007) and his Major Dieter Hellstrom in Inglourious Basterds (2009). The title role in Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx (2017) preceded Malick’s farmer. He has continued to move between leading and supporting parts in German and international productions, with historical drama a recurring home for his work.

The reservation in A Hidden Life concerns how little uncertainty Diehl is allowed to play. His steadfastness is convincing early on, but Malick keeps returning to it as though another explanation were needed. Editors Joe Gleason, Sebastian Jones and Rehman Nizar Ali let scenes overlap and familiar images recur, and the repeated questioning eventually adds little. We would have welcomed more doubt for Diehl to work with; instead, he is asked to confirm what we already know. The performance remains persuasive, but the writing leaves him too little to discover.

Pachner gives him something better to respond to: affection complicated by the cost of sharing someone else’s decision. She makes Fani an equal, and Diehl’s resolve is more affecting because we can see the marriage it puts under strain. James Newton Howard’s music brings warmth to that shared life without doing the actors’ work for them. Begin with A Hidden Life; just do not expect Malick to move on when Diehl has made his point.