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The real meaning of Days of Heaven emerges from its images, not its players. Nowhere is this more evident than in the film's final scenes, when the action shifts from the farm to a bustling nearby town of 1917. Suddenly we are in the death throes of oldtime America: smiling dough boys hop on trains to the blare of brass bands. At that moment Days of Heaven effortlessly transcends its own story to prefigure the history of an era. As Malick's characters lost their innocence on a ravaged wheatfield in Texas, so would a nation on the bloody battlefields of the first World War. — Frank Rich