In 1910, Bill, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor. He flees to the Texas panhandle with his lover Abby and his little sister Linda, where they work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer. When Bill learns that the farmer is ill and has less than a year to live, he encourages Abby to accept the man's attentions. The Farmer and Abby marry, and she and her "siblings" live in the big house, waiting for the Farmer to die, so Abby can inherit, and the three of them live happily ever after. But love seems to be a cure-all: the Farmer seems to be improving--and Abby is no longer seeing this as a marriage of convenience. From a landscape of panoramic vistas, vivid colors, and rich textures comes a timeless American idyll and a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.
Contents
Going places -- Work -- Harvest -- Abby -- Prognosis -- Job ends -- Tired -- Staying on -- Future -- Marriage -- Rich -- Out for a walk -- "I don't know you" -- Flying circus -- Business -- Return -- Locusts -- "Nobody's perfect" -- Hunted -- New beginnings.
Notes
Still photography by Bruno Engler
Filmed in Southern Alberta and Waterton National Park
Special features: Commentary with Jack Fisk, Billy Weber, Patricia Norris, and Dianne Crittenden [audio feature]; Interview with Richard Gere [audio feature] (22 min.); Interview with Sam Shepard (13 min.); Interview with John Bailey (21 min.); Interview with Haskell Wexler (12 min.). Booklet includes essays "On Earth as it is in heaven" by Adrian Martin and "Shooting 'Days of Heaven'" by Nestor Almendros.
Pertains to: climate change, archeological sites including Indian Pit Houses at the Banff Springs Hotel golf course, Indian tools uncovered at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch,pictographs at Grotto Canyon, and sacred Indian medicine and rites
Pertains to recreational users and developers and their impact on the environment: Interview with Hans Gmoser in the Bugaboos on the advent of helicopter skiing; Tony Parisi in Valemount B.C. on snowmobiling; David Schindler on detrimental effects of tourism on the water supply; Chief Sophie Pierre at St. Eugene Mission resort on the perceived "right" of users to the back country; Kevin van Tiegham and the issue of development outside National Parks boundary areas; Park Wardens Scott Ward and Ross Heatherington re: managing on the ecosystem as a whole rather than specifically in a national park; Southern Alberta Land Trust and John Russell for the Nature Conservancy and the role of ranching lands acting as a buffer vs. the fragmentation and development of ranch land for acreages such as Jim Gardner's "Heaven on earth estates"