Reaction
Days of Heaven opened theatrically on September 13, 1978. It later premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1979, where Malick won the award for Best Director—making him the first American director to win the award since Jules Dassin in 1955 for Rififi (in a joint win shared with two other directors). Technically, the film was a commercial failure: its box office gross of $3,446,749 was only slightly more than it cost to make the film ($3 million).
Critical reaction initially varied, with many critics polarised by the beauty of the film, however finding a flaw in a perceived weakness of the story. Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader offered a positive review and wrote: "Terrence Malick's remarkably rich second feature is a story of human lives touched and passed over by the divine, told in a rush of stunning and precise imagery. Nestor Almendros's cinematography is as sharp and vivid as Malick's narration is elliptical and enigmatic. The result is a film that hovers just beyond our grasp—mysterious, beautiful, and, very possibly, a masterpiece". Variety Magazine called the film "one of the great cinematic achievements of the 1970s." Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune also wrote that the film "truly tests a film critic's power of description ... Some critics have complained that the Days of Heaven story is too slight. I suppose it is, but, frankly, you don't think about it while the movie is playing". Time magazine's Frank Rich wrote, "Days of Heaven is lush with brilliant images". The periodical went on to name it one of the best films of 1978. Nick Schager of Slant Magazine has called it "the greatest film ever made."
Meanwhile, detractors targeted the film's direction of storyline and structure. In his review for The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote, "Days of Heaven never really makes up its mind what it wants to be. It ends up something between a Texas pastoral and Cavalleria Rusticana. Back of what basically is a conventional plot is all kinds of fancy, self-conscious cineaste techniques." Additionally, Monica Eng of the Chicago Tribune criticised the lack of significant plot and stated "the story becomes secondary to the visuals".
The film was re-evaluated years after its original theatrical release and is currently considered a pioneering film achievement, particularly noted for the beauty of the cinematography. In 1997, Roger Ebert added Days of Heaven to his list of "Great Movies", describing it as "one of the most beautiful films ever made". In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Days of Heaven is also frequently cited as being one of the most beautiful films of all time. The film holds a 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 8.2/10 based on 45 reviews, as well as a 95/100 weighted average score at Metacritic.
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