“Sometimes I feel very old, like my whole life’s over, like I’m not around no more.” —Linda, Days of Heaven, 1978

Clockwise from top left: 1. & 2. Via Ask Actor; 3. Slant Magazine.

Terrence Malick’s 1978 movie Days of Heaven is sort of about murder and a love triangle among migrant workers on a Texas wheat farm in the 1910s, but only in the way that Lost in Translation is about a vacation, or Titanic is about a boat (well, I might like Titanic more if it were just about the boat, but I digress). It’s a simple story that’s made completely mesmerizing by some of the most gorgeous cinematography ever put on film, and by the strange, naive poetry of its narrator, an adolescent girl named Linda. Linda’s worked hard as a farmhand all her life and has never been to school, yet she has an eerily intuitive grasp of the adult problems around her, and despite her lack of education and sometimes-inarticulate speech, she has all the wisdom and world-weariness of someone four times her age (so your average teenage girl, basically).

Clockwise from top left: via Dressed Cinema; Rodarte fall 2011 via Dazed Digital; Band of Outsiders spring 2012 via Refinery29; Anna Sui spring 2011 via Style.com.

Days of Heaven’s stunning magic-hour palette and long prairie silhouettes have been inspiring fashion designers for years. You can see the film’s influence in a lot of recemt collections: Anna Sui’s technicolor blues and sunset reds, Band of Outsiders’ long duster coats and faded plaids, and the messy hair and tawny caramel makeup at Rodarte (Rimmel makes a great coppery brown eyeshadow, $5 at Ulta).

Take inspiration from The Clothes Horse’s sweet, simple dress in primary colors; Broadist’s gorgeous mix of sky and earth tones (Topshop makes a similar dress but, alas, not in that amazing cyan!); Kennedy Holmes’s dramatic windswept hair and feminine layers (note to self: new favorite Etsy search); or the Parisian girl who looks incredible with just a modest blue dress, a messy bun, and a bike.

Or you can be inspired by Linda herself and wear faded calico dresses and milkmaid braids with an offhand, tomboy charm. Just remember that even a panhandle prophetess has to stop philosophizing about the end of the world and smile sometimes.