FOR WAR CONSIDERATION

Rating: 4/10 (15 January 1999)

January 15, 1999 - Stephen Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN seems the stuff of greatness: it elevates cinematic realism to new heights, is a catalyst for passionate discourse on World War II, emboldens new respect for our veterans, and gives Spielberg an early lock on all things Oscar. Conversely, Terrance Malick's THE THIN RED LINE garners equal parts praise, equal parts derision, and is called the product of an expatriate flower-child who's clearly lost his mind. Four days after seeing Malick's film, I am haunted, not by horrible images of war, but something far deeper and beguiling. Seeking truth, I see "Ryan" again, feeling diplomatic and ready to accept each film as two sides of the same coin - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is the Id, flesh, machination, mission, answer and nostalgic history, to THE THIN RED LINE's conscience, spirit, garden, journey, question, and utopian vision.
Right out the gate, Spielberg is onto something big when he stages the battle of Omaha Beach. Consider that he arrives on location with only five pages of script for the entire invasion of Normandy, then gets busy in his sandbox, re-shooting and fine-tuning the gore until an immaculate vision of carnage is rendered - mostly thanks to Janusz Kaminski stripped lenses and newsreel cinematography. Reading the U.S. Army's technocratic account of D-Day, one is spirited to learn there is a real-life rifle company that lands at Dog Green amidst slaughter and confusion, blows a gap in a mine-field, fights its way to the top of a bluff, and cleans out a machine-gun nest. This incursion actually takes several grueling hours, not twenty minutes - that this should be surprising is testament to the power of Spielberg's false realism.
That Spielberg didn't just tell the whole story of D-Day is a bit of a shame. I suppose he didn't want to remake THE LONGEST DAY (1962), with its ham-and-cheese heroics. I kind of wish he had. Instead, he opts for something more sentimental and personal in scope, but sadly, his vision suffers for it. The very moment Tom Hanks' "Captain Miller" looks back at a beach littered with corpses (body parts curiously absent) the film loses its well-crafted, objectivity. That the eviscerating horrors of the battle still weigh on the mind is no excuse for the parade of stock characters, inappropriate comic relief, and desperate pastiche that follow.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is no rip-off of THE THIN RED LINE, more so, an inversion. "Red Line's" single, gripping battle scene is bordered by metaphysical yearning, while "Ryan" bookends its uneasy spirituality with two scenes of sensational combat. "Red Line" features the hypnotic and ferocious presence of a green jungle, where "Ryan's" palate is leached of all color, save mud, gun-metal and brick. "Red Line" poses unanswerable queries into the nature of human existence, while "Ryan" asks the rhetorical question, "am I a good man?"
All attempts at anticipating Malick's opus would be denied, for up to the second of his film's release, he still worked on it. Here is a man who will never play by Hollywood's rules. Consider that Malick spends twenty years in hiding, is begged out of retirement by a pair of iconoclastic producers (Robert Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau), spends many more years adapting James Jones' novel in secrecy, fires his producers, arrives on location in the wildernesses of Australia and the Solomon Islands with a small army, ditches his script, shoots 1,000,000 feet of 70mm film over a six-month period - most exclusively in evening and early morning light - cuts the film at eight hours, and lastly, writes a haunting, poetic narration to bind the final, three-hour cut.
Those not hypnotized by Malick's vision are finding this film infuriating, though. A common complaint is that the film lacks a central hero to rally behind; but such is the film's belief that there exists a collective unconscious shared by all, and all men are somehow the same. The physical similarities between Privates "Witt" (Jim Cazeviel) and "Bell" (Ben Chaplin) emphasize this point. Both men carry with them memories of a great love, be it sensual wife, or primal paradise; both pass through war never to return to this love. In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN you hear about a soldier's mental island, where one must go in battle to remain sane; but in THE THIN RED LINE, you experience this, and you mourn its passing.
In the end, THE THIN RED LINE is about World War II as much as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is about Death, the dark, senseless way one is mutilated through war. THE THIN RED LINE is about Life, light, and its fragile presence in all living things.
In conclusion, I must address which film and which director will carry home more Oscars? The Academy faced a similar conundrum in 1978 when considering COMING HOME vs. THE DEER HUNTER for Best Picture. (This was the same year Malick made Days of Heaven, then disappeared). The war in Vietnam, long a taboo subject, was then recognized in mainstream cinema but, who had the supreme vision, Hal Ashby or Michael Cimino? The question is superfluous for neither film is about the war so much as the disintegration of the American psyche. Ultimately, The Academy chose THE DEER HUNTER with its deeply layered character studies over the cloying, P.C. sentimentality of COMING HOME. I am hoping that today's voters are of a similar sensibility. Therefore, I most humbly suggest to the esteemed members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for your consideration, for Best Picture THE THIN RED LINE - not because it is the better representation of war, because it is the greater realization of life.
*****