A convert speaks

Rating: 10/10 (13 May 1999)

When I first saw this film, I was expecting a movie.
What do I mean by that?
Well, in my mind, a film and a movie are two very different things. A movie is entertainment -- something that tells a story from beginning to end, and does not necessarily call upon your brain for too much work. A film is a statement -- it requires you to think and asks just as much from you as you ask of it. If you don't ask the film any questions (thinking it is a movie, as it were), then you are not going to get anything from it. If these were books, then a movie would be an Elmore Leonard novel and a film would be a book of poetry or a Shakespeare play.
Despite Malick's track record for working on films, I was still expecting 'Saving Private Ryan II'. I walked out of the theatre saying, "What the hell was that crap about?" But something bugged me. It bugged me day and night -- I knew there had to have been something more to it, so I saw it a second time. Then I saw it a third time. Then a fourth.
I don't usually call anything 'genius', but The Thin Red Line is as close to genius as you are likely to find in a film nowadays. The cinematography and direction was absolutely stunning -- no one can deny that this film looks beautiful. And the message behind the film is as equally beautiful as those widescreen landscape shots.
"But what about that lack of characterisation and plot", you ask?!
I disagree. Every character in The Thin Red Line served a purpose, and served it well. Even Jared Leto's character, who we see for all of two minutes, had a texture that most Hollywood heroes don't show evidence of even after two hours running time.
The plot? Well, it was about a mission to take a hill during World War II, wasn't it? That's not as brain-busting as an asteroid hurtling to earth, but it is still a story.
The acting was fantastic. From Elias Koteas to Nick Nolte, to the excellent Jim Caviezel, everybody contributed to what will surely be remembered as the closest mainstream hollywood ever got to putting pure poetry on celluloid.
I never fought a war myself, but my grandfather says The Thin Red Line was much more like real war than Saving Private Ryan could ever hope to be. Sure, Ryan's battle scenes were as graphic as you're likely to find, but TTRL captures the emotional side of war brilliantly -- lots of long, drawn-out periods of waiting, scattered with bursts of savage violence. Saving Private Ryan made sense, didn't it? Maybe that's it's main problem. The Thin Red Line didn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people, and maybe that's where it's genius lies.
The bottom line is that war doesn't make a lot sense at all. All you can really do is watch, wait, fight and hope that you don't become the very thing you set out to fight against. That is the line between fighting courageously for something you believe in and just becoming another savage on the battlefield. And that line is a thin red line