Malick creates impressionistic work of great spirituality

Rating: 8/10 (9 May 1999)

"Who are we, and what is the point of life?" These are just a few of the philosophical questions I found up front and center in Malick's The Thin Red Line. This movie is perhaps the most impressionistic war film I've ever seen. So much so, that I found it difficult, on a first viewing, to follow many of the film's characters and intertwining narratives. Dressed in their blood spattered uniforms, running through the smoke of battle, at a certain point everyone seemed to blur into everyone else. But it almost didn't matter because the real main character, if you will, of this movie is its unyielding and omnipresent spiritual quest. What is life? What is Love? What is it to be human? What is time? What is horror? What is beauty? How is it we come to know each other? And, how is it we come to know ourselves? Malick pointedly asks these very questions in much of the film's dialogue and narration. However, it is in the juxtaposition of the images of war with the images of the south sea island paradise where the battle takes place that Malick succeeds in crystalizing his best philosophy. We see blood being spattered on to tropical flowers, and leaves shot through with bullet holes offering a broken filter to the sunlight as they wave in the soft breeze. We see the curious tree top animals glancing down at a trapped, bleeding, and hunted man. And we are shown the clouds and the tall blowing grass as the last image seen by a dying mutilated soldier. It's almost as though Malick is suggesting with his imagery that in the unity of war and paradise we glimpse a fundamental truth of the human condition.
This is a very special film.