Extraordinary meditation on good, evil and the meaning of violence.

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 1999)

A voice over at the beginning of this extraordinary three hour photo essay and filmic poem poses a question. Witt, a mystical embodiment of the light of the human spirit, asks why nature contends with itself? Does this contention exemplify two forces, good and evil? The film goes onto answer these ruminations with a depth of poetic imagination and intellectual rigour rarely found in the cinema and especially Hollywood cinema.
Showing a number of men from C company battling for control of a hill on the small Melanesian island of Guadalcanal a number of possible answers to the intial questions are played out and tested. Cleverly the director shys away from involvement with either character or narrative. He doesn't want us to think that everything will be ok in the end because we won the war (something the participants were not so sure about), nor does he want us to be horrified at the sight of violence simply because we identify with one or another of the characters. He wants to see what the range of possible responses the human spirit develops when placed in an appalling situation.
Nick Nolte, a tyrannical Zeus of a commander represents the ends justifies the means argument. Sean Penn's character tries to turn himself to stone, without feelings, without fear. Another draws on the love he has for his wife for spiritual strength. Witt is the one closest to an idea of God and he passes through the film like Christ on the road to Emmaus, only ever partially recognized by his comrades. Ironically it is the tough Sean Penn character who understands him best.
Interestingly, as so many people seem to be comparing Saving Private Ryan with this film, the central question of Private Ryan is posed by the commander, Nolte, to his second in command, Koteas, about halfway through the Thin Red Line. Nolte asks what is the value of a human life in relation to the war and its objectives overall? How many lives are worth losing for a particular hill? Koteas dismisses the question, regarding it as unanswerable. This profoundly moral response deals with Spielberg's rather juvenile question in about 2 minutes. (Matt Damon might be worth the effort but what if it was the neurotic Jewish map reader the platoon were looking for?)
So the Thin Red Line answers its own intial questions in two ways. It refuses the notion that there are two forces, good and evil, in nature. There is however life and death, but these are not opposites as death leads to new life. That makes the problem of good and evil a distinctly human one to which a number of responses are possible.
It is difficult to say that one is superior to another. I don't think Mallick is running a single argument like that. He is more interested in the breadth of human response. This breadth spoke to me about compassion for humanity and the character who embodied that most was Witt. As he walked through the chaos of the conquered Japanese camp I felt compassion for the vanquished as well as the victors. What is sacrificed in war is humanity itself and to a lesser extent innocence, yet compassion can redeem both of these things.
War does not enoble men, as the film says, it makes them into beasts. What the Thin Red Line offers is a way to think about both nature (life and death) and compassion as powerful redemptive forces which can and do exist in the most depraved of circumstances.