War inside

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2007)

People usually remember Thin Red Line as Saving Private Ryan Oscar rival. Most of them have never seen it.
It's a very different kind of movie. Ryan is realism, flesh, blood, physical pain. It shows the cruelty of war mostly from the perspective of violence. We are actually shown how fragile human body is and what merciless bitch is war (sorry for cheesiness).
Thin red line is more a philosophical journey. A journey into the depth of human mind. It shows war from the perspective of life and death as more spiritual substances. Mallick meaningly avoids showing physical violence, physiological ugliness of war and wounds it brings along. He examines it from a point of struggle between endless, perfect beauty of nature and destructive essence of mankind.
Ryan and Thin Red line are simply incommensurable. The nature of war in these two movies is different. Ryan gives us a war on the surface, Line gives us the view from the soul - we see how war eats soldiers from inside, breaks their spirit, rapes their minds leaving open wounds on their spiritual essence.
Line, Ryan - both are great, both are important, but in different ways.
When you watch Ryan you think "Oh, God, that's disgusting. Poor, poor boys. How... Why did we let THIS to happen?!" And I can't know what you are thinking about when you watch Thin Red Line, I simply can't imagine. This movie is too personal, its theme is too delicate.
And the last note: people usually animatedly discuss Saving Private Ryan after watching it. And after watching Thin Red Line viewers are usually detached , only mark of grief on their faces - cause they've just seen this line. And they've crossed it.