Masterpiece, or mockery?

Rating: 1/10 (8 June 2001)

When I heard Terrence Malick had come out of a twenty-year sabbatical and made a new film, I was interested. After all, "Days of Heaven", was a decent movie that was well acted and filled with wonderful cinematography. I had also heard from someone that "The Thin Red Line" was poetry on screen-- an exquisite philosophical blend of the beauty of nature and the insanity of war. What I discovered for myself, after squirming in my seat for three hours on opening night, was cinematic masturbation with little respect to the subject matter of the story, and even less respect for coherent narrative. Somewhere buried within the layers of gratuitous shots of birds and swaying trees, non-stop pretentious voice-overs and ridiculous celebrity cameos, was a story worthy of telling. But sadly, this story never actually materializes and we are left with a dreadfully long, meandering LSD trip flashback, lacking any sort of truth or characterization. To its credit, "The Thin Red Line" has some beautiful nature photography, worthy of The Discovery Channel no doubt, and an excellent score by Hans Zimmer. But these things alone do not a good film make. After a two-decade vacation from filmmaking, Mr. Malick should have taken a refresher course in Story 101 before filling the screen with an unholy volume of philosophical mumbo-jumbo, and insulting the men who fought and died in the Pacific Conflict during World War II.
I know there are many who swear this is a great film. I would say that they have been duped by Mr. Malick in the same way that he duped the studio into unloading so much money into this wandering hippie experimental piece disguised as a feature film.