A Classic Movie in any Genre

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2003)

Many's the time when a movie, or any work of what I see as genius, has suffered the attempted deflation by people who use the most debased methods of argument.
Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line is one such movie. It's the story of Guadalcanal, an important and bloody battle fought in the eastern theatre of World War II. The main argument put forth by those rapier wits is that is supposedly features a number of ridiculously famous actors who have never failed to be taken seriously in a serious role: George Clooney, John Travolta among them. But most use this argument to blast the movie haven't seen it, in my experience. The fact is, those bloated personalities spend a very small fraction of time on the screen. Then rest is taken up, mostly, by actors of little notoriety but considerable talent. Also present are twi famous actors whose fame cannot defeat their ability to suspend our disbelief: Sean Penn and Nick Nolte.
Aside from the selection of cast, the other cheap and narrow-minded shot people take at this movie is the overall tone and the philosophy expressed. While there are a few very long and seemlessly orchestrated battle scenes, the beating core of the movie is it's contention that the world is bound by an intrinsic cycle of conflict of harmony. Paralelling the bloodshed between man, there are shots of trees being strangled by parasitic vines and wounded birds struggling to take flight. But Malick's vision of Nature isn't bound by the suffering inherent in it. He sees the possibility for joy and harnony, expemplefied by the scenes of the idllyc goings-on of a tribe of aboriginese that a soldier, played by Jim Caviezel, lives among while going awol from his company. In fact, it is this soldier's monologues that periodically play over the film, in which he alternately revels at the genius inherent in life when expressed in harmony and peace, and and then puzzling at the brutal mindlessness of conflict.
It' s clear to me that this is not a war for someone expecting a cathartic jingoistic realise. There is very little nationalism here. It presents an unresolved dichotomy between believing in the existence of a harmonious paradise or being resigned to a world of perpetual conflct where the only solution is to retreat from the world.
And if you fail to find my arguments concerning the ideas expressed, than what's left is still a beautiful exercise in the portrayal of the inner lives of terrified men, and a beautiful visual aethetic (one of the implicit points of the movie is that, all the while this tumult and noise is going on, the jungle in all its dangerous beauty, goes relatively undisturbed).