A Wonderful Work of Art

Rating: Null/10 (18 November 2002)

'Sure it looks good, but that doesn't mean it's a good movie.'
Of course not, but it is. It looks incredible -- some of the best cinematography ever shot is in this film. The music, amazingly enough by Hanz Zimmer, is breathtaking, and I don't mean in the Jerry and Elaine way, it really is. So, what's Malick doing here? He's using the two most important things in creating atmosphere and using them to draw us in to the movie.
But then why were there so many aggressive attacks on this film? Well, for one thing audiences weren't willing to open themselves up to the movie. From the first shot of the gator writhing in the mud people wanted to dislike the movie. Those who were anxious for Malick to fall on his face after a 20 year hiatus would do anything they could to help him stumble.
And what's more pathetic than an artist trying to communicate genuine emotion, but being unable to articulate it in words?
So, this film, with Malick's much-hated voice-overs, is simultaneously hated and loved with a passion. It's always bewildered me how someone could attack an artist, most of whom are sensitive to begin with, and call their work terrible without a second thought.
This movie is from the 'Apocalypse Now' school of war movies. That movie was a giant-sized, drunken masterpiece to this writer. I loved how the movie progressed with insanity the longer you were in it making it harder and harder to resist (sort of like a Physics class -- if you're not getting after a week, you're left in the dust). This movie is somewhat hallucinogenic like Coppola's film, but more poetic. And I don't mean it's poetic in that it reveals great truths or is crammed with profundities. It doesn't and it isn't.
What it does have is a feel. From my perspective the camera was literally that of a soldier (or soldiers). Throughout, the camera moves along a sight-line, has a few double-takes and watches with awe. We feel as if we are only catching glimpses of a war from the point-of-view of the soldier. The film was criticised for dropping actors before they were on long enough to be fully made, but so what? Who says we have to fully understand a character? Do you understand everyone you've ever met? No, and neither does the soldier (the viewer); he sees as much as he sees and then moves along.
In his list of the top ten films of the 1990s, Martin Scorsese said how this was like and endless film, like an endless war. He's right. We feel afterwards as if we came in the middle of a conversation. Now, this could be deliberate, or it could be due to the fact that the film was supposedly edited down from six hours.
Either way the film is one of the best of the 90s, with some wonderful moments of watching Sean Penn, Nick Nolte (who chews the scenery, but is only getting better), and Jim Caviezel, who has a perfect thin-lipped, blue-eyed, big-eared vagueness to him.
4 out of 4