Explores that fine line between a beautiful and an ugly place as characters attempt to find themselves amidst it all.

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2009)

The Thin Red Line is a wonderfully observed, slow-burning film chronicling the madness of war and the effects it has on those involved. Told from a couple of characters' own points of view via narration, the film documents events in the Pacific during World War Two and is a triumph of capturing thoughts, feelings and emotions felt from the first person perspective. As a war film, it is the anti-thesis to something like Pearl Harbor or a Rambo sequel, as exploring sensations, feeling emotions and the opening up of one's mind is the order of the day. Whilst combining beautifully captured imagery, but never quite coming across as a piece that glorifies warfare or make war as a whole 'beautiful' per se; The Thin Red Line is a marvellous achievement in straight, un-perturbed and anti-formula film-making working within a distinct genre.
It's the film's poster that best captures what you're heading in for when it comes to The Thin Red Line. Three separate soldiers, ducked down amidst the reeds, either cowering; planning or maybe just observing. The item that springs to mind, or indeed captures our gaze, are the three separate eyes of these men – not the helmets dictating to us the obviousness of the genre; not the brightly coloured foliage designed to distract us by informing us of how strenuously low down these guys are; not even the impressive cast list to the left can alter our gaze. It is the eyes that are looking off centre, eyes that are capturing whatever they're looking at with a small matter of fear, surprise, anguish and acceptance. Each of the soldier's helmets block out one of the other soldier's eyes, rendering the picture somewhat uncanny, but it goes some way in telling us it is a film all about looking; observing and gazing at what's presented to you.
The film predominantly centres around three men, men who are Private Witt (Caviezel); Private Bell (Chaplin) and a Colonel by the name of Tall (Nolte) – soldiers in C Company based around the area of Guadalcanal, during the Japanese occupation of that fateful time. The film opens in the most un-war-like of fashions; with a voice-over accompanied montage of all things beautiful as Witt mingles with some Pacific region natives on an island set away from the war and away from the fighting. This is not a plunging us into the forefront of battle alá Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now with some beach landings or a Napalm bombing and this is not a throwing us into the harsh, behind-the-scenes reality of something put across in the opening of Platoon. For better or for worse, this is an opening set away from not only firefights and bombing raids but the war and the warfare area itself. Although interestingly, like some of the above examples; it accompanies its imagery with some soft, instrumental and somewhat classical music.
The essence of Malick's film being one of the patient variety is captured in the film's attitude to war as an individual item. Rather than open with acts of warfare as explored in the previous paragraph, the director here implants a dizzying array of aspects of mise-en-scene onto the screen that foreshadow violence and blood-shed without ever giving us any. Large, towering cannon-like artillery guns line the decks of the warship we spend much of the early exchanges on; there's a huge, nervous build-up to some beach landings which double up as the film's first example of military action of some kind, whereas each and every solider carries with him a rifle making the presence of firearms extremely prominent. These things, along with the given fact the beach landings are quiet and un-countered by the Japanese, are examples of the film showing us the implements and actions of war without ever actually giving us war itself. Indeed, Malick presents us the results of any fighting before we see any fighting when the bloody bodies of two dead soldiers are encountered.
But that's not to say there are no scenes of fighting at all. The beauty of the location, and the manner in which the camera makes us well aware it is in love with the place in the opening few shots of the film, is purposefully grossly juxtaposed with the notion of long, bloody warfare within the jungle. The first instance of fighting is painful, rather arduous and for not very much as American forces struggle to get an entirely firm grip on a hill dominated by enemy machine gun and mortar placements. There are a number of things that are to The Thin Red Line's great credit; firstly, the fact the film manages to sustain a distinct level of intensity following these Guadacanal landings, and the instances of one's mental and physical endurance being pushed. Secondly, the film's multi-equilibrium approach of detailing a central character's decline in marital status is handled well enough that it doesn't detract from the ongoing pain and suffering of the war as a whole unfolding around him and everyone else. The film is of the slow burning, but ultimately rewarding variety - Malick takes each step as it comes; dealing with fear, desperation, desertion and the lust for glory in an observed and timely fashion, the likes of which we should relish given the current rarity of films of this ilk.