Great

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2012)

There are moments when greatness is immediately apparent. When I first watched Terrence Malick's 1998 film, The Thin Red Line, over a decade ago, it was clear that the film was great, and so was its director. Perhaps it was the opening shot of the film, wherein a crocodile slithers into muck as a rising fugue intones, that invoked a poetic realism that the rest of the nearly three hour film sustains. Or, perhaps, it was within the first 5 or 10 minutes, when the voice-over narration and watery images mixed into something rarely seen on screen. Nonetheless, I immediately felt that sort of pleasure seep into one, knowing that this artist knows exactly what he is doing, and it will be something very good, or even better. And every time I've watched it since it reveals nuances not noticed before. That's a surefire marker of greatness. Oddly, the people I saw the film with disagreed, yet they had no real definitive reasons save the usual emotional response, or its lack. Upon rewatching the film, nothing has changed from my initial opinion. And given that this film was often spoken of in the same breath as Steven Spielberg's schlocksterpiece, Saving Private Ryan, shows how utterly clueless most critics, much less layfolk, are, for while both films were released in the same year, and cover the same war, the qualitative difference is immense.
The Thin Red Line ranks with Paths Of Glory and Apocalypse Now as amongst the greatest American war films ever made. It is a masterpiece that really has no flaws. And like Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut, released a year after this film, I was amongst the very few critics to immediately recognize its greatness, despite massive critical scorn (although the critical tide has belatedly turned in the correct favor). Sometimes prescience has its benefits. After all, as the film recognizes, sometimes it's all about the little moments, or just the little thoughts of bigger ones, that matter.