A Different War Film

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2009)

Released the same year as "Saving Private Ryan", it lost out in the Oscars to Spielberg's film and "Shakespeare In Love". But as time has passed, far too many war films have borrowed Spielberg's formula for a WW2 Film: Start the film off in the present day and tell the story in flashback before returning back to the present day, hand-held cameras for frenetic action sequences, over the top gore, lots of extras for added realism, the usual moral that "War kills people and is bad". With this passage of time, with the War genre seemingly falling into stagnation, Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" stands as a film that doesn't buy into the normal Hollywood codes of convention. It is a rare breed: a War film that is a work of art.
The film has almost no conventional plot, the two main protagonists are Pvt. Witt (James Caviezel) and Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin), and we start off with an AWOL Witt living in the South Pacific with the locals. Once the Army find out where he is, he is put on a ship, bound for Guadalcanal. The rest of the film follows each major character's battle against their enemy and the battle inside of themselves. Peaking inside their thoughts, their fears, their souls. It is a brilliant way of giving us insight into the varied characters, with the two biggest names in the film (John Travolta & George Clooney) relegated to mere cameos, while the lesser known duo of Caviezel and (Ben) Chaplin charged with carrying the film as it jumps from each soldier throughout. The acting is very good from everyone, Jim Caviezel captures the spirit of Pvt. Witt perfectly, Ben Chaplin gives a really good performance, while Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas give arguably the two best performances in the film. Sean Penn is very good also.
But it just isn't a Terrence Malick film without gorgeous visuals, incredible soundtrack and wonderful poetic direction. He may have been out of the game for 20 years, but Terrence Malick delivers on every level: The battle sequences are frenzied and excellent, without ever feeling Hollywood-ised. The cinematography is utterly gorgeous, bringing out the beauty of nature and setting it up against the ugly nature of man. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is exceptional, conveying a sense of the unknown, fear, triumph, evil and beauty all at the same time. Terrence Malick gives us some wonderful visuals: The opening of a Crocodile half-submerged in a swamp, a bird just learning it's first steps amidst a raging war all around it, Sunlight illuminating the tallest tree tops and penetrating the Jungle floor. There is almost no other war film that would concentrate on the beauty of nature in the same vein as "The Thin Red Line". But all of the beautiful pictures, the awe-inspiring music add up to a mood, a sensation that washes over you and immerses you into the film in a way that only Malick and a handful of others can do. But the beauty is more than skin-deep, Malick asks us questions that other war films don't even think of asking: Where did this hatred come from? Is God responsible for all of this? Is nature at war with itself? Malick can't answer these questions, because no human could possibly answer those questions. "The Thin Red Line" touches on God, War, Nature, Innocence, Death, Love among other things. It shatters the normal movie-making conventions that a war film must feature 2,000 battle sequences, that voice-over's should only be done by one person and everyone lives happily ever after. It doesn't exist in the movieworld, and it doesn't quite exist in our own world of realism, it is on a whole other world. It is a magnificent, thought-provoking, engrossing war drama that captivates you, holds you gently, and leaves you feeling elated after seeing it. It is Terrence Malick's finest film, one of the most unique war films out there and one of the finest films of the 90's. It is different, and in this case, different is much, much better.