poetry+cinema

Rating: Null/10 (9 December 2000)

Of all the films I have watched so far, "Thin Red Line" stands out as being an exception due to the fact that its the only and the most successful attempt to fuse two mediums of art; namely poetry and cinema. Not necessarily because the film is emotional, there are so many films out there which sway you between depression, despair, sorrow, ecstacy and the likes. Its because every scene is both emotionally loaded and DENSE, making the film be available to infinitely many interpretations with allusions to the deepest, incomprehendible dimensions of humanity, extreme subjectivity. Some things just cannot be conveyed through cinema, like Sureyya's lines "Your voice has the messines of a house"(a very crude translation). And somethings just cannot be conveyed through poetry, like DePalma's Mission Impossible. Terence Malick identified the deficiencies of both mediums and complemented them with each other, which resulted in a surrealist, subconcious-hungry masterpiece with definitely one of the best cinematography out there. This film should not be represented solely by talking about its plot, because its significant does not lie in its plot. It renders words to be redundant, plot to be redundant, peripheral ideas to be redundant. It digs down to feelings that you have last felt when you were 10, innocence, and through that leaps to divinity. Thank you Malick.