Truly profound

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 1999)

You know, people ask me what the difference between "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line." I tell them simply this: "Ryan" is a narrative, "Red Line" is a poem. Truly, a poem with wonderfully beautiful cinematography. It's almost as though Emerson or Thoreau, or another Transcendentalist of the old days, wrote this movie as a poem where they finally admit that yes, there IS evil in the world. Man's oneness with nature is apparent here in many images. It wonderfully displayes the films true cruelty: The Melanesian people, so beautiful and peaceful, are having their world torn apart by two sides they never knew existed, and frankly don't care about. These antagonists are very much part of nature, as well, and represent the evils that hurt this beautiful world. I can't stand the people who are saying: Man, they were using the wrong kind of rifle; Man, I heard that you don't really think about your WIFE while on combat patrol. This movie isn't about accuracy, as the setting is not as important to the plot as "Ryan." It asks the big question: Why, in a world as beautiful as ours, does war exist?