Terrence Malick is a genius

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2006)

This movie is an accurate meditation on war! It encompasses and puts into actual speech the feelings and emotions of different kinds of soldiers and it is a film of utterly beautiful cinematography. I had one chill after another while watching this movie and I sat through the three hours almost crying. I believe that Terrence Malick created his masterpiece here and I admire him for what he knows about the creation of feelings via cinematography. In one scene, where Jared Leto sees two men of his platoon killed and hesitates about what to do next, Malick inserts a scene where we see the sun passing over the blades of grass. Then the camera goes back to Jared Leto and we see him getting killed a few seconds later. That's it right there! Usually battle scenes in movies display a relentless velocity and don't allow the viewer to take a breath. In this movie Malick shows how complete silence can turn into complete horror from one second to another! However, if you're German, do not watch this film in German. The voices of Caveziel, Chaplin et. al. simply don't have the same melancholic ring to them that they have in the original version. A lot of people probably can't relate to what this movie is about, but I served a year in German army and that gave me an inkling. So long, your favorite German critic!