One of the greatest films ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2005)

The Thin Red Line is, quite simply, one of the greatest films ever made. It is astonishing - and I can't believe it isn't on more people's cinematic radars.
I was looking at the beginning of the film last night on DVD and it is just so beautiful. I think The Thin Red Line is one of the most gorgeously photographed films I've ever seen (along with Apocalypse Now, Tess, The Conformist and The Virgin Suicides) - cinematographer John Toll truly deserved an Oscar for his work. So many images haunt the mind afterwards; the shots of the soldiers creeping through the grass as they try and take the hill, all of the scenes at the beginning of the film, where Jim Caviezel seems to have found paradise on the Pacific Island, the scenes where the American soldiers are silently passed by the indigenous people of the Pacific Islands.
If you have no interest in the movie, see it anyway for the beautiful cinematography.
The themes of the film are amazing - the violence inherent in man and nature, the destruction we wreck upon our planet, nature and each other - all these ideas are explored. The cumulative effect is stunning.
I find it very interesting that this film polarizes so many viewers: some find it boring, elusive and pretentious. Others say that Saving Private Ryan (released around the same time) is the better film. Well, I'm the biggest Steven Spielberg fan in the world and I love Ryan - but the two films couldn't really be more different. It's like comparing the Beatles to Mozart. Both make music, but the results are markedly different. Also, I think the comparisons are lazy - people only compared the two because both are World War 2 films. The directors could not be more different.
Ryan is a more immediate, commentary-style, narrative-driven film. The Thin Red Line is often described by people who have seen it as a meditation on war - and i think that is completely accurate. There isn't a single strong narrative thread in the film, characters come in and out of focus, as does the use of voice-over, but if you just let this film flow over and into you, you'll enjoy an intensely rich experience.
The use of music is also wonderful - particularly Faure's Requiem, which is gorgeously deployed at the start of the film, where Jim Cavizel and and his buddy are AWOL on the Pacific Island.
Terrence Malick is, undoubtedly, a genius. I'm a huge fan of both Badlands and Days of Heaven, but The Thin Red Line is my favourite of all his films. His new movie, The New World, also looks wonderful - and judging by the trailer, it revisits many of the themes explored in The Thin Red Line - nature, destruction, war, love and the primal violence of man.
The Thin Red Line is a ravishing, haunting film, loaded with meaning. Like Kubrick's 2001, it is endlessly open to debate. If you haven't seen it, then get your hands on the DVD, the biggest widescreen TV you can find and enjoy. Better still, see it on the big screen.
A gorgeous work of genius.