The war films as poetry . . .

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2014)

Terence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' is a very poetic movie about the duality of man and it has lingering images that will stay with me. But they are in service of a movie that is too long, too labored and has too many underwritten characters.
Where 'Saving Private Ryan' showed us the war in Europe, Malick takes us to the other side of the world to the taking of Guadalcanal. Amid the fighting we meet several characters (a few of whom are not underwritten) including a pacifist (Jim Caviezel) who has gone off to live with the Pacific Island natives; A bullheaded colonel (Nick Nolte) determined to have his war no matter the cost and a soldier (Ben Chaplin) who's thoughts remain at home with his wife.
The rest though all get screen time at about two minutes a piece and that's too bad because this is a remarkable cast: John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, Sean Penn, John C. Reilly, John Savage, John Travolta. George Clooney comes on screen and doesn't even play a medic - what rip-off! Everybody gets their moment, a few words of dialogue and then are gone just as we are getting interested in them I mentioned that there were moments in this movie that would stay with me. I loved the opening image of an alligator sinking beneath the swamp water (symbolizing the animal that hides just beneath the surface). I liked the shot of a long path symbolizing the long road home and the shots of the open ocean symbolizing the gulf that divides these men from their civilization. John Doe's cinematography is beautiful.
I appreciated these images just as I appreciated those in Malick's 'Days of Heaven' and 'Badlands'. But the movie tries your patience (and I am a very patience film-goer). It seems to take forever to come to a conclusion.