What it is to be a soldier

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 1999)

I really shouldn't have liked this film as much as I did. After all, it had no plot to speak of, was much too long at three hours, used voice-overs speaking poetry and tried too hard to be arty. However, it was the only war film I've ever seen that defined the experience of war in a way that I felt it to my bones. It put me, personally in the action. I felt the fear, the fatigue and the hard questions that each man had to deal with, and left me with an appreciation of what it is to be a soldier as well as a total disgust at the futility of it all.
The director, Terrence Malick, did an outstanding job of conveying all this. He used nature in a way I have never see in a war film. The beauty of Guadacanal from the trees and birds to the native people is shown over and over again in stark contrast to the slaughter of both the Japanese and Americans. The tagline of this movie is "every man fights his own war" and the close-ups of the men's faces manage to show their inner struggles by the use of lighting and perhaps a leaf against the backdrop of nature.
There is star power in the cast - Sean Penn, John Cusack, Woody Harelson, Nick Nolte, John Travolta, and George Clooney. They all have small parts and, with the exception of Nolte as the aging Lt. Col. who has been passed over for promotion too many times and must prove himself on the battlefield, they all blend into the composite of soldiers at war that the director was trying to achieve.
I didn't like The Search for Private Ryan. I thought it was a rehash of every war cliche I ever heard in a predictable story. I feel completely differently about The Thin Red Line, which rings true from its very core. So deeply did I sink into the movie, that I wasn't bored for one moment. Instead I was there, in the trenches, waiting for the next bullet and captured in the experience. This kind of movie, of course is not for everyone. But for those of us who look for the emotional catharsis that is possible in a work of art, I recommend The Thin Red Line.