Bracing, beautiful, and reflective

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 1998)

Happily an apples-to-oranges comparison with Saving Private Ryan (though Spielberg's film, which is great in different ways, prepares the zeitgeist for Malick's philosophical ruminations), Thin Red Line sees war in existential/phenomenological/spiritual light, pictures soldiers contemplating death, facing the horizon, experiencing dread--not usually young men's experience. Malick's extraordinary presentation intermixes recognizable motifs (God seeming to observe man through nature, voice-over technique) but with less intended irony than in Badlands and Days of Heaven. It will seem to some viewers curiously detached, reminiscent of Kubrick; they have simply to realize that both Spielberg and Malick are artists with distinct and brilliantly realized visions in which there is truth and beauty for those with eyes to see.