Fighting Own Wars

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2017)

Decidedly different to the 1964 movie, this Terrence Malick version broadens the scope in the original film, giving equal focus to several World War II soldiers of the same platoon as opposed to just Pvt. Doll and Sgt. Welsh. This allows Malick to explore the war from varying perspectives, with multiple narrators and multiple flashbacks; as the film's tagline goes, we really see how "every man fights his own war". The film is accompanied by atmospheric music from Hans Zimmer, eerily sharp sounds and tracking shots that effectively crawl along with the soldiers (as if the camera is a soldier). The dreaminess of the flashbacks works well too. Admirable as Malick's approach is, it is nevertheless hard not to yearn for the intensity of the 1964 version, which - by focusing on just one private and one sergeant - acutely captured the ability of war to truly transform a human being. The titular line between madness and sanity also comes out more prominently in the earlier version. There are additionally so many protagonists in the 1998 film that one seldom gets to know them as individuals. The film's sprawling nature is quite true to the madness and mayhem of war though, and the dialogue is as poetic and haunting as ever. It may be unclear whether Malick's version of the tale makes for a more powerful war movie, but it is certainly daringly different and memorable in its own way.