Ars poetica

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2005)

I hate to use a word like "intentionality" in commenting on a movie, but it seems necessary in this case. It means something like the "reality" that is constructed between one person and another, shaped by the desires of the main actor. (I hate to use the word because (1) hardly anybody understands it completely, and (2) I don't understand it completely either.) What Terrence Malick has done in "The Thin Red Line" is to ask the audience to participate in his construction of the experience of combat. To appreciate what he's done is to see it partly through his eyes, his point of view, and that point of view is a combination (not always a perfect solution) of realism and poetry.
It reminds one of another war movie, from 1945, I think, Lewis Milestone's "A Walk in the Sun." And to a lesser extent John Huston's "The Red Badge of Courage." Malick's movie, like Milestone's, has a narrator with a penchant for humanistic comments. (Huston's narrator was a lot more matter of fact about war.) Malick doesn't use narration often and that's a good thing because a little of these elliptical lines goes a long way in this context. There is none of the usual banter about the chow. And the voiceovers aren't used for their usual purpose -- telling us about events without having to show them. ("After I slapped her around, she told me what had happened back at the hotel. Malloy had slipped the fat man a mickey, then Thelma put two holes through Skinny Jackson and betrayed the old lush.") And there's not a wisecrack in a cartload.
A GI daydreams about the wife he left behind. "We are together. We come together. We are like water." That sort of thing. Makes you feel like you're back in college, sitting on the floor and trying to seduce a girl by candlelight. It isn't bad by itself, but as James Jones showed us in his novel, these are not the kinds of guys who are likely to think in anapestic trimeter. They're not going to have flashbacks to undressing their wives, not while crawling towards an enemy bunker. They're just ordinary goons, most of them, rednecks from Tuscaloosa or factory stiffs from Gary, who are attacked by the Japanese while moving their bowels, or have situational homosexual encounters, or who deliberately take a sitting position and fire single shots from their M1s at an overwhelming horde of approaching enemy until they are inevitably cut down.
But Malick is intent on taking us beyond that kind of ordinariness. He interpolates shots of nature. The hazy tropical sun shining through a raggedy leaf with holes. The hills are covered with tall emerald grass that waves smoothly as the breezes wash over it. A naked soldier swims underwater with the naked native kids. A bird, newly hatched, still blind, feebly moves its limbs in the rank and blackish mud, dying. Dozens of flying foxes hang upside down from the branches, peering at the soldiers, as if trying to figure out why these guys are all upside down.
It's an intense film and an expression of a very personal vision. I wouldn't be surprised if some simply gave up trying to play the game.
But it has some very good action scenes, which I won't go into, and the Japanese are human beings rather than "bandy-legged baboons" ("Bataan," with Robert Taylor).
The acting is very good too. In some cases very good indeed. The soldiers are all dressed alike, regardless of role or rank, in fatigues dark with perspiration. It's difficult to tell one from another. In compensation Malick uses a lot of closeups so that we can see the men's faces. Elias Koteas, who plays Staros, a lawyer in civilian life, has the wide open eyes of a man who is scared to death of doing his duty but brave enough to not do it. It may be Nick Nolte's best role as the fustian, shouting, ambitious, savvy, ego-maniacal commanding officer. He desperately needs success in combat as a means to promotion. "The old guys, they've HAD their war. This is MINE!" I will take the liberty of directing your attention to his performance during a particularly dramatic moment. He orders Captain Staros over the phone to make a suicidal frontal attack. Staros respectfully refuses. Nolte makes it clear that this is an ORDER. Staros refuses. And it finally becomes clear to Nolte that Staros is telling him to take his order and shove it. Nolte's head jerks back in a spasm, his jaw drops in awe, and he is utterly speechless, awed by a situation he'd never anticipated. He wipes his nose, blinks, spits, looks around. I've never witnessed him in a better scene.
A shame that this came out at the same time as "Saving Private Ryan." Spielberg wants us to look at the external realities of combat, the gore, the bullets clanking on armor, the injustice of it all. Malick on the other hand invites us to look inside the men. Brutality there surely is, but when a GI is waiting for a wounded Japanese to die before he pulls out his gold teeth with a pair of pliers, he lectures him softly on how little it means. That's an intentionality of a different color.
It's understandable that some viewers might be turned off by this. It's a depressing, original, thoughtful, and deeply disturbing film. I wonder if Malick has ever considered making a documentary about nature -- habitat destruction or something.