Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (17 April 2003)

Terrence Malick is one of the few living directors who still believes in the primacy of the "image" and the uniqueness of "motion picture" as an art.
All through TTRL there are various shots of trees, natives, animals, soldiers in meditation, soldiers staring into emptiness..., these only emphasize his belief in the image as a "sign" or as a symbol vivid enough to convey meaning, rather than relying on an "external" plot that would render film "secondary" creation, following a path of a narrative or drama, like some sort of illustrations on paper to help with the read, or nothing but an extended theater captured on film. The image here is primary, more important than dialogue, plot, or background music. It's the center of the work, and everything else is there to give it prominence not to cancel it out. This has always been Malick's philosophy in making movies, whether it's Days of Heaven or Badlands, the image is the only entity which holds his films together. He does it in a simple, natural and quiet way, as if slowly exposing nature's (and nature means all that's there to be seen, including humans not only trees and animals) calm unspeakable, and indescribable secrets, that can only be traced as it sparkles in the time dimension, by the eyes.

This isn't a traditional war movie, the novel itself didn't read like a war novel. James Jones seems to have been much interested (particularly in this novel) in showing the deterministic truth of our world, in which soldiers (as subjects) are nothing but puppets having no control whatsoever on their destiny. Of course he depicts war(as he has always done) not only realistically but also horrifically, not interested in major outcomes or nationalistic motives but in the soldiers, how all this affects them emotionally and spiritually. But also how this war changes them, makes them care about each other, and how an enormously different culture is the culture of soldiers and war.
James Jones' "war" was "the cosmos" in how it represented determinism, and how it cancelled it out and dehumanized the subject. However, in essence, Jones' soldiers had more freedom than most other humans. Malick has delivered this vision, though he wasn't exactly faithful.
The novel was also interrupted by descriptions of the Guadalcanal Paradise-like beauty, but these descriptions didn't seem as essential or symbolic as they were in the film, in fact the shots were more copious and took much more space, and in the film they served different themes, most notably that of nature's contradictory essence, "war in the heart of nature", the tranquillity of colorful birds contrasted with a crocodile sliding into a swamp, or the peaceful carefree natives with the violent struggle of the soldiers. However, the work is multifaceted and it doesn't exactly represent a single theme or philosophy. The issue was too big, too universal for James Jones to represent through a single character(or even two or three), he probably wanted and needed to involve everything at once in one grand kaleidoscopic vision ("allspace in a notshall"). All things coalesce into a primordial singularity of no names and no characters. The film takes that further and negates any sort of behaviorism. There 're no boundaries between the viewer and the character, the characters are almost transparent. Understandably, many people complained about the lack of plot or characterization, which if you have a progressionist's view of literature and art you'd consider both as relics of a bygone world, but that's extreme, and they're the sort of tradition that survives and is worthwhile, and the greater part of our modern creative productions do have a coherent plot, but to dismiss any work because it doesn't have a straight plot is blasphemous, some of the greatest ever works were simply thematic.
The film carries some optimism, but it's not essentially in the face of war, war is represented in this film as something natural (though brutal). This was a meditation on a phenomenon, there are no messages that could be said to be anti-war. It's far from being didactic or overly sentimental about war. War is depicted as a complex phenomenon, an extension of life, an extension of an argument, a representation of a contradiction, a representation of an ongoing struggle within nature, everything is in a constant state of war. However, the Jesus-like Private Witt, who could be viewed here as one of the main characters (though less obvious in the novel), transcends all of this, into a true Paradise of peace, belief, and brotherly love, but he doesn't lead or act like a dramatic protagonist(and there're other characters who had belief in brotherly love like Staros "Stein" and Keck. Symbolically all die or fade away prematurely). Witt can become a source of optimism if you look for it, but it's the type of optimism that has to do with acceptance and calmness, not only expectance and hope.
Though Witt is constantly searching for some truth or meaning, his belief in the Good remains unchallenged. That maybe what irritated or even dazzled Welsh, that in the midst of all this, Witt remains a believer, he'd sacrifice his life for those beliefs, actually he did, but it wasn't a sacrifice, it was more of an acceptance and submission, it was as if Witt was looking for death, as if it's a reward or a realization (in a spiritual individual sense, not at all nationalistic sense. Maybe Witt was in his most selfish when he died).
This isn't exactly a film made with the popular taste in mind. The globally sacred Consumer Ethic here is almost non-existent, it's not value for money, not intense entertainment (no twists or turns, no common stunts or tricks). This irritates the "pop" moviegoer, maybe because it's too self-conscious, too difficult and complex to become a consumer's item. In the end, you don't have to accept the premises offered in this film or come out with a favourable conclusion, it's just a movie! But at the least you have to respect its ambition, loyalty and truthfulness.