Consequently, they are honest when they are deceptive and sympathetic when they are nasty. It progresses from beginning to end and never strays from its mission. The Thin Red Line is the antithesis of Spielberg's movie. It doesn't have a destination. Like the spirit that unifies its soldiers, Malick's filmmaking meanders here and there, picking up what it can, moving on to something else.
War thereby becomes a dream-state.
Malick sacrifices clarity, narrative flow, and maybe even commercial acceptance in the name of sustaining the film's poetic heritage. Even the most realistic scenes in The Thin Red Line feel like they're couched in a reverie. Malick films physical confrontations as sudden bursts of consciousness, as something temporary and ethereal. They don't persist in the soldiers' minds or in our minds. They evaporate from our subconscious.