The Thin Red Line

How to describe my feelings towards a movie like "A Thin Red Line", or my feelings towards a filmmaker like Terrence Malick. Needless to say, "A Thin Red Line" is a special kind of film and a film that could only exist in the mind of its creator.

I've watched the film four times now, and each time I feel like I'm getting a grasp about what it really means to me personally. It's the work of a philosophical mind, it seems to be a war film trying to ask questions not only about the waist of war, (as one character says "it's all about property")it seems to beg the question about humans in relation to nature and finding transcendence from this world unto the next. Unlike most war films, which deal with the grimy realism and horror of being in the trenches, this film reaches more for meaning of it all and if meaning could ever be reached.

"The Thin Red Line" works on a grande scale and employs many characters to convey its story. It's inspired by the novel of the same name written by James Jones 1962 novel about the campaign to overtake the Guadalcanal during world war 2. I have never read the book so I'm not sure how faithful Malick is to it, but that is neither here nor there, film is its own artform, and this is more Malick's voice than Jones.

The first person we meet and get to know is Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) a soldier who we learn has gone AWOL, he has taken a liking to the native people and has run off to join them. He is found by his platoon and saved from his first Sergeant Walsh (Sean Penn). Walsh is a hard cynical person but he seems to have a soft spot for Witt, or perhaps he is just fascinated by him. Witt seems to have inherited a spiritual philosophy on the whole war, he exclaims it by finding a spark or a light in the darkness. Walsh represents the other end of the spectrum, he doesn't believe such things exist in war and could not be achieved. Walsh and Witt to me resemble the argument Malick intends to make with this film.

There are other primary characters as well, there is a colonel (Nick Nolte) who has seen himself passed over time and time again for promotion and is determined to take Guadalcanal at all costs. There is the sensitive captain (Elias Koteas) who's in charge of his men, but doesn't want to sacrifice them in order to take the hill. There are other soldiers in the outfit, many whom we see throughout the film, some of them have scenes that are fleeting, some are played by unknowns, others are played by some well-known stars, yet Malick makes them less as characters, but more of an organic whole.

One of the primary questions Malick asks in the film is if there is in fact a connection between people, he shows it through the experiences of the soldiers many of which speak in voice over that sounds poetic. Many of the soldiers sound the same like they all come from the same place, sometimes it's as if what they are saying relates to everyone in the film, like they are speaking for the whole world.

When I first saw the film, I was confused by it, I wasn't used to its style, it was the first Malick film I saw, and I thought it to be the work of a poet rather than a filmmaker, I didn't get the intense close-ups of the long strains of grass, or the light shining through a leaf, but I understand it better. This isn't a conventional war film, if anything it tells more about our place in the universe, it depicts war as hell, but it also depicts that perhaps we can rise above it. In fact perhaps it could be thought of as the most optimistic anit-war film ever made. Most war films leave you with a message that war can lead to nothing good, but Malick's film is about finding that transcendence, perhaps it's possible, perhaps it's not, it comes down to if you're more a Walsh or a Witt, whether you believe that the Earth is nothing but a rock that we live on, or if there is that little spark we must cling to to reach a state of nirvana.

"The Thin Red Line" was only the third film Malick made, and it was twenty years since his last film "Days of Heaven" which is one of the greatest photographed films of all time. Malick doesn't seem to be concerned with conventional story telling, he seems to find his movie in the editing room where he can fit his images together into a poetic whole. He is a unique voice in the world of cinema, his films need a chance to breath, to be sucked it, he is thoughtful in his approach, he begs to asks questions, perhaps ones that can's be answered in this world, but it makes things worth while when they are at least asked.