Whereas films like Steven Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan were good in its creation, and essentially spoon-feed their audiences, The Thin Red Line differentiates the average narrative. From the first shot—an alligator, sweeping out of the water, a symbol of the death—it is clear that Malick knows how to bend poetry to his canon, an act of auteurist self-reflexivity in keeping with the director's belief in the powerful influence of history on the here and now—and history is by far Malick's favorite subject. In his recent unqualified masterwork The New World, he brought one the story of Jamestown Virginia, with Pocahontas and Smith through, yet again, visceral poetry. Whereas that sociologically and emotionally encased itself in a swirl of hallucinatory images, both unforgettable yet light in creation, The Thin Red Line forms a miasma around the viewer, also unforgettable yet compulsively watchable. Although Malick's style is the same, the director now eschews an unprecedented aesthetic development, resulting in the pinnacle of his career.
As Malick's camera scrolls around the frame, soldiers are met: the ranking officer in the fray is Lt. Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), an aspiring Patton who's finally found his war. Under him are Captains Staros (Elias Koteas) and Gaff (John Cusack), Sgts. Keck (Woody Harrelson) and Welsh (Sean Penn). Along side them, arguably the main protagonist—the only one Malick attaches a subplot to—is Witt (James Caviezel), a young, yet austere and cynical person, both shy yet silently intelligent. In less outré hands, characters would be shamelessly studied and carved to pieces, yet Malick, in another one of his stratagems, fashions them as two-dimensional archetypes; excluding Witt, characters are not as well known as they could be. As the soldiers prepare for battle, fear eats their faces, a stark reminder that among soldiers, there is no heaven, no hell, no salvation; only war, and the existential fear of death crossed with the undeniable will to survive.
The first quarter of the film is spent spiritually analyzing fear, and it is when the Japanese launch their attack that Malick's film awakens from its miasmatically dreamy core. It's still a mesmerizing dream of a film, yet through war and suffering, Malick also finds beauty. As bloody as it is, soldiers are shot, mortally wounded and even stabbed by what the Japanese would call Banzai Charges (charges in which they would lunge with and brutally attack the enemy with their bayonets). Yet there is a difference in between what André Bazin of Cahiers du Cinema used to call "The Cinema of Cruelty". The Thin Red Line, albeit causing suffering among viewers, has an undeniable vérité outlook.
As the film progresses, a company of seven people is sent to capture a hilltop. Among these men is Witt, whom near the top, decides that alone he will go scouting. Here, Malick, like a bit before this moment, analyzes Witt; from a memory, as vivid as real life, one now sees his wife, whom, even in the darkest of times, gives him aspiration and light to continue. Yet, later in the film, Malick destroys this sentiment with news of her leaving Witt, yet another example of the mortal results of existentialisms of war. Although they are able to seize the bunker, many have been already wounded.Many critics and audiences have a hard time with Malick's films: like Terrence Davies, he's a poet working in a medium whose audience is unused to unconventional expressions of thought and emotion. Much like his own realistic and masterfully ravishing mise-en-scène, Malick has essentially created his own genre, one of the first, besides David Lynch and Luis Buñuel, to ever do this. In this film, as well as in The New World, Malick's narrative also eschews inner monologue from the characters. His fluent screenwriting skills are, indeed, thoroughly shown through this. They, again, reveal nothing of themselves, rather revealing simple thoughts. "Who Creates this evil?" asks Witt in his own one near the end. More than anything the film is two things: a silently riveting comment against war itself, and a prime example of the auteur's atmospheric cinema, in which attention to tenor, tempo, and etherealness are placed above all other concerns. If anything, it is this aesthetic that makes Malick's films so special; it is a gift of a true, rare auteur.
Performances in The Thin Red Line are magnificent as well. As shown in Malick's still growing oeuvre, the casting is always perfect. Nick Nolte, giving yet another ferocious performance in his own personal banner year (later that year, he also starred in Affliction) joins Sean Penn, Elias Koteas and Woody Harrelson (whose death scene here is among the film's most accessible, wrenching moments) as stars who manage to emerge with strong personalities intact. In its own poetic world, The Thin Red Line is just about flawless, its editing, as well as one of the best cinematographies ever to be made in Hollywood, simply masterfully exposed.
The exquisiteness of The Thin Red Line and how it reveals itself to its audience is flabbergasting—like a flower encased in time, only to be eroded by the unmistakable and relentless path of nature. It's this purity of presentation and spirit that gives the film its universal attraction. The New World, the final shot was of a tree, unforgettably swinging, a sign of Pocahontas's spiritual and tribal end. In The Thin Red Line, it is of a weed plant, stuck in the sand, resembling something the soldiers could never do: escape and be free. With the gray clouds swinging overhead and the ocean's waves approaching the shore, one finally realizes that Malick has created one of the greatest works of his time, an appropriate sentiment for a film whose meaning—both in cinematic skill and poetry—is to likely never be forgotten.
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