Benefit
Bluelighter
Film: The Thin Red Line (1998)
(this is going to be a long one)
Post-classical Hollywood enigma Terrence Malick returned to feature filmmaking after a 20 year hiatus with this gorgeously painted, lyrical meditation on war that explores the personal terror of combat while weaving plenty of overarching metaphysical strands into a narrative that poses existential questions left and right… but doesn’t answer them.
Terrence Malick is an extremely media shy director. In the 1970s, he directed a pair of critically acclaimed films – Badlands and Days of Heaven – which were part of the 1970s film renaissance. Days of Heaven won an Oscar for its cinematography. Malick insisted on filming during the “magic hour” – about 20 minutes immediately after sunset where he would shoot with the available light given off by the fading sun’s afterglow. This made for an extraordinarily beautiful film, but one that was excruciatingly slow in making. The editing process then took him 2 years as he meticulously cut and re-cut the film. After the commercial failure of Days of Heaven, Malick fled Hollywood and lived in relative obscurity in Paris for 20 years. He didn’t make a single feature film during that time, which added to his mystique.
The Thin Red Line, a project conceived over the course of many years, marked his return to Hollywood. This movie had already been made once – in 1964, in an attempt to ride the popularity of its source material, the James Jones novel of the same name. The novel uses many of the same characters drawn from an earlier Jones novel, From Here to Eternity. A truncated version of From Here to Eternity (sans homosexual overtones and with toned down criticisms of the military) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1953.
Malick scripted and directed The Thin Red Line himself. It features an ensemble cast of big-name and little-name stars: Sean Penn, George Clooney, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, John Travolta, John C. Riley, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack. The mystique of Terrence Malick was such that many actors made themselves available for this film, and many of them were willing to cut their salaries to make the film work. The studio forced Malick to cast certain stars in exchange for giving him significant creative control over the project.
The acting is the weakest element of the film, and it almost doesn’t recover from it. Jim Caviezel is the stand-out. He is Charlie Company’s mystic wanderer, serving as the focal point for the bulk of the movie’s existential pontifications. More on this later. Elias Koteas is decent as Captain Starros, his Greek heritage meant to reflect the film’s Homeric roots as a war epic. Nick Nolte hams it up to the extreme detriment of the film (going so far as to quote from Homer, yuk!), and Sean Penn’s presence in the movie (despite having the lion’s share of choice dialogue) recalls images of his awful turn in the De Palma disaster Casualties of War. John C. Riley has about 1 minute of memorable screen time, and the rest of the actors bop into the narrative for only a few minutes, making their presence nothing more than slightly extended cameos for the most part. Other than Caviezel, the rest of the acting really took away from the poetry of the film.
As you might imagine if you’ve ever seen a Terrence Malick film, the lyrical beauty of the visuals, editing, cinematography and soundtrack are remarkable. Malick’s trademark is shooting sweeping landscapes and other images of nature that overpower you with their raw beauty. In this film, he juxtaposes the majesty of nature with the meaningless barbarism of warfare. His violence is suggestive, cross-cutting between explosions and shots of palm trees swaying in the wind. Sometimes the effect is transcendent, and sometimes it makes you roll your eyes. All of this is synced up beautifully to a restrained, subtly moving Hans Zimmer score and the sound editing is rich with nature sounds – the soft brush of the soldiers in the tall grass pockmarked with the discharge of am M-1 carbine. His editing style is epic in scope and notoriously meticulous, tending to linger forever on shots. Again, sometimes the effect is incredibly powerful… and sometimes it smacks of over indulgence. Regardless of those technical and creative decisions, the color and shot compositions are simply breathtaking.
The visual style complements the overarching themes of the film well: the personal isolation and terror wrought by warfare, and the bigger metaphysical questions it poses about man’s place in the world and the value and meaning of life. Malick employs the conceptual prism of war with great care, using it to probe difficult and unanswerable questions. Specifically, how does the breadth of human existence measure up in a world perverted by such madness as warfare? The film, rightfully, gives no answer. But by contrasting the experiences and perspectives of different soldiers, it offers a number of textured insights into the question, leaving the viewer to reconcile the opposing views on their own.
Malick’s linking of the personal with the universal is best expressed in Jim Caviezel’s powerfully nuanced performance as Private Witt, the lonesome wanderer constantly asking questions that push the film’s existential agenda. Witt doesn’t say much, but the performance is so pitch perfect that long winded dialogue could have only hurt it. Caviezel’s character represents the point at which man’s fascination with his own mortality transcends the limits of human comprehension – his death at the film’s conclusion is seen as a sort of enlightened catharsis where everything is supposed to come together and make sense for a brief moment in time. It is the point in the movie when the individual and the universal finally link up, after battling each other meaninglessly up to that point.
This dichotomy is lifted straight from Steinbeck and others, while John Ford’s love of naturalistic landscape shooting bleeds through heavily to my eye. There is so much going on in this film.
This was the best war film of 1998 – unfortunately the timing was horrible. Saving Private Ryan is infinitely more digestible and the mesmeric and technically brilliant battle sequences made it much more palatable to mainstream audiences. Over the years, The Thin Red Line has faded into relative obscurity, eclipsed by the overwhelming success of Spielberg’s war epic. But Saving Private Ryan practically chokes you with its sentimental patriotism and rather shallow commentary on war. Not that it isn’t a great film, but it’s like comparing Michael Crichton to Camus.
The Thin Red Line is very dense, and it poses questions which cannot be answered. Many people consider this film an over indulgent piece of crap, and the general public has NEVER had a taste for Terrence Malick. But even if the philosophy is too heavy handed for you (personally I dislike philosophy as an academic discipline), this film is a visual and auditory bonanza. If you don't have ADD and can sit still for 3 hours, the imagery alone is worth it.
(this is going to be a long one)
Post-classical Hollywood enigma Terrence Malick returned to feature filmmaking after a 20 year hiatus with this gorgeously painted, lyrical meditation on war that explores the personal terror of combat while weaving plenty of overarching metaphysical strands into a narrative that poses existential questions left and right… but doesn’t answer them.
Terrence Malick is an extremely media shy director. In the 1970s, he directed a pair of critically acclaimed films – Badlands and Days of Heaven – which were part of the 1970s film renaissance. Days of Heaven won an Oscar for its cinematography. Malick insisted on filming during the “magic hour” – about 20 minutes immediately after sunset where he would shoot with the available light given off by the fading sun’s afterglow. This made for an extraordinarily beautiful film, but one that was excruciatingly slow in making. The editing process then took him 2 years as he meticulously cut and re-cut the film. After the commercial failure of Days of Heaven, Malick fled Hollywood and lived in relative obscurity in Paris for 20 years. He didn’t make a single feature film during that time, which added to his mystique.
The Thin Red Line, a project conceived over the course of many years, marked his return to Hollywood. This movie had already been made once – in 1964, in an attempt to ride the popularity of its source material, the James Jones novel of the same name. The novel uses many of the same characters drawn from an earlier Jones novel, From Here to Eternity. A truncated version of From Here to Eternity (sans homosexual overtones and with toned down criticisms of the military) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1953.
Malick scripted and directed The Thin Red Line himself. It features an ensemble cast of big-name and little-name stars: Sean Penn, George Clooney, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, John Travolta, John C. Riley, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack. The mystique of Terrence Malick was such that many actors made themselves available for this film, and many of them were willing to cut their salaries to make the film work. The studio forced Malick to cast certain stars in exchange for giving him significant creative control over the project.
The acting is the weakest element of the film, and it almost doesn’t recover from it. Jim Caviezel is the stand-out. He is Charlie Company’s mystic wanderer, serving as the focal point for the bulk of the movie’s existential pontifications. More on this later. Elias Koteas is decent as Captain Starros, his Greek heritage meant to reflect the film’s Homeric roots as a war epic. Nick Nolte hams it up to the extreme detriment of the film (going so far as to quote from Homer, yuk!), and Sean Penn’s presence in the movie (despite having the lion’s share of choice dialogue) recalls images of his awful turn in the De Palma disaster Casualties of War. John C. Riley has about 1 minute of memorable screen time, and the rest of the actors bop into the narrative for only a few minutes, making their presence nothing more than slightly extended cameos for the most part. Other than Caviezel, the rest of the acting really took away from the poetry of the film.
As you might imagine if you’ve ever seen a Terrence Malick film, the lyrical beauty of the visuals, editing, cinematography and soundtrack are remarkable. Malick’s trademark is shooting sweeping landscapes and other images of nature that overpower you with their raw beauty. In this film, he juxtaposes the majesty of nature with the meaningless barbarism of warfare. His violence is suggestive, cross-cutting between explosions and shots of palm trees swaying in the wind. Sometimes the effect is transcendent, and sometimes it makes you roll your eyes. All of this is synced up beautifully to a restrained, subtly moving Hans Zimmer score and the sound editing is rich with nature sounds – the soft brush of the soldiers in the tall grass pockmarked with the discharge of am M-1 carbine. His editing style is epic in scope and notoriously meticulous, tending to linger forever on shots. Again, sometimes the effect is incredibly powerful… and sometimes it smacks of over indulgence. Regardless of those technical and creative decisions, the color and shot compositions are simply breathtaking.
The visual style complements the overarching themes of the film well: the personal isolation and terror wrought by warfare, and the bigger metaphysical questions it poses about man’s place in the world and the value and meaning of life. Malick employs the conceptual prism of war with great care, using it to probe difficult and unanswerable questions. Specifically, how does the breadth of human existence measure up in a world perverted by such madness as warfare? The film, rightfully, gives no answer. But by contrasting the experiences and perspectives of different soldiers, it offers a number of textured insights into the question, leaving the viewer to reconcile the opposing views on their own.
Malick’s linking of the personal with the universal is best expressed in Jim Caviezel’s powerfully nuanced performance as Private Witt, the lonesome wanderer constantly asking questions that push the film’s existential agenda. Witt doesn’t say much, but the performance is so pitch perfect that long winded dialogue could have only hurt it. Caviezel’s character represents the point at which man’s fascination with his own mortality transcends the limits of human comprehension – his death at the film’s conclusion is seen as a sort of enlightened catharsis where everything is supposed to come together and make sense for a brief moment in time. It is the point in the movie when the individual and the universal finally link up, after battling each other meaninglessly up to that point.
This dichotomy is lifted straight from Steinbeck and others, while John Ford’s love of naturalistic landscape shooting bleeds through heavily to my eye. There is so much going on in this film.
This was the best war film of 1998 – unfortunately the timing was horrible. Saving Private Ryan is infinitely more digestible and the mesmeric and technically brilliant battle sequences made it much more palatable to mainstream audiences. Over the years, The Thin Red Line has faded into relative obscurity, eclipsed by the overwhelming success of Spielberg’s war epic. But Saving Private Ryan practically chokes you with its sentimental patriotism and rather shallow commentary on war. Not that it isn’t a great film, but it’s like comparing Michael Crichton to Camus.
The Thin Red Line is very dense, and it poses questions which cannot be answered. Many people consider this film an over indulgent piece of crap, and the general public has NEVER had a taste for Terrence Malick. But even if the philosophy is too heavy handed for you (personally I dislike philosophy as an academic discipline), this film is a visual and auditory bonanza. If you don't have ADD and can sit still for 3 hours, the imagery alone is worth it.
