The Thin Red Line Review
by James Brundage (brundage AT alltel DOT net)January 20th, 1999
The Thin Red Line
Written and Directed by Terrence Malick (Badlands)
Based upon the novel by James Jones ("From Here to Eternity")
Starring Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Ben Chaplin, John Cusask, Woody Harrelson, Elais Koteas, Jared Leto, Dash Mihok, Tim Blake Nelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, Larry Romano, John Savage, Arie Verveen, David Harrod, Thomas Jane, Miranda Otto, Jim Caviezel
Featuring, in cameos, John Travolta and George Clooney.
I will address the first question first. Everyone ahs asked, how does The Thin Red Line compare with the other epic war film of 1998, Saving Private Ryan. I address it by saying this: they are not to be compared. They are too different to even be considered competitors. Under my advisement, I would recommend that you watch Saving Private Ryan and then The Thin Red Line. One will sack you with a visceral image of war, and the other will give you a means to comprehend the massive onslaught of emotion the first did without allowing you to forget.
The Thin Red Line follows C-for-"Charlie" company during the battle of Guadacanal. The reason the cast is as epic as the 6-hour-director's-cut (the final movie is 3 hours) is that not one character is focused on much more than any others. All of them are given fairly equal screen time, with a difference of perhaps ten or twenty minutes for a couple of people.
There are five people that are followed more than any other, and those would be Capt. James "Bugger" Staros (Elias Koteas), First Sgt. Edward Welsh (Sean Penn), Lt. Col. Gordon Tall (Nick Nolte), Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) and Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel). These five, consequently, are the primary narrators of the story. Not a single scene exists where one of them is not present.
To truly describe the complexity of The Thin Red Line, I would need an academic paper. This review, I will warn you now, will be insufficient. The same is true of my review of Saving Private Ryan.
One thing to be honestly said about The Thin Red Line is that it is a film of images. From the horror of a dying bird shot by a stray bullet to the beauty of a fern closing at a soldier's touch, The Thin Red Line rivals The Sweet Hereafter in precious visual complexity. As I called it shortly after, The Thin Red Line is a poetry of images.
Another thing that you can honestly say is that The Thin Red Line is uniquely contemplative. In the pauses that come in the battle, both you and the characters take time to reflect upon what you just saw. You do not, however, prepare yourself for what happens next.
The Thin Red Line may nab a couple of nominations that Saving Private Ryan doesn't. One is for Best Supporting Actor, which may very well go to Nick Nolte for playing the career-motivated Lt. Col. Gordon Tall who, until he has seen the death his armies inflict and receive firsthand, does not even truly realize that men are dying. Another possible nomination, although someone with so few speaking lines will most likely not get it would be for Best Supporting Actress, Miranda Otto.
Miranda Otto plays Marty Bell, the woman you see on the swing in the commercials. Wife of one of the two truly important characters, Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) and Private Witt (Jim Caviezel), Miranda Otto gives a heart-stopping performance as the wife of a soldier at war.
Private Bell gives a much better performance as the husband at war, down in the grit and fighting it. A former officer in the corps of engineers, he is a demonstration of how the military command itself may well be the only villain in this film. He quit the corps of engineers to be with his wife, only to be promised by the military that he would be drafted and he would become an infantryman. Lost in the dark, murders world of Guadacanal that Terrance Malick so aptly shows, Private Bell is forced to moor himself to a wife he cannot see in order to retain his sanity, to not cross the thin red line.
The thin red line, as told according to James Jones, is the line between man and beast. It is the point where you cease to recognize a difference between killing a human and killing an animal, and thus kill with the same sociopathic lack of concern.
Private Bell and Private Witt are the only people that do not cross the thin red line. Everyone else, in the horror of battle, crosses at some time or another.
The scene at which everyone but Bell and Witt cross is a perfectly filmed attack on a Japanese hilltop encampment. Lasting about the half the duration as the recreation of D-Day in Saving Private Ryan, I would venture that this scene is more effective.
This scene is set to music composed by Hanz Zimmer, music sure to score him a nomination and, hopefully, the win for Best Original Score. This music, increasing steadily in both volume and tempo, sets the pace for both that attack itself and the violence towards the victims. Using that same mastery of images that Malick displays through the entirety of the film, people are placed as to show the sorrow of the moment much more than Saving Private Ryan ever accomplished.
This scene greets you with the sight of a meditating soldier, who prays as the world literally goes to hell around him. It also shows a hospital's patients being killed in mass of fury, in retaliation to the deaths during the initial offensive. The most striking item, however, is the image of a private removing the teeth of dead Japanese, and contemplating removing the teeth of a living one, for the purpose of their gold. This, of course, was used in Schindler's List to denote the inhuman nature of Nazis, and is equally effective here.
Private Witt is the final statement in both the film and the review. The only person to retain all sanity through the film, Witt is a repeated AWOL who returns to the company shortly before the battle. A deeply religious man, Witt is placed to counter Sean Penn, an atheist, but develops his own character. He has lived among the natives but, in the film's most powerful statement, is not allowed to return when the battle is over. He is Army. He is American. He is, in their eyes, death.
The film suffers one major pitfall that, until I wrote this review, I thought was much more serious than it actually was. After the hilltop is taken there is a half-hour pause in the film. Each line implies a fadeout, and it is still an hour until it is given. I realize now that this is the point which allowed me, and should allow you, to analyze the intense two hours you have just witnessed.
Oh, yes. You haven't witnessed it yet.
Please do.
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