The Thin Red Line Review
by Curtis Edmonds (blueduck AT hsbr DOT org)February 25th, 1999
by Curtis Edmonds -- [email protected]
The Thin Red Line is a spectacular movie, intelligently written and directed by supergenius Terrence Malick, and don't let anyone tell you different. Like no other film, it shows the passionate futility of war, the dark side of mankind, and the stark, underappreciated beauty of elephant grass. Brilliantly acted, with haunting, eloquent voiceovers supplementing the gritty, realistic pace, The Thin Red Line is a courageous movie which will be studied by generations of film students. Only an ingrate, a person with no appreciation for truly great cinema, could ever say bad things about this instant classic. If a critic comes along who doesn't like this movie, who doesn't appreciate its preeminent place in film history, he should be forced to leave the country and eat taro root in Guadalcanal until he regains his senses.
Or so the fans of this movie say. Me, I'm packing my bags and wondering if Tabasco makes taro root taste any better. The Thin Red Line is overserious, overlong, and over my head. It is ostensibly the story of a WWII infantry company fighting for control of Guadalcanal, but don't be fooled into thinking that this is Saving Private Ryan in the Pacific Theater. The Thin Red Line is overlaid with symbolism and philosophy to the point that it makes Platoon look like The Green Berets. In this movie, Higher Truths fly past faster than bullets.
This is not to say that I did not take any Higher Truths away from The Thin Red Line. I did. Out of all the high-flown sentiment, all the stunning visual jungle imagery, all the scenes of heroism, courage, and sudden violent death, I left The Thin Red Line with one truth: Don't take small children to movies that have explosions in them.
Ha-ha! And I could go on, poking cruel and heartless fun at Terrence Malick and The Thin Red Line for the next three hours (or until some nice person from the Miami Herald taps me on the shoulder and mentions that Dave Barry is sick this week, and can I have a column ready by 5 this afternoon?). But it would be incredibly rude and mean-spirited of me to do so. (Although, come to think of it, that hasn't stopped me so far.) The Thin Red Line is a great movie whether I like it or not. (So is Saving Private Ryan, for that matter.) It is a matter of taste, that's all, and if my taste isn't broad enough to encompass this boring, pretentious, pointless clunker of a movie, so be it.
Before going to see The Thin Red Line, you need to understand that it is actually three one-hour movies all spliced together. If you like at least any two of them, you're going to enjoy the movie. If you only like one of them, however, you're in for a long stretch over some rough road.
The first movie is the one I liked best, and the one I was expecting. It is the War Epic, complete with all-star cast and on-location filming. I love war epics. I love all the great epic WWII movies like The Longest Day and The Great Escape and Bridge on the River Kwai and all of the others. And this third of the movie is spectacular. It has Woody Harrelson leading his team in a desperate assault on a Japanese-held hill, only to make a tragic error. It has Nick Nolte in the John Wayne part, pushing the company up that hill by force of pure will -- along with Elias Koteas as the decent infantry captain who opposes him, not wanting to throw away the lives of his troops. And it has a lot of good, young actors playing in minor roles, building their resumes.
There are two great scenes in The Thin Red Line that help put all of these movies to shame. There's a scene where an infantry squad (led by John Cusack, of all people) has to take out a Japanese machine gun battery on top of a hill. The company has inched painfully up this gorgeous hill covered in leafy elephant grass for a good chunk of the movie, but has suffered a lot of casualties from the unseen machine gun nests ahead. The scene where Cusack's team charges up the hill and takes the nest is a great, courageous, almost wordless piece of filmmaking. You understand exactly what's going on and where the armies are situated and the sheer guts it would take for anyone to trot over to a machine gun emplacement and lob in a grenade. There's another great scene at the two hour mark where the company overruns a Japanese barracks and hospital. It is a scene of terror and desperation, almost as good as Spielberg's D-Day landing, and much more fast-paced. Malick does an outstanding job in conveying the chaos and fear that both sides must have experienced... but it's the last good scene in the movie, which still has an hour to run.
The second movie is, of all things, a nature documentary. There are scenes -- dozens of them -- that look for all the world like they were snipped from a National Geographic special on Guadalcanal. If you have cable, and want to get an idea about what The Thin Red Line is all about, click back and forth between The History Channel and The Discovery Channel and you'll have some idea. The movie's opening scene is an alligator sliding, slowly, into a filthy pond. And it looks great, from a purely visual perspective, but a whole hour of such images gets to be a bit oppressive. And it really doesn't help matters that Malick is so good at his craft. There's a shot of some bats at one point, and I will concede that it may be the best, most poetic, most lovingly crafted film rendition of bats ever made. But -- ingrate that I am -- if I want to see bats, I can find better ways to manage it than paying to see The Thin Red Line again.
The third movie stitches the other two together. It is, at least partly, a debate about philosophy -- how the beauty of Rousseau's "state of nature" is destroyed and tarnished by a nasty and brutish Hobbsean war. Whatever. It is told largely by director Malick in a series of moody, pointless voiceovers. It is as though Malick is one of the angels in long black leather coats from City of Angels, drifting around Guadalcanal the way that Nicolas Cage drifted around Los Angeles, hearing the thoughts of the dying and of brave men, hearing the ineffable music in the sunset. What was magical in City of Angels is, well, wretched in A Thin Red Line. (Or vice versa. Like I said, it's a matter of taste.) The voiceovers are overlong, incomprehensible ramblings about life, death, nature, eternity, and some blonde chick back home. This all may be deeply profound, inspired thinking, but I thought it was boring as hell.
A Thin Red Line is almost exactly like the Olympics, in one way. You have a great, exciting contest between men and teams of men, with national honor at stake. But every so often, when you're not paying attention, the coverage switches to gymnastics or figure skating or women's volleyball or some such other event. It's not so much that the other events are bad or evil or something worse than the complete waste of time that they are. It's that every minute they're on the screen is another minute we're not watching basketball or hockey or the decathlon. And in The Thin Red Line, every minute we spend listening to the deep inner thoughts of howler monkeys or what have you is a minute that can't be used to show the Battle of Guadalcanal, which is what we came to see.
In grading The Thin Red Line, I give the battle scenes an A, and the rest of the movie an F. That averages out to a C in my book, although I'm confident that my mean-spirited rant will not detract from the greatness of this movie. If anyone needs me, I'll be watching a hockey game. And eating taro root.
Rating: C
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Curtis Edmonds
MovieNation: Movie Reviews in Black and White
http://members.xoom.com/movienation
[email protected]
"No children have ever meddled with the Republican Party
and lived to tell about it." -- Sideshow Bob
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