Cast: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin, Nick Nolte, Adrien Brody, Jared Leto, George Clooney, Elias Koteas, John Cusack, John Travolta, Woody
Harrelson

Director: Terrence Malick

Screenplay: Terrence Malick

Running time: 2 hr 50 mins

Genre: War/Drama



CRITIQUE:


Terrence Malick’s slow-burning, almost structureless war film proves to be a hard sell to mainstream audience. Given that it flirts around nearly a three-hour running-time, told in various character perspectives, virtually roots for no central hero and provides no resolved conclusions, it takes resilience to sit through The Thin Red Line. But then Malick is no mainstream director. To many others, it might appear that he’s frittering away with monologues about the moralities of war rather than a slam-bang, grit-blowing action sequences that’s worthy of a Saving Private Ryan opener. His characters with mudded faces and looking very grim launch into epiphanies, poetic voice-overs, ruminating about their lives, fate, disasters and asking big questions like “Where does this evil come from?” whilst these American GI soldiers assault a hut-village of armed Japanese men. It also boasts an impressive star ensemble only Robert Altman can convene together, top-billing actors on top of their games, but mostly either utilised in cameo roles or die right away in the battlefront. Malick must be out of his mind.


Except that he is not, in so many ways. The Thin Red Line is, above all, a war film that exceptionally achieves an art form. Whilst its narrative construction is almost formless (this is more a narrative account of the American siege in the Pacific than a tightly-wrapped tale, free from external insights of the going-ons from the other side of the globe circa WWII), it manages a linear flow with intermittent interruptions of characters getting lost in the psychological and emotional wilderness. Suffice to say, this is a film that dismounts that braves-soldiers-on-the-front gaffe that portrays frightened men, terribly afraid at the panorama of death. One soldier runs away after having witnessed the death of 18 of his men at one go. Sean Penn’s Sgt. Welsh hardens himself to a kind of emotional freezing, as to not feel pain and loss. Jim Caviezel’s meditative Private Witt empathises with the killings of his supposed enemies. Ben Chaplin’s Private Bell holds on to the memories of his wife, his only driving impetus at the futility of war. Elias Kotas’ noble Capt. Staros flouts military commands from his commander Nick Nolte’s brutish Colonel Tall out of fear of losing his men, his surrogate sons. All these characters’ inner torment collectively gathers together and pins down an emotional fulcrum that is deeply profound.


And its striking poetry is visualised in a sumptuous, eye-popping cinematography. Capturing the lush tropical forests, the beach hut-village, the rolling hills and ridges – the camera suddenly takes luminous life, sweeping and swooping over the hillsides, Steadycams smoothly gliding through grasslands in perfect sun-dappled, or rain-washed, landscapes. That standout action sequence of the attack of the hills is a visual, technical accomplishment, achieving a supreme nuance in editing and cadence. It’s a sequence, for any self-confessed cinephile, that is worth the prise admission alone.


VERDICT:

This may be one of the greatest modern war films ever made, in stark comparison to Coppola’s majestic Apocalypse Now. Malick’s vision of chaos is ironically aching with sublime beauty, lyricism and a pulsating sense of loss. The Thin Red Line breaks any hard fast rules of filmmaking, snubbing the pieties of plot and achieving that rare form of cinematic meditation, art and poetic refinement.



RATING: A+