I once saw an
interview in which Christopher Plummer said that what Terrence Malick needs is
a writer. He was referring to his experience shooting The New World, which saw his role considerably reduced. The same
happened to a much greater extent with Malick’s war movie The Thin Red Line (1998), which saw the screen time of many movie
stars reduced to mere minutes amid a 170-minute running time. However you have
to hand it to the guy: he knows how to make anything look beautiful, including the
carnage of war.
Malick’s movie
came out the same year as Saving Private
Ryan, so I think that year I had my fill of ultra violent war films and was
no too interested in seeing it. Sixteen years later I finally caught up to it
on Netflix, but in hindsight the big screen might have been a better option since
this is a very visual story. The plot is pretty loose, following one American
soldier and sometimes some of his brothers in arms as they make their way
through World War II in the Pacific theatre of war, but throughout the
cinematography by John Toll keeps reminding viewers the action is set in a
beautiful place and oftentimes on a beautiful day. Even when Woody Harrelson
accidentally blows off his rear end with a grenade you notice the lush
vegetation around the soldiers and the blue sky above.
Supposedly the
movie was to focus on Adrien Brody’s Cpl. Geoffrey Fife, but instead after
months of editing the final cut puts the emphasis on Jim Caviezel’s Private Witt,
who is first seen living with the natives in the South Pacific after having
abandoned the army. To call him the protagonist would still be generous since
after he is found and imprisoned the story then focuses on the invasion of a
key Japanese location in Guadalcanal and Witt only rejoins the action later
during the battle.
There is an
interesting conflict between Lt. Gordon Tall (Nick Nolte), who seems like the
kind of army man that sees the American flag every night in his sleep, and
Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), who is hesitant to attack a Japanese controlled
hill. It is easy for Tall to bark orders about taking that hill no matter how
many lives might be lost, but Staros is the one on the front line seeing his fellow
soldiers get killed as they attempt to defeat the Japanese soldiers who are
shooting at them from an elevated position inside bunkers. Understandably,
Stavros feels this battle might need a new strategy.
That main battle
is about all you get in terms of plot. Throughout the rest of The Thin Red Line you get brief glimpses
of a wide cast that includes John Cusack, Sean Penn, John C. Reilly, Jared
Leto, Thomas Jane, Tim Blake Nelsom John Travolta, and even George Clooney for
a brief moment. Even Mickey Rourke had some scenes, but they ended up being cut
out of a first five-hour first cut. You get some brief scenes about life at
home for some of these characters, but also many random scenes of the
landscape, vegetation, and natives. The result is quite poetic amid the very
graphic violence depicted on screen, but one wonders what the main plot is
supposed to be.
I recently saw a
stand-up special by Patton Oswalt in which he talks about how there are many
male directors who will shoot hours and hours of footage and declare it a
masterpiece. Then a woman calmly walks into the editing room to try to sort out
the mess into a coherent movie. That might be a generalization, but it seems to
have been the case with The Thin Red Line
since editor Leslie Jones spent seven months editing the massive amount of
footage. Eventually Billy Weber and Malick himself also participated in the
editing process, resulting in the theatrical cut and the diminished screen time
of many actors.
The end result is
a movie that has a vague plot about the effect war has on soldiers and also
about the beauty in the world when people are not busy trying to shoot each
other. Every shot that does end up on screen is gorgeous, but you do wish there
was a more straightforward narrative in order to remain engaged during the
pauses in combat.
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