The Thin Red Line (1998, R)

Directed by: Terrence Malick

Grade: C+

The Thin Red Line is an enigma within itself: the characters are so complex, the narrative is interwoven with so many little subplots and evocations, and the end of the film, when it does come, concludes the piece with no, definitive repercussion.  So then I ask, what is the meaning of this film?  For a rapid response, I might suggest that the serene, opulent jungle of Guadalcanal was being unethically torn to shreds by war, and that the illustrious director Terrence Malick was going to great lengths to emphasize this throughout his film.  The truth, however, is that the Thin Red Line, for all its visual beauty and artistic values, and  is an incomplete motion picture, and as a result, everything, from the hard-to-understand characters, to the philosophical questions at hand, to the entire theme of the film, are all left with ambiguity. 

I’ll need to be candid; this is the first Malick film I have seen, and already, I do have a great deal of respect for the man.  Malick takes each of his film projects carefully, and he unquestionably refuses to treat filmmaking as anything less of an art.  Visually, as well as artistically, the Thin Red Line is absolutely exquisite, and it is from that perspective that Malick’s talent is displayed in full.  Malick shot over a million feet of film footage for the Thin Red Line, shooting from various locations in the United States, Australia and even on Guadalcanal itself.  The cinematography at hand here is of such unique, special importance, perhaps even to ‘special’ for an Oscar, and it’s the visual impact that make us wonder about whether or not the Thin Red Line is a war film at all.

While the mainstay of the Thin Red Line follows a company of American soldiers during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, the story is piece marked by individual character revisions, such as when we watch the perplexing Private Witt learn to honorably serve alongside his buddies in the Company after previously abandoning them to go find harmony while on AWOL with Pacific Islanders; the passionate Captain Staros who, despite deeply caring for his men, soon learns that sacrifices must be made in battle; the dedicated Private Bell who wishes only to return to his wife; the secluded Sergeant Welsh who only feels lonely “around people” and yet exhibits great gallantry in the thick of mortal combat to save the lives of the dying men around him; and the iron willed, harsh Colonel Tall who is willing to go to any expense of human life to attain victory.  Even if we don’t fully connect with any of these characters in any particular way (I’ll expand on that in a little while), they are what carry the lifeblood of the entire film.

The first half of the film, which is reasonably commendable, devotes itself to the Battle of Hill 210 in Guadalcanal.  The battle scenes are disparate of other war films in that they manage to make clear the revulsions of battle in an entirely new (and perhaps uncompromising) way.  A little over a half hour into the movie, following necessary character establishment scenes at a native village and aboard a ship, the Company lands on Guadalcanal and treks across beautiful country, coming across two dismembered American soldiers with their entrails sprawled before them and their limbs mangled and bloodstained.  This is only the first glimpse into the harrowing combat that is sure to come: at the Battle of Hill 210, Welsh braves enemy fire to deliver morphine to a dying, bleeding soldier; an overwrought, grief stricken Sergeant reports back to the Company about how the rest of his squad has been killed; and seven men are sent alone in the face of machine gun fire to secure a bunker.  Seeing the terror held in their eyes as bullets whiz above their heads and Japanese banzai attackers charge them with bayoneted rifles from the higher ground, makes us realize that no one can truly understand what it is like to be in combat without actually being in it ourselves.  Undeniably though, the film’s most prevailing moment comes in the mopping up operation when the surviving members of the Company overwhelm a Japanese position in a village, as the vultures fly overhead in the sky, the defeated Japanese either hug the dirt begging for mercy or kill themselves, and the American soldiers realize that the victory they have attained came far less swiftly then they possibly could have imagined.

Yet, even as the Thin Red Line demonstrates instances of sheer power and forte, it just as soon begins to reveal what is ultimately so maddening about it.  Immediately frustrating about the film is how Malick distances the general feel of the audiences, thus making the film feel truly remote and isolated as if it were in its own world.  Even as I appreciated all of the character development that I spoke of in the third paragraph, I still did not care for any of characters, because each individual character, as developed as he is, is really almost selfish and antagonistic.  When one of their deaths did come, I assume that I was supposed to care for his demise, and yet, I felt nothing.  Equally unsatisfying is how Malick intersperses the scenes with repetitive shots of the flora and fauna of the island.  While I am kind to imply that the lush, establishing camera shots featuring this are indeed much appreciated, I must oppose with the fact of how Malick doesn’t hesitate to impede the film’s progress by showing the same shot repeatedly throughout the entire film of that massive tree against the sky, or of the natives swimming gracefully in the clear blue water.  Showing us this once is enough, but after Malick continually places these shots in the film, the story flow is recurrently interrupted.

The terms ‘maddening’ and ‘frustrating’, however, both find an entirely new meaning in the second half of the movie.  Whereas the first half of the film is worth praise, the second is not.  I would have been happy with the movie had it stopped at the conclusion of the Battle of 210 and actually made decisions regarding the outcomes of the characters.  Instead, Malick draws the movie on to unnecessary overlength, and slows things down when we are left watching separate characters wandering around aimlessly as their philosophical thoughts are told in voice over.  It is perhaps because of this that the Thin Red Line feels thoroughly inconclusive at its end, considering that hardly any of the characters are able to find answers to their questions that they’ve been rambling on about in voiceover throughout the storyline.  As a result, the dramatic effect of the first half of the Thin Red Line is obscured by the second half.

Malick is such a visionary director, and it is evident throughout the Thin Red Line that Malick put in extensive effort to make the film look lush and vivid in the standpoint that Guadalcanal is a blissful paradise scarred by the aftermath of combat, even as the impassive storyline meanders without any clear resolution.  With the Thin Red Line, Malick has, in some places, crafted cinematic exquisiteness, even if the film, as a whole, is more than hard to relate to.  C+