The Thin Red Line
by Terrence Malick
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Chaplin, Elias Koteas, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Sean PennDirector: Terrence Malick
Brand: PENN,SEAN/NOLTE,NI
Writer: Terrence Malick
Producer: George Stevens Jr.
Producer: Grant Hill
Producer: John Roberdeau
Producer: Michael Stevens
Producer: Robert Michael Geisler
Writer: James Jones
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 170 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-05-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Thin Red Line
Movie Review: If I did "top ten" movie lists, it would probably be the first
Summary: 5 Stars
At the time I sat down to write my review of *The Thin Red Line*, about 850 earlier reviews had already been published here at Amazon. So what can I add that hasn't been said before, probably dozens of times? Not much, methinks.
But I do feel moved to tell you that I've watched this film repeatedly since it came out in 1999. Dozens of times. And I continue to love every long minute of it.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I do understand quite clearly why *The Thin Red Line* is not to everyone's taste. I know some of you reading this are sure to find it too slow, too lacking in action and bloodshed. You'll say it wastes too much time with cloudy skies, leafy trees, pretty birds, flowing water, and other tiresome nature shots, yadda yadda yadda. It needs more whining volleys of bullets, spectacular explosions, spurting blood, and dismembered bodies thrown through the air.
If that's what you think I don't expect my words to change your opinion. I can only repeat: I love this movie. It is a work of art. It is cinematic poetry. It is the most philosophical movie I know of. Actually it goes beyond philosophy. It is a mystical experience captured on celluloid.
Every time I watch it, it pervades my heart and my mind with warmth, wonder and depth. The acting is amazing. The music is entrancing. In a word, it's beautiful.
Just what is *The Thin Red Line*? Well, it is surely no war film. Or should I say, it's not *just* a war film. That's why nine out of ten war movie buffs are not gonna like it.
On one level, it is a film that questions man's place in nature. More precisely, while admitting that mankind has an inseparable place within greater nature, the film asks us why "civilized people" (men like the Americans and Japanese who are pitted against one another in merciless high-tech warfare) have lost sight of their place in nature.
These soldiers, all of them on both sides, are blind to the incredible beauty of the paradise island on which they fight. Just as much, they are blind to their own souls.
Some try try to find themselves and the beauty they've lost in the love of women. We meet one such soldier. He believes his wife to be the most beautiful person in the world, a woman he thinks is so trustworthy that he has given over his own soul to her. But he's betrayed by a "Dear John" letter. She's written to confess she's in love with an Air Force officer, and wants a divorce. In doing so she's just crushed her husband's heart. So can love of the opposite sex really be the way to find lost beauty and lost Self?
Some try to deny their Self and the beauty of nature as a mere illusion. They resort to cold cynicism, as seen in the character Sean Penn plays. However, he's forced to grudgingly admit that he still feels for his men, even though it would be bliss, he says, if he could just stop feeling altogether.
Others try to embrace God, the father of nature. "Please show me how You see things", one sergeant prays. So he becomes a witness to the death of every man in his platoon. And loses his mind to battle fatigue. Yes indeed, his prayer was answered, since God unblinkingly watches all of us die...but a taste of the God's-eye view of death was too much for this hapless sergeant.
No matter what they do, the mysterious war within the heart of nature and the heart of mankind remains a puzzle to all these men. So some of them throw in the towel, insanely screaming: "We're just grass! Just dirt!"
It turns out that the question haunting *The Thin Red Line* is not merely, "What's the right equation between man and nature?" The fuller question is, "What's the right equation between man and nature and God?" In addition: "What's the right equation between man and his own Self?"
The end of the film intimates that all these puzzles are created by the shining Self of mankind as a whole. The full lesson of what this means is not revealed in the film. It's a tantalizing clue, left for us to ponder as the final credits roll.
Have the Melanesian natives who seem so at peace with themselves--"The children here don't seems to fight with each other" remarks the philosophical GI to the beautiful Melanesian mother--have these Melanesian natives who commune with nature, and who praise God in their lilting religious hymns--have these natives solved the nature-God-self equation? Do they, in this short human lifespan, ken their real purpose on earth?
Are they, as human beings, superior to the over-intellectual, technologically-sophisticated Americans and Japanese who use iron machinery to rape nature, defy God and commit mass murder upon one another? But who remain blind to Reality which *The Thin Red Line* makes so beautifully apparent in all those lovely shots of cloudy skies, leafy trees, pretty birds, flowing water, and happy island children?
Or is the answer wholly and solely locked within the shining Self of philosophical, civilized man? The most soul-searching American seems sincerely inclined to explore that route. His voice-over of introspective speculations about man, God and nature appeal to the thoughtful Western-trained minds of viewers of *The Thin Red Line*.
But what's really at the heart of his philosophizing? It this not just Occidental individualism in intellectual form? As a product of Western mentality, can it really be a cure for the Western dysfunction? Is it not the same disease in cerebral disguise--that age-old, vain, incurable, totally futile exaltation of man's egoistic ideals above all else? Can it not help but end in pitting mankind once more against nature, God and himself?
We never learn for sure. But we do see our introspective hero buried in a nameless grave in the jungle, a few dismissive words uttered over him by his cynical sergeant. "Where did your Soul get you?"
Meanwhile the jungle--Mother Nature--ceaselessly flourishes. The happy islanders continue to find peace within themselves and with nature, singing their hymns to God.
Summary of The Thin Red Line
Adaptation of James Jones' autobiographical 1962 novel, focusing on the conflict at Guadalcanal during the second World War.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 20-MAY-2003
Media Type: DVD
One of the cinema's great disappearing acts came to a close with the release of The Thin Red Line in late 1998. Terrence Malick, the cryptic recluse who withdrew from Hollywood visibility after the release of his visually enthralling masterpiece Days of Heaven (1978), returned to the director's chair after a 20-year coffee break. Malick's comeback vehicle is a fascinating choice: a wide-ranging adaptation of a World War II novel (filmed once before, in 1964) by James Jones. The battle for Guadalcanal Island gives Malick an opportunity to explore nothing less than the nature of life, death, God, and courage. Let that be a warning to anyone expecting a conventional war flick; Malick proves himself quite capable of mounting an exciting action sequence, but he's just as likely to meander into pure philosophical noodling--or simply let the camera contemplate the first steps of a newly birthed tropical bird, the sinister skulk of a crocodile. This is not especially an actors' movie--some faces go by so quickly they barely register--but the standouts are bold: Nick Nolte as a career-minded colonel, Elias Koteas as a deeply spiritual captain who tries to protect his men, Ben Chaplin as a G.I. haunted by lyrical memories of his wife. The backbone of the film is the ongoing discussion between a wry sergeant (Sean Penn) and an ethereal, almost holy private (newcomer Jim Caviezel). The picture's sprawl may be a result of Malick's method of "finding" a film during shooting and editing, and in some ways The Thin Red Line seems vaguely, intriguingly incomplete. Yet it casts a spell like almost nothing else of its time, and Malick's visionary images are a challenge and a signpost to the rest of his filmmaking generation. --Robert Horton
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