OVP: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Film: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Stars: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta

Director: Terrence Malick

Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Score, Sound, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, I am completing all of the remaining gaps in my Terrence Malick filmography (one of my favorite film directors) with what we're calling "Terry Tuesdays" throughout June.

Terrence Malick took 20 years between Days of Heaven and his next picture.  During that time, he wrote a number of screenplays that were never produced, including one called Q that would later serve as the basis for two of his films, The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time.  He finally returned, after two decades of time off to film an adaptation of James Jones' classic novel about World War II, The Thin Red Line.  Malick at this point had not entirely abandoned the concept of a truly linear plot, but it was obvious that was where he was headed.  You could make a legitimate argument that this is the last movie with characters that really seem to run together, with actual spoken dialogue that grounds together a story (though The New World and The Tree of Life have this to some degree, even though they become more-and-more abstract).  The film, though, would become legendary given it would establish Malick's strange reputation as someone who could assemble a gargantuan movie star lineup...and then become distracted by a parrot in the cutting room floor.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Private Witt (Caviezel) stuck on an island in the South Pacific after going AWOL.  After being captured, he's allowed to return to the military rather than face certain imprisonment, but he must do so as a member of the 25th Infantry Division as a stretcher bearer, as they are invading the island of the Guadalcanal.  The days that follow are a series of attacks on the island against the Japanese, as they come face-to-face with death, intimately seeing the perils & pitfalls of war.  One soldier (played by Woody Harrelson) dies not from enemy fire but from accidentally pulling the pin out of his grenade and blowing himself in half.  Throughout this time, we see personifications of the glory of war in Nick Nolte, the glory of peace through Caviezel's Witt, the glory of humanity in Elias Koteas loving Captain Staros, and the reality of survival through Sgt. Welsh (Penn).

The movie has about a 50/50 split between spoken dialogue and narration, and there are moments when this is confusing.  The movie hires a number of well-known actors, some of whom are easily identifiable as narrators (Sean Penn & Nick Nolte are difficult to mistake), but because there's so little traditional character-buildling outside of Nolte, Penn, Koteas, & Caviezel, when they aren't the narrators (which is often) it's sometimes hard to distinguish who is who.  Similar to The Tree of Life, which was overwhelming the first time I viewed it, I suspect I'll find that it's easier to decipher upon repeat viewings.

Because there will be repeat viewings of this.  We are 3/3 in masterpieces out of Malick, as I see the last "important" film of his career (we have one more late stage Malick next week that I haven't seen that will cap this collection).  The movie is probably the most-lauded of Malick's epics, getting seven Oscar nominations, and while part of that is the subject matter (war films tend to do well with AMPAS), it's also deserved.  The film's alternating perspectives on different characters gives it a sense of balance while sticking to its central thesis that war is tragic, no matter one's views on the merits of the conflict.  We see young men, barely into the prime of life, torn apart.  There's a terrific bit of dialogue late in the picture where a young man says something along the lines of "I've had a long life even if I'm young" and while in another movie that would've read as "proud & brave...imagine what these men have been through" here it reads as pablum.  This man is ready to give up his life, but he hasn't even lived it yet & has no concept of what he's saying, sacrificing his youth for ivory tower figures like those played by John Travolta who has no concept of the early days of war anymore it is such a distant memory they only believe the pablum.

The cinematography, by Oscar winner John Toll, is stupendous.  Malick & Toll underline their script not just with grand looks at the ocean & tall grass providing these men minimal cover for their lives, but also with throwaway shots like a panning look across a rocky cliff, the only sign of these men's sacrifice a littered pile of bullet casings that may sit on this island in the middle of the Pacific for the next 50 years without movement, the entire lifetime of the men who shot them...had they not died.  Combined with an iconic Hans Zimmer score (some of his best work) and realistic movie makeup (the dying-and-blood feels very real, particularly by the standards of 1998 with only traditional visual effects on display), and you have one of Malick's most proficient technical films.

The editing, apparently cut down from a five-hour runtime, is the stuff of Hollywood legend at this point.  George Clooney has laughed about this in interviews, saying how much he was basically trimmed out of the story to only appear onscreen for about 90 seconds.  Adrien Brody found it less funny.  In the book, his character is central to the story, and so for Brody, who was a young actor who  hadn't struck it big yet (unlike Clooney, then in his ER heyday), it was a big deal.  But at the premiere of the film, Brody supposedly found out that he was not only not the lead, but had been trimmed down so much that he was barely in the movie.  Indeed, if there was an actual line spoken by Brody directly onscreen as opposed to just talking in a group shot, I missed it...his wide eyes more a prop to help him standout in a crowd shot than the lead part, which is delegated to Caviezel in particular.  This would become something of a refrain for Malick, who would increasingly see major stars trimmed from his movies, some deeply upset about it even when they're still in a large chunk of the movie like Christopher Plummer (whom, it's worth noting, I would've cited for the Oscar for his work in The New World).  Next week we will conclude our look at the films of Terrence Malick as I watch my final gap in his filmography.