THE THIN RED LINE

Part One of My Examination of War in Film

"Maybe all men got one big soul everyone's part of. All faces are the same man."

James Caveziel. Nick Nolte. Sean Penn. Elias Koteas. Ben Chaplin. Woody Harrelson. John Cusack. John C. Reilly. Nick Stahl. Adrien Brody. John Travolta. George Clooney. These are the players involved. THE THIN RED LINE is the game of their lives.

An epic poem about life and death, madness and contentness, love and loss, sacrifice and brotherhood, THE THIN RED LINE is one of the supreme accomplishments ever put onto celluloid, of any genre, at any time. Director Terrence Malick returned to filmmaking after a 20-year hiatus after making DAYS OF HEAVEN in 1978. Malick adapted the film from a novel written in 1962 by James Jones, a fictional account about the American assault and eventual takeover of the Japanese island of Guadalcanal during World War II. The novel (and first film adaptation, made in 1964) was a straight-forward look at the battles the soldiers fought in to claim the Japanese stronghold. Malick's vision is something deeper; something sublime.

While the battle scenes are masterfully shot and rival those of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN in terms of tension and staging (though definitely not carnage or blood), THE THIN RED LINE really isn't about war at the end of the film. Instead, Malick, tells a tale of how every single person is intertwined by the gift of life, no matter who they are or where they come from. He uses the backdrop of war as a metaphor to say how crazy (and ironic) it is that man's worst enemy is himself.

In the film, the Japanese are the enemy, but they are not portrayed as one-sided hateful beings, but soldiers who face many of the same fears, feel the same hopes and ambitions, and experience the same traumas of war as the Americans. The usual American war film clichés are gone; the Americans do not run in and kill those bastard Japs with guns blazing and soldiers standing upon the hills while the enemy flees in terror. As it progresses, the soldiers and the audience both gain an understanding of how equal and common every person is.

With the use of multiple narratives from different characters, all of whom have different perspectives on life, love, war, death, and themselves, Malick's knack for storytelling is undeniable. The first story, and what in my opinion is the most important and best-told story of the film's entirity, focuses on a private (Caviezel) who goes AWOL on an island paradise inhabited only by a small village of natives. He is the first man from the outside world they have ever encountered, but they are not afraid of him nor do they look at him with biased eyes. In this world, this island, there is hardly any conflict, even between children. This is paradise to Private Witt, but it is short-lived, and he is forced to go to war, which is hell.

This is how war is presented in THE THIN RED LINE. Malick uses beautiful natural-light based imagery and higher thought to offset the underlying theme that war is most definitely hell. Men killing other man is one of the most troubling paradoxes this world will ever know, especially when one considers how tightly we are all bonded, no matter who we are.

A+