For twenty years, fans have been waiting for the third film by Terrence Malick. After making the real boom in the film world with his Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s, Malick literally disappeared from the world of cinema. Only in 1998, exactly twenty years after the second film, audience from around the world will see his third film - The Thin Red Line. With a recognizable style and rhythm of narration and new techniques that will not be abandoned in the next films, The Thin Red Line is probably the highlight of Malick's film career.
The year was 1943, on the southern Pacific, Guadalcanal became a strategic battleground. The US military is seeking to conquer the islands because its position is perfect as a station for planes flying from the American continent, and therefore a strategic position to win the war. In the fight against Japanese troops, the story follows a group of soldiers and from all points of view shows all the cruelty of the Pacific War. Ignorance, pessimism, compassion, insanity are just some of the motives Malick shows during this film.
The Thin Red Line is the eponymous 1962. novel by American writer James Jones. The author wrote his personal experiences from the fight at Guadalcanal. It is interesting, however, that Malick decided to take most of the narration of some characters from Jones's second novel - From here to eternity. Mostly, it is a well-known fact that Malick doesn't adhere to either the script or the story so that the film undergoes a few changes by the end of its creation process.
What is particularly interesting in The Thin Red Line is the way Malick's war is opposed to the environment. While the rain of bullets falls over the hillside of the Pacific Islands, it captures and displays the animal world at certain moments. Fear of futile death is reflected on the faces of all soldiers. Healing and suspicion of war goes from one mind to the next. However, they do not say it. These thoughts are reflected in their views, and right here, Malick creates a spell. While sergeants are commanding and receiving medals from a safe distance, people here on the first line are giving their lives and they don't even know why they are here. In every scene, in every death, we see the innocence and sorrow of the fighters who go to certain death, not because they want, but because they must. The futility of warfare is thus emphasized, becoming the strongest demotivating force among soldiers. For this reason, The Thin Red Line is the most emotionally complex film in Malick's opus.
Before Malick began a rich collaboration with Emanuel Lubezki, John Toll was in charge of the visual aspect. Toll's vision and Malick's genius make up a whole spectrum of luminous sketches and scenes. From the battle to the pacific island in which Malick knows from time to time to get lost. Guadalcanal is truly portrayed through Toll's camera lens, as one beautiful tropical place. Given that man is also a part of nature, soldiers themselves, just like Malick, are able to drown in the paradise depths of the island, at least until the rain of bullets and grenades return them to reality.
The fact is that many today remember Malick and his ability to cut out the entire roles of certain actors in the film editing room. This procedure certainly starts with this film. So, although film posters are abundant with a large number of well-known and quality actors, Malick singles only a few sentences. Central figures are surely Jim Caviezel and Sean Penn, but their characters at one point only fall into the background. In addition to them, we have a number of actors whose career still needs to come to life: Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Jared Leto, and some already experienced actors like Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, John Travolta, George Clooney and veteran Nick Nolte. However, while many movies can be dimmed in their all-star set, Malick doesn't allow this. He rules every aspect of film and narrative, which is why no actor overshadows the other. Each of them gets its five minutes of glory in the foolish war.
The most moving scenes in the film echo Nick Nolte’s comments about James Jones – where people who truly experience the horror of war lose their inauthenticity and an overwhelming and truly authentic altruism takes over them – such as the scene of Bell breaking down after the assault on the Japanese bunker on the hill. This overwhelming focus on others’ well being threatens to break the limits of the human condition, of being isolated in your own consciousness, and whilst it cannot actually break out of the barriers of inescapable isolation it offers a momentary sense of transcendence from the subjective self.
“The question is, is there any place on the battlefield for human compassion? That’s James Jones’ question… [He] wrote a story about his own experiences in war – that men go into war not knowing why – they’re usually indoctrinated to go in for idealistic reasons. Then they realise they’re going to die or they’re going to have to kill somebody and they become tremendously horrified… [He] said that the great experiences he had in the war were, one, the horror, and, two, the day he was shot and knew he was going to die… Such a fear came over him — up from his feet, overwhelming his body — that it stripped away all social and military conditioning, personality, grasp… When you know you are going to die [this] tremendous fear overwhelms you. And in that moment of fright and horror, [you] literally lose [your] self… It shatters all of your social conditioning, your facade, your personality… Something is replaced once that self is gone… into this nothingness…and that’s this unbearable compassion of love…, compassion of love for [your] fellow men… for the fellow standing next to [you]… He said, after you feel that, and have lost your self, then you know you will die for your buddy. And he said, it’s one of the strange ironies that come out of this terrible diseased idea of war. He says he never felt that love again. That the love of a parent for a child comes closest. But the parent still holds on to their identity.”
Nick Nolte [1]
TRAILER
This was my translation from Croatian to English from Ziher gr article ''Između dužnosti i smrti'' by A.Bajrovic
[1] This is an amalgamation of various interview in which Nick Nolte discusses the same subject