The Thin Red Line

There is a melancholy beauty in all of Terrence Malick’s films, and in The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick simultaneously fashions his most intimate and classically universal examination on life, innocence (lost), and the pursuit of paradise. Coupled with John Toll’s breathtaking camerawork and Hans Zimmer’s singular score (Journey to the Line is moving even after wearing it out these past nine years), Malick appropriates James Jones’ novel and filters it through his transcendentalist lens, chronicling the devastation of war and the philosophical/theological desire to do honor in this world.

Situating the film around ellipses, allowing characters to rise and fall with the same ebb and flow as his pacing, Malick is able to examine multitudes of perspective, yet the film is governed through Pvt. Witt’s thoughts and memories and, indeed, the core of the film is situated in his opening voiceover about his mother: “I just hope I can meet it [death] the same way she did, with the same... calm. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.” Within all of Witt’s actions lies the attempt to dutifully face death with the same calm and grace, and the opening and closing of the film reveals the consequences of that faith, situating immortality in the typically Malickian image of nature (an idea that is returned to in the closing of The New World).

Among the many wonders of the film are the characters, and few possess the honor and grace of Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), a character who grows more profound in his care of his men with every viewing. And, of course, Lt. Col. Tall (Nick Nolte) is the doppelganger to Staros, abusing the hierarchical military structure of the war for professional recognition, yet he too expresses fear and regret, allowing Malick to posit the various shades that chronicle duty. When I refer in the opening paragraph to the classical-ness of the film, I do so noting the deliberately idealized role of women in the film. Yet within that idealization exists the “Dear John” letter which divests the film of this idealized quality, rupturing the exterior transcendence that the men bestowed upon women (though Malick never judges the men for these actions) and revealing women to be just as confused and lost at home, and Bell’s Wife thus epitomizes the women’s struggle through the indignant horror of war.

All in all, it’s the first film that revealed to me the wonder that cinema can offer, and it’s a film I regularly return to, only to be as astonished as I was during the first viewing.

The Thin Red Line: 10/10