Saturday, August 7, 2010

#100 - The Thin Red Line



BACK STORY: “The Thin Red Line” came out in 1998 (the same year as “Saving Private Ryan”). It is based on the acclaimed novel by James Jones and is a fictional account set in the Battle of Guadalcanal. The film marked the return of legendary director Terence Malick after a twenty year hiatus. He had previously made “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven”, both of which were highly thought of in Hollywood. Many A-list actors were interested in being directed by Malick in whatever movie he made his comeback with. In fact, several major actors worked on the movie and were left on the cutting room floor (e.g. Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman ). The movie did not do well at the box office, but did garner seven Oscar nominations ( including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography ). It won none.


OPENING SCENE: The movie opens with an idyllic scene in a native village where two AWOL soldiers are living in peaceful paradise. We listen to the first installment of the “voiceover” as a disembodied voice comments about nature. Later in the scene, the main character (Witt) sees an American warship off the coast and next thing you know – he’s in the brig.

SUMMARY: We meet most of the characters on board a troop ship headed for Guadalcanal. A pompous general (cameoed woodenly by John Travolta) implies to Col. Tell ( Nick Nolte ) that this is his chance to advance his stagnant career. Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn) meets with Witt and implies he disagrees with his anti-war philosophy and his going AWOL, but he still likes him. Witt is going to be put in a discipline battalion where he will be a stretcher-bearer. Meanwhile below decks, the soldiers are doing the typical before a landing clichés like complaining about how their officer (Staros) is not a warrior and they always get the shit details. It is this scene that signals the first flaw in the movie. This is supposed to be August in the South Pacific and below deck in a poorly ventilated troop ship and yet no one is sweating! (I will come back to this theme of how the characters react to the environment in future movie reviews. Or more simply, are they sweating when they should be?)

The landing via Higgins boats is unopposed and the men head inland. Here the viewer becomes aware that Malick is very interested in shots of nature and we will have to put up with the pretentious and sometimes indecipherable voiceover throughout the movie. The men are still not sweating!

The core of the movie involves an assault on a hill that has several hidden bunkers that have clear fields of fire. The first attempt ends up with the unit being pinned down after suffering severe casualties. The assault is shown with appropriate graphic violence and realistically portrays the “fog of war”. Malick develops the theme that war causes men to crack and do things that violate humanity. He also does a good job depicting the randomness of war as some men are hit and others are not. Sgt. Keck pulls the pin on a grenade then accidentally drops it and is mortally wounded.


There is a command crisis as Tell insists on taking the hill immediately at any cost while the company commander Staros insists it’s a suicide mission and refuses to order the attack. Tell backs down and allows a flanking attack. A patrol of volunteers ( including the deserter Witt who has begged to return to the unit ) goes after the main bunker. The tactics portrayed are realistic with artillery fire called in first and then grenades thrown through sight holes. Americans kill prisoners (which definitely happens in combat especially when there is racism involved).

Tell arrives and is excited about the victory, but wants more and insists on pushing on even after being informed that the men are suffering from lack of water. At one point Tell says “The only time to worry about a soldier is when he stops bitching”. The audience is meant to feel that Tell is an insensitive jerk, but if you think about it he is right. You should not give up the momentum and it’s a leader’s job to insist on doing the right thing even if the men want to rest.

The attack reaches the Japanese camp where at first the Japanese meet it with a frontal attack which inexplicably quickly turns into the Japanese running away. The Americans rampage through the camp with the Japanese putting up little fight. Most of them are so delirious they cannot even commit suicide. This flies in the face of the standard view of the fanatical Japanese soldiers.

After the battle, Tell relieves Staros from command because he is too soft and cares about his men too much. Again, we sympathize with Staros, but have to admit Tell is right. The men are enjoying R and R including booze in bottles ( no “jungle juice” for them ) and the amazing absence of critters like mosquitoes. Malick’s Guadalcanal is a tropical paradise with no rain where you can snooze in the lush grass.

One character gets to have flashbacks about his lovely wife. As though it’s not obvious enough what is going to happen, he even comments to a friend “I haven’t touched another woman”. Cliché/Spoiler Alert: guess what his wife has to tell him in her next letter?

Returning to battle, we find the unit wading in a river under the command of a new officer who is clearly in over his head ( not literally ). When there is suspicion that they might be wading into an ambush, Witt volunteers to scout ahead. Witt runs into a large Japanese force and proceeds to lead them away in scene similar to the “Platoon” scene where Elias is killed. Witt does not get to die Christ-like, however. Later, we see the obligatory burial scene with the stoical mates saying goodbye to the deserter/pacifist who had morphed into a heroic warrior.

THE FINAL SCENE: Malick bookends his stunt cameos with George Clooney arriving as the new Captain and giving your standard pep talk. The men re-embark and the battle is over for them and for us.

RATINGS:

Realism – 5

Acting – 6 ( some embarrassing performances )

Action - 7 (some good combat scenes)

Accuracy – 5

Plot - 8 (it is based on a great novel)

Overall - 5

WOULD CHICKS DIG IT?:   My wife hated this movie. She sighed through the entire length and could not wait for it to end.

CRITIQUE: Most movie critics loved this movie when it came out. They had been waiting for twenty years for a Malick product and refused to be disappointed. It seems every male actor wanted in on the project and when Malick would tell them to wander around and gaze at the sea ( as he did with Travolta in his big scene ) they did not question the “genius”. The Oscar nominating committee must have been very impressed with cinematography that managed to make Guadalcanal into a tourist destination. Some lucky cameraman was paid to get numerous shots of flora and fauna, especially looking upward. And then there are the voice-overs which are sometimes character’s voices ( often unidentifiable ) and sometimes a more generic sentiment. This may be inspired film-making but it just looks and sounds pretentious to the average war movie buff.

The main fault of the movie ( and any bad war movie ) is lack of realism. Malick may be arguing that the Battle of Guadalcanal was evil man versus good environment, but any veteran of the campaign would support the view that the environment was almost as big a villain as the Japanese. To make a film set on a tropical island and not show the pests, the rain and mud, and the heat is laughable.

Several of the characters do not behave realistically. Witt goes from pacifist to gung-ho with no explanation why. Welsh is a tough guy, yet he volunteers to assist a malingerer back to the rear at a critical moment in the battle, but later he makes a suicidal dash into no man’s land to help a dying soldier.

The assault on the bunker is well done, but the following attack on the camp strains credulity as the Japanese behave against type. Is Malick being a revisionist? Nothing I have read suggests the fanaticism of Japanese soldiers has been inaccurately depicted by military historians.

ACCURACY:

This movie was not meant to be a documentary about the Battle of Guadalcanal, but since the movie-going public often gets its history from Hollywood it is a shame that the movie gives an inaccurate take on the battle. The unit arrives on the first day of the battle and moves into the interior to assault the hill. This is contrary to the flow of the actual battle. Guadalcanal was mainly a defensive battle in the early stages. The landing was unopposed, the Americans seized the airfield and then had to hold it against several banzai-type assaults. The movie plays loose with chronology by skipping the defensive phase and moving to the offensive.

Although we cannot demand that Malick teach the Battle of Guadalcanal through his film, we can demand that he get the soldiers’ experience right. The biggest flaw of the movie is to gloss over the terrible hardships the men went through. Guadalcanal was a tropical hell, not a tropical paradise. When men broke down on Guadalcanal it was usually due to the living conditions, not the combat. A famous phrase associated with the battle was “One more Marine reporting, St. Peter. I’ve served my term in Hell”.

CONCLUSION: Because I am in the opening stage of my journey through the greatest war movies, it is premature to offer an opinion on whether “The Thin Red Line” belongs on the list. I will be watching some movies that did not make the list as part of my “Should it have made the cut?” blogs which will basically come down to whether other movies are better than “The Thin Red Line”. However, I feel it is safe at this point to say that this movie is a dubious inclusion on the list. For instance, just off the top of my head, I would argue that “Enemy at the Gates” is a superior war film.

Next up:  #99 - They Were Expendable

18 comments:

  1. Yes, I agree, this move really sucks. One thing the War Movie Buff does not mention is that all of the characters in the movie are US Army, but it was US Marines that won the battle for Guadalcanal. The Army was sent to Guadalcanal a couple months later to mop up after the Marines had already defeated the Japanese.

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  2. Good point. Thanks. I will check the book to see if it is that way in the book. Sorry it took me so long to respond. I had given up on getting comments!

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  3. Nice post. This movie had a more philosophical approach. Actually I liked this.

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  4. I don't begrudge you your liking of the movie. It does have its supporters and they have good arguments for it. It is just that within the parameters of my mission, this is not what I would call a good war movie. Perhaps it is a good movie, but not a good war movie.

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  5. Yes agree to what you have to say.......by the way when are you going to review Band Of Brothers & The Pacific mini-series

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  6. the war movie buffJuly 20, 2011 at 9:12 PM

    I tend to view those types of programs as not being war movies. Besides, have you seen how long my reviews are of 2 hour movies? Are you sure you would want to sit through a review of a ten hour miniseries? It is actually humane of me not to review them. I will do this for you:

    Band of Brothers A+
    The Pacific B
    Generation Kill A
    Horatio Hornblower A
    Piece of Cake B-

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  7. My impression of this movie is that it occurs after the critical early months when the Marines were holding on by their fingernails. By the time of the movie, it seems that the 1st Marines have been largely if not entirely relieved by a force consisting mainly of US Army troops. This major changeover in personnel occurred in early December 1942, so a time period in latest 1942-earliest 1943 (mid December to the end of the campaign or almost) seems most likely.

    The following website generally confirms this interpretation

    http://www.friesian.com/history/guadal.htm

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  8. My impression of this movie is that it occurs after the critical early months when the Marines were holding on by their fingernails. By the time of the movie, it seems that the 1st Marines have been largely if not entirely relieved by a force consisting mainly of US Army troops. This major changeover in personnel occurred in early December 1942, so a time period in latest 1942-earliest 1943 (mid December to the end of the campaign or almost) seems most likely.

    The following website generally confirms this interpretation

    http://www.friesian.com/history/guadal.htm

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  9. This should help you
    http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1603-the-thin-red-line-this-side-of-paradise

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  10. I would be interested in knowing what you thought of the earlier (1964) version made from Jones' book. Have you seen it?

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    1. I want to but I have not been able to find a copy.

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  11. I will admit I do technically have a bias, with Terrence Malick being my favourite film director of all time and ultimately my greatest idol and greatest influence as a young film maker myself. However, I will try and offer my alternative opinion respectfully and objectively, as much as I can.

    To me this film is refreshing in how it strays from the conventions of the war genre, taking a typical Malickian philosophical approach, incredibly thought provoking. Together with the shots showing us the tremendous beauty of nature, in stark contrast to the horrors of war, and the meditative music, I find this film an immersive, strangely soothing, soul searching experience, every time I watch it. Many times now, and each time I see something new, feel something new, think something new.

    I really do think the contrast between the portrayal of the horrific brutality men are capable of, with the stunning beauty of nature, and how the actions of mankind fucked up mother nature's equilibrium in this part of the world, and by extension how it does on a wider scale, is worthy of much praise.

    I would argue that Guadalcanal, objectively, actually IS a tropical paradise, just not perhaps for men who are not used to that environment and especially considering what they were doing there. However Guadalcanal was a paradise for its' Melanesian inhabitants and it's non-human inhabitants alike.

    Some of your observations regarding the depiction of the environment are valid, however to me it felt like nit-picking complaining about no mosquitoes, no sweat on the troop ship. Respectfully, there was rain in the film albeit only in one shot which showed a soldier sitting topless in the rain, psychologically distressed. Around the time of third act. As a film maker I have suffered the unpredictability of weather, and how we cannot control it. Generally we don't want it to rain, then again maybe we need it to rain but it doesn't. Now on a film with a larger budget you could expect that they can make fake rain with sprinklers, but again we don't know what happened on this film and I know that it is often hectic, fast moving, and sometimes things don't work or don't come together as planned. Maybe they couldn't use their rain sprinklers (assuming they had them) very much due to some kind of technical issues, and then bearing in mind Malick's tendency to shoot huge amounts of footage and cut it down vastly for his film, he may have cut out a fair bit of rain. Similarly regarding the sweat, I argue that this was shown later in the film. When Colonel Tall came to Staros' position to assess the situation himself, there were topless men who looked pretty sweaty, and Tall chastised one of them for not wearing his "blouse". A little later a sweaty John Cusack walks along side Colonel Tall in mega hot weather complaining that the troops don't have enough water and he's worried they will actually start dying of thirst.

    So anyway that's my defence of one of my all time favourite films. Nonetheless I respect you are assessing these films as war movies first and foremost with particular attention to realism ahead of.. the art of story-telling I suppose. I am enjoying going through these blogs. Totally agreed with you on The Big Red One while on A Bridge Too Far you encouraged me to reconsider the film and acknowledge some more positive aspects of the film which I had not before perhaps appreciated enough.

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    1. I really enjoyed your comments. Thanks. It is a very polarizing movie and there are intelligent people on both sides. I understand the points you are making, but I feel that Malick overemphasized the tropical paradise aspects and underemphasized the critters, heat, and rain because they did not fit his theme. It is hard to argue that the production was incapable of showing rain and mud. As far as the sweating, it is a pet peeve of mine that war movies don't show climate well. I was specifically referring to the scenes below deck.

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  12. I liked the artsy nature of this film but I must admit it's not one that ever enticed me to watch it again.

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  13. I feel this movie defines pompous and is more interested in the director's POV than the novel

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  14. One of the worst movies.

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  15. I remember this movie being paired with Saving Private Ryan, with the implication that they were similar movies. I wonder if this was a deliberate choice by the producers of The Thin Red Line, hoping to raise their box office draw by making their own film in effect a kind of high-brow Mockbuster.

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Please fell free to comment. I would love to hear what you think and will respond.