"We were a family. How'd it break up and come apart, so that now we're turned against each other? Each standing in the other's light. How'd we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What's keepin' us from reaching out, touching the glory?"
—Private Witt
"What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?"
—Sergeant Welsh
Sometimes, we're not in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate a piece of art. Independent of age or mindset or philosophy … sometimes we're just at a stage in life where our mind is more closed to the possibility of the abstract, more open to the call of cynicism and lack of attention.
I watched "The Thin Red Line" years ago, and remember thinking that it was OK, but more just another in a long line of war movies. However, I made myself rewatch the movie recently, listening to an internal pull that was telling me that there was something I had missed, some new artistic presence within the movie that I wasn't prepared to embrace at that former point in my life. Usually I'm not a big fan of rewatching a movie, in much the same way that I don't re-read books—I figure there are so many tremendous cinematic and literary works of art out there that to see or read the same one twice only diminishes by one the number that I can absorb in my lifetime. But I am tremendously glad that I took the time to view "The Thin Red Line" again.
Early on, the narration in this abstract movie reminds one of "Forrest Gump," but you begin to get used to it, and then revel in the revealings. "The Thin Red Line" is part poem and part film; it's part love story and part war story; it's part optimism and part pessimism. In essence, it's a film of contrasts, a movie of questions, a work of art that calls on the viewer to engage directly, to work to stay involved, to call certain beliefs into question.
Powered by an incredible cast, it involves an internal look at Charlie Company, with thoughts from a disparate range of various characters, revealed as voiceovers. At one glance, it appears to be a movie about the pregnant-pause-laden dynamic between the characters of Jim Caviezel (Private Witt) and Sean Penn (Sergeant Welsh), with Witt being the martyr, the Jesus-like character invested in the beauty around him in the midst of war, saying, "War don't enoble men; it turns 'em into dogs." He muses, ""This great evil … where'd it come from? How did it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from?" Welsh is the pragmatist, a hard-nosed cynic who has been too damaged and broken by the events around him to give too much thought to the aesthetics of a dying bird. He counters Witt by noting, "There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be OK. There's just this one, just this rock … In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one … We're living in a world that's blowing itself to hell as fast as everybody can arrange it." But Witt refuses to give up on his sergeant, maintaining that "I still see a spark in you." Later, as he kneels over Witt's body, Welsh whispers, "Where's your spark now?"
"The Thin Red Line" offers a distracted view, with a wide variety of perspectives on war and humanity, but it's a very beautiful film, filled with haunting music and bold intensity. Director Terrence Malick uses a rolling cinematography approach in certain scenes, which serves to make you feel as if you're directly "in" the action. Centered mainly around Charlie Company's extended assault on a hill held by the Japanese in Guadalcanal during World War II, we are shown the limits of human endurance, where some reach the breaking point. It's rife with symbolism, with the loveliness of the hill's wind-rippled grasses overlaid with the horror of the blood staining it, with smoke as a spirit, with the final image of a tiny island with a plant at the end, before the fade to black, signifying that true beauty can still be possible on a tiny island in the midst of turmoil. We see that Witt was that island, that he had a grace and a beauty, even among the terror and horror of war, leading to his loss being felt by so many, even though they may not have known him so well.
Boasting tremendous intensity and vivid camera work, the film also isn't above relying on a few clichés, including Woody Harrelson's character muttering, "I'm cold, I'm cold," as he's dying, as well as an amazing and memorable turn by Nick Nolte as the quintessential crusty Lieutenant Colonel Tall. Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) and Tall face off as examples of competing leadership approaches, heading up the idea of sacrifice vs. strategy. Tall forces Staros to consider how many lives the objective is worth, then accuses him of not being of tough enough fiber to lead men into war. As Staros is relieved of his duty, he emotionally tells his men, "Dear sons, you live inside me now." The performances of both Nolte and Koteas are incredible in their fitting understatement.
Another noteworthy storyline involves Private Bell (Ben Chaplin), who intersplices the cruelty and brutality of war with flashbacks of a simpler life back home, to intimate moments with his beloved. In one of a number of touching love-note voiceovers, Bell says/writes, "My dear wife, you get something twisted out of your insides by all this blood, filth, and noise. I want to stay changeless for you. I want to come back to you the man I was before." He also says, "Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free." However, Bell eventually receives a letter from his wife telling him she is leaving him for another man, the tender love notes destroyed by the reality of unfaithfulness. He writes back, "People who've been as close as we've been always meet again … Help me leave you," and finally ends with, "If I never met you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes and my life will be yours."
The bliss of numbness permeates the haunting chaos surrounding these men, who eventually encounter briefly touched upon difficulties in fitting in anywhere after the war. Again, the idea of morality as it relates to the military rears its head, with the inevitable question chasing these men after the war: am I bad because I was a soldier?
"The Thin Red Line" was nominated for seven Oscars, yet it remains a somewhat overlooked and underrated film. Based on an autobiographical novel written by James Jones in 1962, it was first made into a movie in 1964, in a version that dwelled mainly on the Tall-Welsh relationship. Malick took on the project, but it took him 20 years to complete, finishing in 1998. Due to the difficulty of filming on Guadalcanal (50% malaria rate), the flick was shot primarily in Queensland, Australia, and some in the Soloman Islands.
Besides Caviezel, Penn, Nolte, Chaplin, Koteas and Harrelson, this film also featured Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John Cusack, Thomas Jane, Jared Leto, Tim Blake Nelson, John C. Reilly, John Travolta, Nick Stahl ("Carnivale") and Kirk Acevedo ("Fringe," "Oz"), among others. The phenomenal cast was no accident; a ton of other notable actors were originally in the movie, including Billy Bob Thornton (who had three hours worth of voiceovers eliminated), Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Jason Patric, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke. Drawn by Malick's impeccable reputation, ensemble cast and dramatic return to film-making after an extended absence, basically every major male actor of the time approached Malick about wanting to be in the movie. Upon meeting Malick, Penn reportedly said, "Give me a dollar and tell me where to show up." However, the extensive cutting involved in the final version upset some of the actors, most notably Brody, whose larger part was severely diminished. The end result is reportedly much, much different than what was initially shot, but no full-length DVD has ever been released that includes the deleted materials, leading to something of an underground movement to get Malick to do so.
Famed director Martin Scorsese called "The Thin Red Line" his second-favorite film of the 1990s, and it did win the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. The first time I saw it, I was a much different person; my mind was too closed to fully experience and embrace the abstract and beautiful aspects of this tremendous film. But sometimes, the genius is in the rediscovery … as I truly and finally learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment