Thin Red Line

[fishstick]

OMG, there`s a village raid scene where something actually happens?????

 

Thin Red Line must`ve have been inspiration for Twilight. Nothing ever happens in this 20 hours long movie just like nothing ever happens in 4 Twilight books and 5 movies.

Edited March 30, 2013 by fishnets

[Noctis]

DAwful film. ToL is infinitely mote captivating.

[Gopher]

 

One of the best scores of all time. 

[acsc1312]

^The Village track transitioning into Silence...chills!!

[fishstick]

 

One of the best scores of all time. 

 

Especially when used here:

 

[Lordmandeep]

"The only way The Thin Red Line is boring is if you're only concerned with visual stimulation in regards to films. A movie that makes you think is the opposite of boring, although simple-minded folk will inevitably label it as such, IMO."

 

That is so disingenuous...

 

You are saying a boring and poorly made film is great and suggest any one who does not like it as simple minded.

 

Simple as that...

[mattmav45]

"The only way The Thin Red Line is boring is if you're only concerned with visual stimulation in regards to films. A movie that makes you think is the opposite of boring, although simple-minded folk will inevitably label it as such, IMO."

 

That is so disingenuous...

 

You are saying a boring and poorly made film is great and suggest any one who does not like it as simple minded.

 

Simple as that...

 

Um, what?  Taking statements on the Internet in a literal sense isn't the brightest way of interpretation.

 

Movies are obviously subjective........and I can understand one thinking this is boring (to each their own, I suppose).  But if you're insinuating that The Thin Red Line is poorly made, then that's just fucking ridiculous. 

Edited April 5, 2013 by mattmav45

[ChD]

The actors in this were horrible miscast in my opinion

.

[luna]

a character mulls over some emotional or philosophical musings in his head. malick responds with an image. his judgments don't coincide with a humanity of importance and meaning. from bittersweet happiness to traumatic sadness, every thought and emotion is evoked.

 

97

[The Stingray]

A meditation and quest for the meaning of life, disguised as a war movie. It is also one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen, and I'm not just speaking cinematography-wise.

 

A+

Edited September 10, 2014 by The Stingray

[Jessie]

I remember this being a massive disappointment.

[The Futurist]

The most beautiful movie I have never seen.And Yes Terrence, I agree with you, we are the cockroaches who invaded peaceful Gaia.A +++

[Dementeleus]

I remember somewhat liking this, but also being frustrated by it. That was when it first came out, and it was also the first Malick movie I'd ever seen. Needless to say, it was a perplexing but not worthless experience. For the first time since its initial release, I just saw it again in its entirety, and what a difference 16 years make. It's majestic. Sublime. Brilliant. Yes, it's absolutely, resolutely unlike any Hollywood war movie, or even any traditionally "realistic" movie. But that doesn't make it less powerful; if anything, it makes it stand up all the better.

[Noctis]

Sublime? Lol

[Hanamichi Sakuragi]

Amazing film.

 

This was the first Mallick film I ever saw, and it was unlike anything I had seen before. I'm not good with words, so I'll let Scorsese and Ebert speak for me.

 

MARTIN: No. My choice for Number 2 is Terrence Malick's adaptation of James Jones' novel, "The Thin Red Line." There are many great actors in this movie, including Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Savage, Jim Caviezel and others, but there's no star. The film has a deliberately loose structure, and the story is told through multiple voiceovers and points of view. "The Thin Red Line" is actually the story of every soldier who took part in the endless battle to secure Guadalcanal.

 

MARTIN: "The Thin Red Line" works very differently from most films. As you watch it you wonder: What is narrative in movies? Is it everything, and if so, is there only one way to handle it? I realize now that each of the four top movies on my list moves at a very slow tempo. If Malick had just done a straightforward narrative, could he ever have achieved the kind of poetry he does here, or made a film where you really come to see the world as a primeval place? I don't think so.

 

ROGER: You know, I was thinking that, too, about your top four films, because in your films characters are very much in the foreground. Your films are about people --

 

MARTIN: Yes.

 

ROGER: -- and about their souls, their guilt, their anguish. And here these people are at arms length. I loved the film too, because once again though its kind of like a dream. The narrator comes down from above and thinks about this material, rather than really being up to his neck in it.

 

MARTIN: Well, it takes you to a place in time. It takes you to a place You begin to think about you know, what are we as human beings, what are these soldiers doing on this primeval island?

 

ROGER: Do you think that audiences are open-minded when they see a film that doesn't play just like a standard TV movie?

 

MARTIN: No, I'm worried that they're not at this point. That's what worries me.

 

ROGER: Yeah. I worry about that, too.

 

MARTIN: I'm very worried. That's why I think "The Thin Red Line" is so important. You could come in the middle of it, you can watch it. It's almost like an endless picture. It has no beginning and no end. People say, "Well, sometimes I can't tell whose voiceover it is." It doesn't matter. It's everybody's voiceover.

 

 

 

[Dementeleus]

Sublime? Lol

 

Yep.

[baumer]

Everyone who thinks this movie is a good movie, is wrong.

 

That's all I gotta say about that.  

 

 

maybe I'll try to watch it again, 16 years after the fact.

[JohnnyGossamer]

Malick's a beast. Too ponderous for his own good sometimes, but, damn, certainly provokes more than most filmmakers I've seen with big questions, gorgeous visuals and muddled answers.

 

Thin Red Line A-

[Joel M]

I watched this movie for the first time in a theatre back in the day when I was 13 years old. I really can't remember why at that age my older cousin took me to see it. Maybe we thought it was an epic action film? I really don't remember. The only things that I do remember is that I didn't like it at all, that I didn't fell asleep (quite remarkable in retrospect for 13year old me), a thousand shots of grass and flashbacks from a soldier's wife.

 

I watched it again yesterday after all these years and it blew me away. It may have some breathtaking battle sequences but it's more a film about war than a "war movie", one of the few that really captures the toll war takes on people, no matter how honorable the cause is. I think the antithesis of a horrifying battle taking place in such an idyllic peaceful scenery is brilliant and Mallick makes the most of underlining constantly how much the nature doesn't care about what's happening. The voice overs could seem obvious and pseydo-philosophical new age crap if you see them at a clip out of context but they absolutely work in the movie. The fact that, aside from a few scenes when someone is recalling his past, you can't tell which soldier's voiceover you hear most of the times, gives the movie a unique voice. As we follow and then drop and sometimes finds again each character the voice overs start to blend in one singular thing. It's like a collective narration of all those soldiers and their thoughts are variatons on the same BIG questions that everyone has at some point, even someone illiterate who maybe can't express those heady ideas wonders about mortality or the afterlife or if life has any meaning. Especially those people that were expendable cogs in the machine one step away from death. Or as Sean Penn's character puts it "They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie..." 

 

I'm not a religious person, not even an agnostic. I don't believe in any afterlife and I have low tolerance for pretentious philosophical ramblings. But Mallick here doesn't just spits out pretentious bullshit with pretty words for every teenagers facebook status update. He really uses all his cinematic tools to ground these questions in his story and make you wonder. In the end even if I'm closer to Sean Penn's cynic character than Caviezel's wide eyed optimist, I can get the notion of reaching a higher state of being and embracing the metaphysical at the moment you understand that you are about to die. I believe even someone who thinks that we are just food for maggots the moment we die will ponder when he can see the end coming. This movie f@cked with my head like no other and even if not even 24 hours have passed since I watched it, I'm pretty sure it's one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. I really hope I get the chance to watch it again on the big screen some day because the first time I was too young. I can't get out of my head the words that end the movie. A couple of paradoxical sentences that don't make any sense and simultaneously make all the sense in the world. They are a testament to how Mallick doesn't care about the answers but just to put in words and images all those thoughts we all have but maybe we can't articulate.

 

"Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining."

 

11/10 (for emphasis)

 

ps. About Caviezel not being the protagonist at the start of the project it's true but hardly surprising for Mallick. Adrien Brody supposed to be the main character, but partly because Mallick thought as the shooting progressed that he was miscasted and partly because he just shoots miles and miles of film and then assembles the movie in the editing room, Brody ended up with 5 minutes of screentime and 2 or 3 lines. There's still a not-too-happy interview of Brody about this floating around the web.

[Dementeleus]