'The Thin Red Line': Beauty and Destruction in Pacific Battle
By JANET MASLIN
A thrilling sense of déjà vu accompanies the lush Edenic images that provide "The Thin Red Line" with its prologue in paradise.
Even if they could be watched without knowledge of their provenance, they would be instantly identifiable as the work of Terrence Malick, whose 1970's "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven" were the most beautiful and elusive films of their time. Malick's subsequent two decades in cinema limbo may have turned him into a figure of hype-inviting mystery, but it's immediately obvious that they have not dimmed his visual genius. It's as if a familiar voice had never left off speaking as, at long last, Malick's huge new opus begins.
His intoxication with natural beauty, fused so palpably and strangely with the psychic sleepwalking of his human characters, remains exactly as it was. So does the innate momentousness that has always come so easily to Malick's filmmaking. Here is a visceral reminder of all that made his past work so hauntingly majestic, even if this movie's difficulties will soon announce themselves with equal clarity. Intermittently brilliant as it is, "The Thin Red Line" shows why being a great film director and directing a great film are not the same.
Having envisioned an adaptation of James Jones's famous Guadalcanal novel since at least 1988, Malick has had time to drift far afield of his original idea and into something hazier. Though its starting point was a book full of gut reactions and detailed particulars, Malick has moved the material to a different plane. Disjointed poetic effects and ravishing physical beauty now supplant the nuts and bolts of wartime experience, even if this film -- like "Saving Private Ryan," with which it happens so bizarrely to overlap -- depicts a military landing on a beach and a terrifying assault on a hillside bunker. For all their surface similarities, Steven Spielberg's film was about character and Malick's is about spirit.
As "The Thin Red Line" contemplates mankind's self-destructiveness, the oneness of a company of soldiers, the rape of nature and the emptiness of Pyrrhic victory on the battlefield, it leaves behind any ordinary opportunities for individuals to emerge from the fray.
Actors here, whether famous or unknown, are concealed behind helmets and grime as they move -- often wordlessly -- through the initially unspoiled landscape of this Pacific island. As filmed magnificently by John Toll (with the Daintree rain forest in Queensland, Australia, doubling for the actual site), "The Thin Red Line" seems to capture every blade of grass gloriously while also reminding the audience over two and three-quarter hours how very many blades of grass are here. Though the United States-Japanese battle played out here was one of pivotal importance during World War II, its strategic value is not really the heart of the matter here. Indeed, the fury of battle often fades away as this film's indistinct principals venture into their own private thoughts.
Hence the married man (Ben Chaplin) who faces battle thinking of his bride and reciting in typically dreamy voice-over: "Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. If I go first I'll wait for you on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now." Malick can accompany even the most sentimental reveries with lofty phrasings and lovely imagery, like this man's visions of his sweetheart in summer dresses. She has purity, sensuality and lightness that would be rare in any film.
"The Thin Red Line" will as easily fascinate those attuned to Malick's artistry as it disappoints anyone in search of a plot. For all the marquee power of its stellar cast and the story's potential for high drama, remarkably little happens. As in "Saving Private Ryan," violence erupts with shocking randomness for soldiers at the battle site, but it is interspersed with meditative passages, glimpses of the island's indigenous life, and near-wordless passages propelled by the eloquent forboding of Hans Zimmer's score. The way light filters through the canopy of the rain forest means at least as much here as the specifics of battle.
Nick Nolte, giving yet another ferocious performance in his own personal banner year (he can be seen to devastating effect in next week's "Affliction"), joins Sean Penn, Elias Koteas and Woody Harrelson (whose death scene here is among the film's most accessible, wrenching moments) as stars who manage to emerge with strong personalities intact. But no one here has a role with much continuity, since the film's editing shows off the performers to such poor advantage. "The Thin Red Line" is one more film that could have been helped by excising repetition and focusing performances, but it wanders almost randomly instead. The heart-piercing moments that punctuate its rambling are glimpses of what a tighter film might have been.
Among the unfamiliar actors in a position to make their marks here, James Caviezel supplies a handsome, beatific countenance to suit his character's fervent meditations on flawed humanity. ("How did we lose the good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered. Careless. What's keeping us from reaching out, touching the glory?") Red-haired Dash Mihok, as the private named Doll, provides the film's strongest visual sense of battlefield chaos. And Adrien Brody plays one of the novel's major figures, Corporal Fife, virtually without a peep. Like the film's leading Johns -- Cusack as a Captain, Savage as a crazed Sergeant and Travolta, believe it or not, as a brigadier general -- he simply gets lost in the hubbub that surrounds him.
The glorious Melanesian scenes that provide both the film's divine serenity (and its signs of destruction) amount to nature photography as exquisite as it is redundant. Brilliantly colored birds, greenery in silhouette, shards of light and idyllic underwater swimming -- not to mention a soundtrack layered with sounds of the rain forest -- are among reasons to admire "The Thin Red Line" despite its habits of meandering. As was surely Malick's intent, those sensations matter as much as life or death here, to the point where they are inextricably intertwined. He brings that simple, essential message on his long-overdue return.
"The Thin Red Line" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity and tough violence on the battlefield.
