The Thin Red Line

[irishScott]

Quite honestly I'm wondering if it's worth my time. I bought this movie due to its ratings and recommendations from a few people. I was told it was the "thinking man's Saving Private Ryan", and being a huge fan of the former I was intrigued. What I got (so far) was a director's stream-of-consciousness musings mixed with the occasional well done combat scene.

IMO this is not a war movie, it's a philosophical work set in the context of WWII; and while that's all well and good it's so disjointed and directionless that I have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on. It's like the movie doesn't care about the war at all. Hell maybe I just wasn't paying attention (or was too busy trying to make sense of the movie's opening musings) but I had to look on wikipedia to know that they were even on Guadalcanal. When they started talking about rocks and air strips I was thinking Iwo Jima. Then they landed on an island with foliage and I was mind-fucked as hell.

But I digress. My main problem with the movie is it's structure. IMO a good movie makes you ask the big questions yourself. The Thin Red Line asks them for you, and if you don't like the current question or don't understand it (and there are plenty of obscure lines that end in question marks), too bad. Movie goes right on to the next one.

And that might all be acceptable, if this wasn't billed as a war movie. This is a movie for philosophy majors. When I think "war movie" I think about the situation and the men/women involved. I also think about the immediate reality of said, and like to be as close to that as I can get, including the big questions they're probably considering. In Saving Private Ryan they didn't need to verbalize their heavy thoughts, you could see it in their faces. From there, I can ask the big questions of my own whilst lying awake at night. This movie has shots of very existential "thoughts" that supposedly describe what the soldiers are thinking, but they make no sense. Somehow I doubt a solider on Guadalcanal was thinking about having very sensually poetic sex with his wife... while he's approaching a fucking machine gun nest and could be killed at any moment.

I could go on with more specific examples, but suffice to say the realism in this movie, aside from a few very well shot combat sequences, is TMK virtually nonexistent.

So back to my original question: I just sat through a 2 hour philosophy discourse. Does TTRL turn into an actual war movie or am I better off popping in Donnie Darko?

 

[eLiu]

Stop now. It never turns into an actual war movie and is just full of bullshit.

Save yourself. I watched it through, and I hurt afterward.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I read the wikipedia article about it after watching it. This really helped me understand why it turned out like it did:

"Post-production

In addition to the cast seen in the final cut of the film, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke also performed, but their scenes were eventually cut. Editor Leslie Jones was on location for five months and rarely saw Malick, who left her to her own devices.[10] After principal photography wrapped, she came back with a five-hour first cut and spent seven months editing, with Thornton contributing three hours of narrative voice-over material.[3][10] It was at this point that editor Billy Weber came on board and they spent 13 months in post-production and the last four months mixing the film, using four Avid machines with a fifth added at one point.[10] There were no preview screenings but several in-house ones, the largest of which was attended by 15 people for marketing executives.[10] The editors faced the challenge of blending footage of veteran actors with less-experienced ones, integrating the many cameos, and the voice-overs. According to Jones, "Malick removed scenes with dialogue whenever possible, with the final film varying greatly from the original concept".[10] Four months after principal photography, Malick invited Toll to a rough cut screening of the film.[7] In December 1998, Toll did the first color correction at the lab prior to the film's release in North America.[7]

The editing also resulted in many of the well-known cast members being on screen for only a brief period: for example, John Travolta and George Clooney's appearances are little more than cameos, yet Clooney's name appears prominently in the marketing of the movie. The unfinished film was screened for the New York press on December 1998 and Adrien Brody attended a screening to find that his originally significant role, "to carry the movie",[11] as he put it, had been reduced to two lines and approximately five minutes of screen time. Malick was upset that the studio screened his unfinished version for critics and Penn ended up helping him in the editing room, shaping the final version.[3] Malick spent three more months and cut 45 additional minutes from the film. The director refused to subject his film to test screenings before delivering his final cut.[12] After Geisler and Roberdeau told their story to Vanity Fair magazine, Medavoy's attorneys declared them in breach of contract and threatened to remove their names from the film unless they agreed to do no future interviews until after the Academy Awards.[2]"

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

I liked it.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: CoinOperatedBoy
I liked it.

 

[PottedMeat]

Was this the movie where Woody Harrelson blows his ass off with a grenade?

I think it ends with the lead guy swimming in the pacific with a bunch of kids or something.

 

[Poulsonator]

Originally posted by: eLiu
Stop now. It never turns into an actual war movie and is just full of bullshit.

Save yourself. I watched it through, and I hurt afterward.

Yep. I saw this piece of shit in the theaters. So disappointed, and so bored out of my skull.

 

[bobross419]

Originally posted by: eLiu
Stop now. It never turns into an actual war movie and is just full of bullshit.

Save yourself.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Poulsonator

Originally posted by: eLiu
Stop now. It never turns into an actual war movie and is just full of bullshit.

Save yourself. I watched it through, and I hurt afterward.

Yep. I saw this piece of shit in the theaters. So disappointed, and so bored out of my skull.

i rented it not long after it was available. i dont remember much other than also being bored to death.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

The bored people were expecting Patton and got Proust.

 

[drinkmorejava]

I always thought that the opening scene was pretty epic, but it was all downhill from there.

 

[AstroManLuca]

If you didn't like the beginning, you won't like the rest. I can understand how some people might like the movie, but I thought it was a piece of shit. I'm amazed you were able to get as far as you did... I fell asleep about an hour or so in. I did end up finishing it, but in retrospect I didn't need to.

 

[soulcougher73]

I did not enjoy this movie either.

 

[KMFJD]

I thought the movie was better than Saving Private Ryan

 

[swbsam]

i haven't seen it but think T.M. is a genius. I was just watching The New World on blu ray yesterday - fantastic movie. In fact, i wish it was even slower with less of a plot than it had, because the abstract moments were brilliant and made me feel like I was living in that time, removed from plot and just watching the sun light bounce off of the sea below.. a very weird feeling

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I read the wikipedia article about it after watching it. This really helped me understand why it turned out like it did:

<overview of post-production hell>

Maybe I don't fully understand the film production process but how the hell does one end up with five hours of footage for (I imagine) what may have been conceived as a three-hour war epic? Didn't someone realize, "Guys, this shooting script is 300 pages long. Shouldn't we lose a hundred pages or so before we even commence shooting?" Isn't it terribly wasteful to shoot all those scenes only to relegate maybe a handful of them to a DVD extra?

 

[swbsam]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I read the wikipedia article about it after watching it. This really helped me understand why it turned out like it did:

<overview of post-production hell>

Maybe I don't fully understand the film production process but how the hell does one end up with five hours of footage for (I imagine) what may have been conceived as a three-hour war epic? Didn't someone realize, "Guys, this shooting script is 300 pages long. Shouldn't we lose a hundred pages or so before we even commence shooting?" Isn't it terribly wasteful to shoot all those scenes only to relegate maybe a handful of them to a DVD extra?

Malick's an experimental director - there are multi minute shots of grass in his movies.

I love his work - Days of Heaven was outstanding, The New World mesmerizing.. But you have to be in the right mood to watch his movies, and know what you're getting into. Some days I like to watch junk like Blade II - it's a personal favorite but, if I was in a blade ii mood I would rather go to the dentist then watch a Malick movie.

 

[torpid]

Stop now. It doesn't change much and if you don't like it yet for the reasons you stated then you probably won't care for the rest. It's not really much like SPR except that they came out the same approximate time and both were about world war 2.