Cinecult: The Thin Red Line

Originally published on the Entertainment page on 28 September 2009.

If you’ve never heard the name Terrance Malick before, there’s probably a good reason. In the past forty years, directors like Clint Eastwood and Francis Ford Coppola, have been involved in dozens of movies, while Malick has only directed a grand total of four. Despite this, among critics and terminal film nerds (like myself), he’s regarded as one of the great auteurs of the age. His films Badlands and Days of Heaven are regarded as some of the best films ever made. Considering this pedigree, if you watch The Thin Red Line, it shouldn’t be hard to understand why he’s so well respected despite his slow gestation time.

The Thin Red Line, despite being nominated for Best Picture has since fallen by the way side. There’s some pretty good reasons for this. First off, this slow-paced, but elegant war film had the misfortune of coming out the same year as one of the biggest action movies of all time: Steven Spielburg’s Saving Private Ryan. Secondly, and probably more importantly, it’s a sprawling, self-indulgent mess. It’s often plodding and it’s covered in scars from being cut and re-cut (and despite this it’s still probably too long). It also doesn’t have one main character—or even a handful of main characters-- that the audience can hold on to. The James Jones novel that the movie is based off of has the same massive cast of characters, but at least the book gives names to the people in it. Roger Ebert describes the movie as “hallucinatory” and that’s about as good of a one word summation of this film as there could be. As we should all know, hallucinations aren’t for everybody.

Despite the rough spots in the movie, there’s still plenty of beauty to be gleaned from this film. The Thin Red Line follows one of the bloodiest battles in American history, which takes place on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. Malick pays just as much attention to the horrors of war as he does the beauty that these battles take place in, and that alone makes this movie an interesting anomolly in the genre.

The dialogue is also fairly wonderful. Admittedly, most of it has no place in a war film (Would a character being shot at really consider the morality of nature? Probably not.), but it can’t be denied that, in and of itself, the writing is beautiful. That’s what most of the film is like and that’s what makes me love it so much. It isn’t quite a visceral war film and it isn’t quite a poem. It doesn’t do either of these things perfectly, but the failure that results is probably more interesting than most movies.

The Thin Red Line isn’t all poetry, though. The action scenes are among the best I’ve ever seen. Unlike the rest of the film, which moves with the swiftness of dream, the action scenes are as tightly plotted and assembled. Combat has a frightening weight that few other movies ever seem to execute. Part of this is because the Japanese aren’t just enemy soldiers, they’re ghosts. They slink out of the forest without a sound, kill something and leave just as quietly. In Saving Private Ryan, the Germans were something we could understand, they were in tanks or behind machine guns. In this case, the enemy is a mystery. How are these men supposed to defeat the enemy if he’s nothing more than a muzzle flash two hundred yards away?

The Thin Red Line isn’t for everyone. As I’ve said, it isn’t perfect and it’s probably the one of the spottiest movies that I would consider “great.” But in between the rough spots are some truly beautiful pieces of film making. If only for these quiet moment Malick’s movie is worth giving a shot. Plus, the loud ones are pretty goddamn good, too.

Image via Google. As usual.

The Thin Red Line

Originally run on 4 May 2009. Illustration by me.

A Review of The Thin Red Line by James Jones.

As war nerd, it was only a matter of time before I began to chew my way through the great American literature on World War II, and with that one of the most critically acclaimed novels to come out of that war: The Thin Red Line. Written by James Jones (who also penned From Here to Eternity) in 1962, the novel follows a hapless band of soldiers in C-For-Charlie as they attempt to clear Guadalcanal, the bloodiest island in the Pacific, of the Imperial Japanese forces. The book was later adapted twice into film, once in 1968 and a second time in 1998. From what I can tell, the second film contains the best passages of the book, without the immense amount of chaff that makes up Jones' novel.

This isn't a criticism of the book, exactly—it's unfair to compare one medium to the other-- but what works for the film is that it's much better paced. Jones' novel is a rambling affair with no obvious rhyme or reason. Presumably, this is Jones' point since in war there's no clear objectives, romanticism, or selfless courage— there's only trying to get through the day. In this way Jones has made a unique war novel, one that is completely detached from the popular myths of the Greatest Generation.

The soldiers of The Thin Red Line aren't John Waynes or Audie Murphys, they're frightened mortals who cuss, retreat, develop pointless grudges, and, occasionally try to have sex with each other. While Jones manages to avoid the sentimentality of WWII, he also makes every person, place, and thing in his book completely unlikable.

The story lacks a central narrator and the reader isn't chained to a single character. What this results in is a story without a spine. It doesn't have distinguishable characters; it doesn't have set pieces, or even character development (unless one gets shot). The Thin Red Line is so generalized that it's almost reductive. The reader isn't given enough time with any character to properly care about him and when he does learn something about a soldier he finds that he isn't just flawed, but the character is a downright, miserable bastard. With the exception of Sergeant Welsh (who reads like he fell out of Catch 22) there's little to be interested in, or to sympathize with. Jones might be trying to make a point about the loss of individuality that occurs in the military, but I'll be damned if I care.

The style is primarily expressed through the viewpoints of about a dozen or so different soldiers. The author never indicates when he shifts from one character's perspective or another, either. Even though this unanchored narrative is what causes most of The Thin Red Line's problems, it's also the most interesting thing about the book. As readers we're left to figure out if these men are liars, crazy, or actually bothering to tell the truth. Jones is one of a select few writers that can shift between several dozen characters' narratives and make it appear seamless. Note to aspiring writers: Steal from this man.

Interesting literary techniques aside, as a novel, it falls short. There is no story, there's just drudgery, and a lot of descriptions of terrain that I can't make any sense out of. The Thin Red Line is a well-constructed book that I'm glad I got out of the way, but there isn't much I can give a shit about in its 500 pages. If it came down to it, I'd rather watch the movie again and spend the rest of my day napping in peace.