Movie: The Thin Red Line (1998)

So, I watched "The Thin Red Line" again, after, what, 10 years? Got it on DVD. And, once again, I'm both struck by and off-put by the movie. It remains a 170-minute war movie-as-art film. It remains distinctive in many ways -- Terence Malick's marvelous use of silence, slow montage, tracking shots, scenery, color -- all of that. Very much in evidence, and very much using film as a storytelling medium in and of itself.

And yet, the battalion of cameos in it, like every goddamned male actor of that era in that movie...

1. James Caviezel as Pvt. Witt
2. Sean Penn as 1st Sgt. Welsh
3. Adrien Brody as Cpl. Fife
4. Ben Chaplin as Pvt. Bell
5. George Clooney as Capt. Bosche
6. John Cusack as Capt. Gaff
7. Woody Harrelson as Sgt. Keck
8. Elias Koteas as Capt. Staros
9. Nick Nolte as Lt. Col. Tall
10. John C. Reilly as Sgt. Storm
11. John Travolta as Brig. Gen. Quintard
12. Thomas Jane as Pvt. Ash
13. Jared Leto as 2nd. Lt. Whyte
14. Dash Mihok as Pfc. Doll
15. Tim Blake Nelson as Pvt. Tills
16. John Savage as Sgt. McCron
17. Nick Stahl as Pfc. Beade
18. Miranda Otto as Marty Bell

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.

I mean, WTF? It gets distracting -- Oh! There's John Travolta! Hey, there's John Cusack. Oh, shit, there's George Clooney. WTF, is that Jared Leto? Huh, there's John C. Reilly. On and on and on (and on and on). Way, way too many cameos. And it's likely because of Malick's stature (including as a producer), these actors all wanting a piece of that action. Throw in the ones who didn't make the cut, and it's like every fucking actor of that era onscreen.

So, that distracts me a bit (and Clooney's patriarchal little scene is particularly noisome, above and beyond Clooney even showing up in the movie at all), and I think Sean Penn's vastly overrated acting chops are particularly ill-used in the movie (First Sergeant? Says who? He doesn't look that part at all, just offers Method grimaces and his usual expressions throughout it).

The voiceovers, which comprise nearly all of the dialogue in the movie, are also overused, to the point that you can lampoon it pretty easily...

Show scene of waves washing gently on the shore. A lizard scurries between some rocks. There's a coconut being tumbled by the waves.

Till: What is life?

The waves keep tumbling the coconut.

Witt: Who made this ineffable dream?

CUT TO wind softly blowing through palm tree fronds, a slightly cloudy sky.

You run into it over, and over, and over, and over again, and it begins to call attention to itself, and it begins to irritate me. I remember being irritated by it before, and I find it irritates me again.

So, as ever, I'm of two minds with this movie -- on one hand, it manages a masterful visual style, an expansive kind of ebb and flow between action sequences, the humanity and brutality of war, the nuances of violence and victory -- and yet, it also feels incredibly self-indulgent and too full of itself (originally five hours, it was trimmed to 170 minutes -- and you feel every last fucking minute of it, believe me).

And, in the end, what's the moral lesson? What, that war is a terrible thing? No shit. No fucking shit. That Miranda Otto is hot? I dunno, I dunno. It's like with "Schindler's List" -- before that movie, I didn't realize that the Holocaust was a terrible thing (sarcasm, here).

Whyte: What is true? Who is true? How can we know what is what or who is what or what is when when we're here?

CUT TO a monkey climbing a tree. It pauses while eating a piece of fruit to look at something.
CUT TO a tank, broken, rusting, half-buried in the beach.

Witt: Where are you?