Nearly every award season has a war film in the mix of contenders. This year,All Quiet on the Western Frontmade impressive sweeps and years past have given us the likes ofDunkirk,Apocalypse Now,The Hurt Locker, and1917, to name very few among many, but one particular year saw itself graced by two of the best war films of all time. In 1998,Steven Spielberg’sSaving Private Ryanpremiered to deserved and enduring praise, but its contemporary, though faded into unjust obscurity for far too many, was not only thebetter war filmof 1998; it’s the greatest war film of all time —The Thin Red Line.
The Thin Red Line, written and directed by the elusive auteurTerrence Malick, is a war film unlike any other. Based on the 1962 novel of the same name, the film centers on the Battle of Mount Austen during the Guadalcanal Campaign of World War II. Boasting ascore byHans Zimmer(who begins the film with a piercingly gorgeous arrangement of “Jisas Yu Holem Hand Blong Mi” by The Choir of All Saints of Melanesia),The Thin Red Lineis more poem than war epic, and its raw, intimate depiction of death demands a deeper look.
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‘The Thin Red Line’ Has an Absolutely Stacked Cast
If you were to go into the film without having scoured IMDb beforehand, you’d be ill-prepared for the behemoth of a roster headed your way. During the first ten minutes ofThe Thin Red Line, which has the feel of an entire film in and of itself, you meet only two named characters: Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) and Private Train (John Dee Smith). It’s 1942, and the two privates of the United States Army have gone AWOL from their unit during World War II. Caviezel, most known today for portraying Jesus Christ inMel Gibson’sThe Passion of the Christ, is the closest thing the film has to a central protagonist in an otherwise ensemble-led narrative. As Private Witt, who has chosen to spend his desertion living in brief peace among the people of the South Pacific’s Melanesian islands, Caviezel sets the tone as a soft-spoken, gentle ponderer amidst the violent circumstance of war.
Eventually, the privates are tracked down and retrieved by a U.S. troopship, and the rest of the cast begins to roll in. Upon capture, Private Witt is interrogated by First Sergeant Welsh, who is played bySean Pennin one of many masterclass turns. “You’re just another mouth for me to feed.” Welsh bites at Witt, scolding him for yet another foul in his six years with the Army. The two parry back and forth in a game of careful jabs at the other’s character. In a self-proclaimed act of mercy, Welsh assigns Witt to a disciplinary outfit to serve as a stretcher-bearer, taking care of the wounded of C Company. The unit is on its way to the island of Guadalcanal with the specific intent of securing Henderson Field, seizing control of the island from Japanese forces, and blocking their main access route to Australia.
C Company carries the bulk ofThe Thin Red Line’s heavy hitters. After the tense exchange between Caviezel and Penn, the rest of the squad begins to roll out.John Travolta,Nick Nolte, andJohn Cusacktake their turns at stealing the screen. There’sElias KoteasandWoody Harrelson, each fully prepared to deliver utter heartbreak in some of the best of their careers, and the list goes on.Adrien Brody,Jared Leto,John C. Reilly,Tim Blake Nelson, and evenGeorge Clooneyround out the ensemble that doesn’t end there.
The Poetry of ‘The Thin Red Line’s Post-Production
“We’ll fix it in post,” a common turn-of-phrase on film sets, is generally accepted as an omen of doom, indicating issues during production that can hopefully be reconciled during the editing phase. Terrence Malick has a touch of infamy in this area, known for often frequently implementing sweeping changes to his films in post-production. While no details surroundingThe Thin Red Line’s timeline of changes come from Malick himself (he had a clause in his contract that required him to do no press), interviews and commentary from the cast and crew tell us major shift occurred in the edit, transitioning the film from what was likely a more traditionally structured narrative to the more meandering melody that it is.
In a1999 interview with Entertainment Weekly, actor John Cusack provided invaluable insight into the methodology behind Malick’s unique, if not manic, process. “I don’t know if this will make sense the way a normal film does,” Cusack told EW. “Terry’s wildly intuitive and impressionistic. He wrote a script based on the novel, and he’s making a film based on the script, but he’s not shooting the script. He’s shooting the essence of the script, and he’s also shooting the movie that’s up there on this hill. He’s trying to transcend the book and the script and himself.”
Perhaps the most scathing condemnation of Malick’s ways came from one ofThe Thin Red Linesvery own soldiers. Adrien Brody, apparently blindsided by thereduction of his role, plays a rather small part compared to others in the ensemble. “Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film,” Brody revealed in a2001 interview with The Independent. He had already undergone boot camp and the entirety of the film’s long, grueling shoot before he learned of the film’s edits. “I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything … in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I’d already begun press for a film that I wasn’t really in.”
Somewhere along the way, the plan in Malick’s mind drifted away from a Hollywood war epic more closely aligned with the novel and toward an emotional bath of poetic narration unlike any of its kind.
With ‘The Thin Red Line,’ Terrence Malick Tells the Story He Wants to Tell
Coming off his two prior films,Badlandsin 1973 andDays of Heavenin 1978, Malick opted for a staggering twenty-year hiatus before finally returning withThe Thin Red Line. It’s the Criterion Collection’s DVD extras that give the best insight into Malick’s mission. In the release’s commentary, editorLeslie Jonesrecalled Malick “wondering why he was [making] this movie.” Co-editorSaar Kleinhad similar feelings, saying that for Malick, shooting the war sequences “just kind of felt that wasn’t directing,” revealing that Malick even wished he could have someone else shoot the war parts so that he could focus on directing the actors more intimately. “He doesn’t like war. He’s not an action director,” Jones elaborated. “He would say, ‘I don’t know how to direct a battle scene. What am I doing?’ and you can see what he turned the movie into.”
As the film begins and the score starts to swell, the first figure to appear is not a soldier, but a crocodile. From here, Malick never lets go of nature as the centerpiece ofThe Thin Red Line. Life in and around the violence of war consistently receives special attention, with the camera tilting up toward the canopies of trees or lingering on a fluttering bird while a character ponders on mortality. It’s a breed of gentleness never before, and maybe never again, seen in a war film, and it’s something that only Terrence Malick could have conjured.
