The movie A Thin Red Line, directed by Terrence Malick and based on the autobiographical novel of James Jones
(1962), tells the tale of the Charlie Company involved in the battle
around Guadalcanal. Published around the time of Spielberg’s ‘Saving
Private Ryan’, the movie was grosly underrated and most of time seen as
a ‘rip off’ of ‘Saving Private Ryan’. However, when the movie starts,
the difference in approach is right there: the movie ‘A thin red line’
has no pretentions. It’s confusing, particularly because of the
monologues, flashes of the past and even random
images of the flora and fauna and beloved.
Where Spielberg bombs us directly with the violences of war, Malick
slowly builds up the tension: the marines we follow are slowly pulled
into a circle of violence and cruelty of war. The signs slowly appear:
American marines with cut off legs put on display by the Japanese. And
when one of the sergeants finally raises his arms to start the attack
on a hill, it’s like watching the first 15 minutes of ‘Saving Private
Ryan’.
So where’s the difference? Malick effectively uses movie and sound
to build up this story: Spielberg throws in the first 15 minutes of war
and lets the movie end into a typical Hollywood tearjerker.
The actors in Thin Red Line are like anonymous soldiers (American and
Japanes) with seperate motives and actions. Without the heroic bombast
of ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Because at the end, surviving a war is not
about doing heroic things but literally about trying to
save your own life. With some luck the life of the soldier next to you.
That message in this movie is obviously more clear than in
‘Saving Private Ryan’.
No wonder why this movie won’t show up in your super-duper
Dolby Surround cinema theatre. Most likely it will show up in your
local filmhouse. If you ever had to make a choice between ‘Saving
Private Ryan’ and ‘A Thin Red Line’, go for the latter. You don’t
need to see a multimillion dollar movie to learn about the horrors of
war.