Terrence Malick’s war film is moving, patient and occasionally too fond of its own questions. John Toll’s photography and the performances make its wandering worthwhile, though some soldiers barely emerge as people.
The Thin Red Line is a moving, absorbing war film, though its soldiers sometimes speak as if they have been asked to explain all human suffering. Terrence Malick, adapting James Jones’s novel, wants to hear what goes through their minds as well as watch what happens to them. He keeps making room for thoughts that have no practical use to a soldier trying to stay alive. At 171 minutes, it asks for patience, but we recommend giving it that time.
John Toll photographs the natural world with enough care that it becomes difficult to treat the landscape as somewhere for a battle to happen. The light makes us want to keep looking, while the attention to plants and animals makes the soldiers seem less entitled to occupy every frame. We found those images unexpectedly upsetting, because they made the men’s impulse to destroy seem worse. Malick spends time looking at living things that cannot explain themselves in a voiceover.
Jim Caviezel’s Private Robert Witt gives the wandering film someone worth staying with. Caviezel makes Witt’s search for meaning feel sincere, and that sincerity is essential when the writing risks sounding pleased with its own seriousness. Sean Penn as First Sergeant Edward Welsh and Elias Koteas as Captain James Staros help keep the questions attached to recognisable people. Their performances make us want to know more about the men, even when Malick seems ready to move on to another speaker.
Editors Leslie Jones, Billy Weber and Saar Klein let the film pass between voices without making one soldier the permanent centre. Their cutting gives the thoughts room to wander, but it does not always give the people speaking them enough time to become distinct. Some characters remain sketches, and the familiar faces cannot supply histories that the film has not given them. This is the caveat we would put first: if following a group of soldiers means learning exactly who everyone is, the interruptions may become wearing.
Jack Fisk’s production design helps keep the soldiers’ surroundings convincing when the talk becomes lofty, allowing the men to belong to the landscape Toll photographs. Hans Zimmer’s music sustains the feeling across changes of speaker, so a move away from someone need not mean losing our concern for him. It can lend too much importance to an already solemn passage, particularly when the voiceovers are also reaching for profundity. But the music helps us stay with a film that repeatedly interrupts its own story to listen to somebody think.
Malick’s voiceovers do sometimes keep asking questions after the images have made us think of them for ourselves. We wanted him to leave more of those questions unspoken, particularly when the words began to make different men sound alike. But his willingness to let soldiers remain bewildered, without hurrying them towards a useful lesson about courage, is one reason this war film stays with us. Give it an uninterrupted evening, and accept that getting to know every man is not part of the offer.
