Beyond the other side of the thin red line is the snake in the green grass.
By John Pilchard // As far as war movies go, there’s Saving Private Ryan, and then there’s rest. Saving Private Ryan redefined how war movies should be made and that impact can still be felt today. Saving Private Ryan was released in the United States on July 24th 1998. A few months later, that same year, another high-caliber war film was created. Then The Thin Red Line changed how war movies should be made again.
Some call The Thin Red Line the Saving Private Ryan of the Pacific theater. But the two films could not be any more different.
The Formula
War films tend to be story and character driven. The audience will always relate to the character, and sometimes the thrill seekers want to experience the horrors of war from the comfort of their own home. It’s why there will always be a market for them. Moviegoers are able to shrug off the horrors they’ve just witnessed, while actual veterans may disregard the inaccuracies of what they have just seen.
The Sea Of Green
The Thin Red Line, as character-driven as any other war movie, goes out of its way to create a new character for the viewer. This character is not typically addressed within other war movies (maybe with the exception of Apocalypse Now. (But even that’s predominantly a character-driven film)), and it raises a good question as to why it’s not.
The Thin Red Line uses the island of Guadalcanal and turns it into a living, breathing character. Like no other war film before it, the Pacific campaign spoke. The constantly waving green grass engulfs the encroaching soldiers, and hides the enemy within, creating tension and anguish for the characters unfortunate enough to find themselves locked into this situation.
The shots of foliage and wildlife chosen by Terence Malick become pieces of dialogue for this island character. Each caw of a bird, or hoot of a monkey becomes vital bits of information that allow the island to speak. This stands out considering the near-three-hour run time of the movie, and the relative lack of actual dialogue from human characters. The heavy use of narration over seemingly unrelated images also adds to the romanticism and spiritual aspect of The Thin Red Line.
Wars movies carry the same emotional weight with them, divvied out in varying degrees. You can always trace the themes of futility, imminent death, and hopelessness in an already lost cause. This is nothing new. What The Thin Red Line has done differently is respond to those themes by focusing on their polar opposites.
There Is Always the One Guy From the Bronx
If you don’t stop and look around at the world at war, you may miss it. Preoccupation is the second most important theme throughout The Thin Red Line. Pvt. Witt has gone AWOL 6 times, and towards the end if the film, wants nothing more than to live among the indigenous people again. Unfortunately, he is killed and buried on Guadalcanal to rest there for eternity.
For a man with a knack for going AWOL and a disregard for military code and conduct, Pvt. Witt has not lost hope in himself or the soldiers around him. He is a sensitive man, in tune with nature and the island around him. He is the one you expect to be the coward, but he sacrifices himself in the end for the sake of countless amounts of men. Typically when an incompetent leader is in charge, the innocent subordinates pay the ultimate price. However, Pvt. Witts last redeeming action saves the lives of his entire company.
Lt. Col. Tall, played by Nick Nolte, has been passed over for a promotion by the higher ups. He harbors this jealousy by sacrificing his men on a whim. The epitome is of his character rings out with this line, “I’ve waited all my life for this. I’ve worked, slaved, eaten untold buckets of shit to have this opportunity and I don’t intend to give it up now.”
Throughout the entire film, Pvt. Bell keeps having flashbacks to the days before his deployment. These flashbacks show intimate moments between him and his wife. Even as the firefight for the valley is going on, his mind is elsewhere thinking about the one woman he loves. Then she writes him a letter asking for a divorce.
The standard war movie characters are there, but in the end, they don’t really matter. The war will go on, and someone else will eventually take their place.
The Thin Red Line is about war (clearly), but more so, it is about the spirit of man, but most importantly it’s about where humanity resides.
Beyond The Red Line
There are three shots that are worth referencing when it comes to the visual merit of the movie, and what the movie is trying to tell you. It’s trying to tell the viewer everything. Once the first battle on the ridge begins, a young bird is knocked out of its nest, and it begins to writhe on the ground, injured and in pain. Up to this moment, Jared Leto absentmindedly sent two soldiers to their death. People are dying, and ground quaking artillery is exploding near by. Terrence Malick forces the viewer to look at a young bird when war is unfolding in every direction.
Guadalcanal in 1942 meant everything was caught in the crossfire.
A war is erupting around these men, and a snake in the waving green grass startles two formerly staunch soldiers. Soldiers are dying, and the viewer is forced to look at the snake starting at the soldiers for an exacting amount of time.
Woody Harrelson dies, and then a flower wilts in the hands of an unknown soldier.
The Thin Red Line is about nature and how war disrupts more than the lives of men and women. War disrupts the forces that we have to coexist with, even when we refuse to acknowledge that coexistence. Pvt. Witt is trying to live with the indigenous people when the U.S. Army comes to reclaim what is theirs. This examination of natural life amidst the battle for a valley is what The Thin Red Line is really about.
How Many Lives Are You Willing To Spend For This Campaign?
There is a sad level of irony within this film that seeps out of the story, and into real life. Dozen and dozens of soldiers die on screen, quickly and callously. The irony rest within the ensemble cast, Jared Leto is there for a bit, and George Clooney swoops in during the third-act. This is Fight Club level irony. You hired the worlds most recognizable, highest paid actor to play the greatest anti-establishment character ever created?
The level of A-listers in this movie is absurd. And the frequency in which they die is even more absurd. It’s as if Terence Malick knew about the casual nature of war film viewing audiences and wanted to do something about it. There will never be a intimate connection between the reality of war and war films, but Malick wanted to go a step further to make his audience feel loss a little bit more. When Woody Harrelson’s character died by pulling a grenade pin from his belt accidentally, the audience felt that more because, a) it was Woody Harrelson, and b) the viewer didn’t spend that much time with his character. His star power made his death resonate more.
A Coconut In The Sand
War movies place the viewer in the there and now, the living-breathing present is what matters. War movies are the insight into the past one will never know. The Thin Red Line takes the viewer into the philosophical and emotional beyond. It says that the world will go on and war and nature will have to forcibly coexist, until the day that one eradicates the other.
Nature will rebuild faster than humanity ever could.
The Thin Red Line commandeers the eyes and tells the viewer that there are bigger things going on in this world. There are bigger things than the frivolity of human expenditure, bigger things than the entire world at war for the second time, bigger things than abandoning duty, only to be swept up into the system yet again. It’s the journey to these realizations that matter the most.
Sometimes all it takes to realize these things is to come face to face with the snake in the tall green grass.
Maybe all men got one big soul everybody’s a part of, all faces are the same man. – Pvt. Witt