Complete Mess

I tend to agree. I think they were high while editing.

I clearly believe this movie should have been better.. The first 40 minutes bored me to tears and it was overall too long. I think if someone edited out about 30-45 minutes of this movie- it could have been great..

6 / 10

2 Words... Terrence Malick... What type of film did you expect? Im not telling you to like it or not, im just being as simple as i can.

I can help you.

This movie is about how we fit into the world as Beings, and how we only question it when the world is ending, crumbling, or coming down around us. Though as beings we are constantly in movement towards death, we don't always realize it, but once we do realize, that's when we become the fundamental kind of being, the one that's most aware and best with itself, because it has a sense of temporality. We understand the past brought us to the present, we can seize the present and control, and though the future holds a definite end, we can meet it under conditions of our own determination and will. Think of the characters in the film and how they meet death. Will they meet it madness or death? In fact, this is the main character's early question in the film, if he will meet death as his mother did.

There is more too of course. The horizon of temporality, which is represented by all the shots of looking upwards, which I think represents the concept of all beings (characters, soldiers) merging their views on the horizon around them.

There is the nature of language in its expression throughout the film. The narration, for example, of different soldiers told in the same tone, and sometimes hard to tell the difference. These soldiers are hard to tell apart physically and audibly, they are replaceable in that regard, but the longer we watch, the more we become invested, it isn't the narration that communicates, but images that communicate the clearest expression. Through this we see absolute expression of language, not the meaningless expression that is passed on from man to man, platitude to platitude, insight to insight, wondering which one it is, why it is language expresses through him differently than it does through another.

This is not pseudo philosophy of course, this is all Martin Heidegger, whom Terrence Malick studied as an undergrad at Harvard. It is easy to call it pseudo or false when it is difficult, but I have to say, go and try to read Heidegger's work, then come back and watch the film. Malick does a great job of bringing the concepts out of the abstract.

Well I agree that it's not exactly coherent but it was intended to be this way. The plot (i.e. the war) is simply and straight-forward, the complexities in the film are the several philosophical ideas. They are presented haphazardly because each character begins to understand more about themselves as the film progresses. There's no central character in the Thin Red Line. This has been my problem with most Hollywood films in recent years. There's so much emphasis on the traditional 3 Act structure these days. If you look at great filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Haneke, Stanley Kubrick etc no one really follows the typical narrative formula. It's very easy to make a film that gives you all the answers and neatly ties everything up with a bow, it's hard to make a film that demands you to think about it.

And I completely disagree with you about the war scenes. I think the war scenes were incoherently edited at times and the most interesting parts of the film are the visuals and the philosophising. Malick's characters are intellects who raise big ideas. When did that become a bad thing?

The war scenes are badly directed, and Malick's depiction of Guadalcanal is woefully inaccurate. It's also a bastardization of the novel. He seemed more intent on filming a National Geographic documentary than a war film. Frankly, the only saving grace is the performances, which are excellent.

~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.