BFI Modern Classics: The Thin Red Line

by J.D. Lafrance

J.D. Lafrance , a film critic from Canada, is currently researching and writing a book on the films of Michael Mann. He writes weekly DVD reviews for the online film magazine WhatDVD and has a regular column, entitled "Cinematic Pleasures," for the online pop culture magazine, Erasing Clouds.

Precious few books have been written about reclusive filmmaker Terrence Malick and his films. So little factual information is known about the man, so when a new book is published, there is a certain amount of anticipation by fans of his work. Michel Chion has written a book under the BFI Modern Classics banner that attempts to decipher many of the mysteries and enigmas that surround Malick’s 1998 film, The Thin Red Line. An adaptation of James Jones’ novel about the battle for the Guadalcanal during World War II, Malick’s film is a thoughtful meditation on the nature of war, death and the environment to name but only a few themes that this ambitious movie examines.

Chion recognizes that the film has no beginning or ending and therefore an analysis of the movie can begin at any point, which is exactly what he does as he makes an excellent observation about the jaded character of First Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn): “But perhaps Welsh has rediscovered that spark of consciousness and anxiety that had been extinguished within him. Perhaps the death of an individual is what allows the flame to move from one to another.”

He argues that Malick’s film places animals, the environment and human beings on the same scale—a very unique concept as most movies put an emphasis on one group over another. Chion illustrates the unusual approach that The Thin Red Line takes on its subject matter. Characters pontificate about life and death and love and hate in “erratic, fragmented interior monologues” that embody “mysterious relationships created by the way shots are cut together, in the contrast between small details and big events.”

Malick’s previous two movies, Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) are briefly examined and how the filmmaker’s background (what is known, anyways) informed these films, specifically, the atomic age of the 1950s and the “atmosphere of violence” that he encountered growing up in Texas.

Chion also points out the disorienting effect Malick creates by juxtaposing big name stars, like John Travolta and George Clooney, with lesser known ones, like Jim Cavaziel and Adrien Brody (who were relative unknowns at the time), in primary and secondary roles. “For the viewer this has a disturbing effect of mixing up identities and making roles relatively interchangeable.” Some character’s names are never mentioned and this forces the viewer to pay extra attention to the faces of the characters, their actions and what they say.

There are several themes that run throughout Malick’s movies and Chion does a good job of identifying what they are and then analyzing them. For example, he examines the isolation that the protagonists in his movies experience. Many characters in The Thin Red Line are either shown to be alone in a shot or through voiceover narration. Direct conflict between characters is also avoided. Even the big showdown between Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) and Lt. Col. Tall (Nick Nolte) is done over the phone. Both Private Witt (Cavaziel) and Welsh are solitary figures alone with their thoughts—Witt with his notion of another world, a paradise waiting for him, and Welsh with his cynical view that the war is only about property and nothing else.

Chion’s book is an excellent primer for Malick’s challenging movie. Newcomers to his cinema are given a thumbnail sketch of the filmmaker and his body of work and major themes. Chion does not just analyze The Thin Red Line; he also identifies its structure and breaks it down into five separate sections. At one point in the book, he even deciphers what the Japanese soldiers say. His writing style is clear and concise and acts as the perfect companion piece to this important movie.