The Thin Red Line

Surprised there was no thread for this film before this one.

Well I'm posting this about a year after you, but hey, let's make this thread work.

I really liked this film, even if it wasn't quite a masterpiece. I loved the ambition of its philosophical ideas. The main ideas I got from the film were: - Why does nature fight itself (especially with the Eden-like scenario at the beginning contrasted to war) - Why does love have to die and be consumed by hate.

- Themes of brotherhood? How it can in some cases be destroyed (the Captain who cares about the troops is sent away by a man who only cares about winning, thus showing war destroying our relationships with other people), but then also sometimes perseveres (eg. Sean Penn's character feels he's been very touched by the actions of Jim Caviezel's character by the end of the film).

- Dehumanisation: the enemy is completely dehumanised and the process of war causes the soldiers to be dehumanised too (some start to feel numb, they're generally not truly cared for by their commanders etc.)

It was also beautifully shot (of course, with it being a Terrence Malick film) and I found it emotional - especially when people were dying (either Japanese or characters) and generally when a battle took place.

However, I feel at 3 hours it could have perhaps been edited down a little, sometimes it was a little pretentious (there were a couple of points when I was thinking 'What the hell are you saying...') and almost had too many random ideas it didn't really develop much, it was almost overwhelming (although perhaps that was intentional, but in my view that kept it from being a masterpiece since it became quite difficult to find out what the film was really saying at points). Also, the endless small roles that famous actors took became a little distracting (there was a point where every 5 minutes, I'd think - 'Wow, this guy's in the film!'). The worst offendor was George Clooney, who was in the film for a minute at most (and near the end), and his presence and me recognising him distracted from what was otherwise a very powerful end to the film (with a fantastic voiceover from Sean Penn). Regardless, I still like it a lot due to its ambition, its philosophical nature and how emotional I ended up finding it.

Um...I apologise for such a long post haha.