What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night? Sign In. Play trailer Drama History War. Director Terrence Malick. James Jones novel Terrence Malick screenplay. Top credits Director Terrence Malick. See more at IMDbPro. Trailer The Thin Red Line. Clip A Guide to the Films of Terrence Malick. Photos Top cast Edit. Jim Caviezel Pvt. Witt as Pvt. Sean Penn 1st Sgt. Welsh as 1st Sgt. Nick Nolte Lt. Tall as Lt. Kirk Acevedo Pvt. Tella as Pvt.
Simon Billig Lt. Billig as Lt. Mark Boone Junior Pvt. Peale as Pvt. Adrien Brody Cpl. Fife as Cpl. Norman Patrick Brown Pvt. Henry as Pvt. Ben Chaplin Pvt. Bell as Pvt. George Clooney Capt. Bosche as Capt. John Cusack Capt. The camera crouches low in the grass, and as Malick focuses on locusts or blades of grass, we are reminded that a battle like this must have taken place with the soldiers' eyes inches from the ground. The Japanese throughout are totally depersonalized in one crucial scene, their language is not even translated with subtitles ; they aren't seen as enemies so much as necessary antagonists--an expression of nature's compulsion to "contend with itself.
Actors like Sean Penn , John Cusack , Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin find the perfect tone for scenes of a few seconds or a minute, and then are dropped before a rhythm can be established. We get the sense that we are rejoining characters in the middle of interrupted actions. Koteas and Nolte come the closest to creating rounded performances, and Woody Harrelson has a good death scene; actors like John Travolta and George Clooney are onscreen so briefly they don't have time to seem like anything other than guest stars.
The central intelligence in the film doesn't belong to any of the characters, or even to their voice-over philosophies. It belongs to Malick, whose ideas about war are heartfelt but not profound; the questions he asks are inescapable, but one wonders if soldiers in combat ever ask them one guesses they ask themselves what they should do next, and how in the hell they can keep themselves from being shot.
It's as if the film, long in pre-production, drifted away from the Jones novel which was based on Jones' personal combat experience and into a meditation not so much on war, as on film.
Aren't most of the voice-over observations really not about war, but about war films? About their materials and rationales, about why one would make them, and what one would hope to say? Any film that can inspire thoughts like these is worth seeing. But the audience has to finish the work: Malick isn't sure where he's going or what he's saying.
That may be a good thing. If a question has no answer, it is not useful to be supplied with one. Still, one leaves the theater bemused by what seems to be a universal law: While most war films are "anti-war," they are always anti-war from the point of view of the winning side. They say, "War is hell, and we won.
War was hell, and they lost. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. George Clooney as Capt. Woody Harrelson as Sgt. Elias Koteas as Capt. John Cusack as Capt. Adrien Brody as Cpl. Nick Nolte as Lt. According to this EW article , a role was written specifically for him, and sent to him.
Similarly, Viggo Mortensen , Martin Sheen and Jason Patric were all mooted at some point, with Patric apparently largely a studio suggestion. Do you mind if I just take a few shots? He insists on overwriting until it sounds terribly pretentious… and he edits his films in such a way that he cuts everyone out of them… I was put in all sorts of different spots and suddenly my character was not in the scene that I thought I was in, in the editing room.
It was very strange. It completely unbalances everything. And a very emotional scene that I had suddenly became background noise. A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact.
Everyone can find there a personal, emotional or spiritual connection. Those who do generally emerge very moved.
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