Thin Red Line is #1

[Neutral Party]

From previous postings I know that most of you guys hate TTRL. But just to stir things up (and because I'm bored waiting) here is what British movie mag "UNCUT" had to say about it.

" With his return to film making after a twenty year absence, legendary director Terrence Malick created a unique and extraordinary masterpiece. Using the American efforts to retake the Pacific island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese during WWII as a backdrop, Malick's film was a haunting, hallucinatory meditation on the nature of death; lyrical, transcendental and deeply moving. At its centre were towering performances from Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack and Elias Koteas, struggling to find honour, meaning and humanity in the chaos and random horror of war. Perhaps the finest study of men and dying ever made."

Strong stuff. I hope you all now admit that while you may know the air speed of a european swallow and what a nahvertatishoosnotter is, you don't know **** about movies.

Joe

[Guest Capt_Manieri]

Ummmmmmm.......huh????

[SS_PanzerLeader]

That movie sucked ass !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

------------------

SS_PanzerLeader....out

[This message has been edited by SS_PanzerLeader (edited 01-18-2000).]

[Compassion]

Hi there, I havea degree in film production, so I guess that aside from being able to tell you how to pick out the discrepencies of the Tiger in Saving Private Ryan and tell you what it started life as, I guess I know a little more than **** about both film and film criticism. By training I can tell you why some elements work and some don't in a movie, but that doesn't make mine... or some critic's opinion on whether a movie is any good or not any more important or convincing than a paying patron.

I often disagree with people on why a movie is good or bad (and I say movie becasue I think that peopel that are always going on about "Cinema" and "Film" are just so annoying), but their opinion on the goodness or badness is theirs alone and as valid as anyone elses.

Of course if someone disagrees with me they are simply wrong, but that has nothing to do with movies.

[Goanna]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>. . . haunting, hallucinatory meditation on the nature of death; lyrical, transcendental and deeply moving<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Certainly a little rich for the Captain's blood, however for the colonial perspective on this movie I will add, since I only recently saw the film as well:

Typically, if you are going to attempt this type of personal psychological perspective on war it helps to do a bit of character development (al a Apocalypse Now). So, either Malik or the editor working on the film should have left a fair bit of the film that was obviously chooped off the front of the reel. The only character that I remember that we get a sense of their motivation is Nick Nolte, who obviously wants his full bird and is set to impress a general, who is unconvincingly portrayed by John Travolta. Perhaps roles should have been reversed.

In a word to answer this thread - bollocks

------------------

desert rat wannabe

[This message has been edited by Goanna (edited 01-18-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Goanna (edited 01-18-2000).]

[SS_PanzerLeader]

Hi

While I dont have a degree in film production, I did just take a film which in whcih I got an A so I know a little (very little compared to anyone in the industry) about the techniques etc involved in filmaking and editing. Although I'm by no means an authority I feel I can appreciate what goes into film composition from a more technical angle. Yet in regards to all the wonderful techniques of editing lighting and so on and so forth the end result can still be a ****ty movie - hence "the thin red line". It should've been called "the long white line" because it was a neverending venture down a boring highway. His use of the montage style format filmwide rather than just in individual scenes left alot of us scratching our heads going WTF? I only rented this on video and I felt ripped off for a buck, I'm sure glad I wasn't unfortunate enough to have to sit through it in the theatre

------------------

SS_PanzerLeader....out

[This message has been edited by SS_PanzerLeader (edited 01-18-2000).]

[killmore]

Guys it was simply another OSCAR movie. And most of these are only loved by critics!

[SS_PanzerLeader]

Yah an Most critics got sugar in their tank :-P

Wasn't referring to you there compassion

[This message has been edited by SS_PanzerLeader (edited 01-18-2000).]

[Guest Tom punkrawk]

I personally liked the movie. Everyone bitched that there wasn't enough fighting, well damn, the war wasn't just fighting.

If anyone has ever read the book "The Thin Red Line", you'd know they aren't fighting in half the book, just sitting around.

Aftere I read the book I was slightly disapointed w/ the movie although they said later they decided to only use some ideas for the book and then make the rest up on thier own. If this wasn't the case, they would have done a ****ty job recreating the book. Hell Witt doesn't even die in the book.

If you you want to know the characters more, read the first half of the book. I remember reading of all the complaints about how the characters in the movie go off talking about nothing and they do that emensly(i doubt I spelled that right,but you get the idea)in the book. Everytime one of them goes off anlyzing this and that in his head.

I don't know blah blah blah That's just my opinion. Sorry my spelling sucks, hope you were able to understand it...

[Xavier]

I like TTRL even if it's not a pure war movie. I find the approach is original. There are some good unusual themes in this movie like fear before attack, post fight trauma...

Saving Private Ryan is funny, very hollywood. But for me all that is after the landing scene(the better war scene I think) is not always very serious.It's more something like "the seven mercenaries in normandy".

1/Sorry there is no sheep in normandy(yes,the movie was filmed in Irland where the extra are less expensive!).

2/No Tiger were engaged in the first days of D-day because german HQG still thought it was a diversion.

3/why CM doesn't modelize these famous common weapon like the explosive socks or the mortar shell uses as a grenades ?

4/The progression of german soldiers in the town is all but realistic: two columns, 2 meters between each guy...

But I agree SPRyan is a great movie, a great show.

[Richard III]

Well, I posted this link before, but in case anyone missed my favorite review of this film here it is: Thin Red Line Review

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS in this review. Don't read it if you haven't seen the film and wish to.

[Guest John Pender]

"stumbled on for yet another half hour like a meth addict with a spear through his head"

Lol, thats funny Richard

Take care

John

[johnma]

I liked "The Thin Red Line": its point (I think) is that in the end war is a defeat for every man.

[Eridani]

Why should anyone take someone elses opinion into account when determining weather or not a movie is good? Why is the movie good simply because some critic says it is?

The success of a movie is registered by the number of audience members it turns, not the number of stars or reviews it gets...

just my personal feelings...

-EridanMan

[Zamo]

I have read a lot of books and seen a lot of movies and while I enjoyed the book, I found this movie adaptation to be the absolute worst piece of self-indulgent trip Hollywood has ever produced. I mean that litterally. This was the only movie I have ever felt like walking out on. Sadistically I stayed, I wish I hadn't. Some of the combat scenes were good, but that doesn't come close to holding up the idiotically surrealistic pompitude that meanders wistfully throughout the rest of the ordeal. If he was trying to recreate the hell of war, he sure succeeded, because just like some guy caught in the open during an artillery barrage, I spent most of the movie wishing with every fiber of my being that I was somewhere else...

My two cents....Zamo

[sage]

Well.

I personally have both TTRL and SPR on DVD. And think they are both excellent movies. SPR has been done to death, although I disagree with some of the historicaly criticisms; for example Xavier notes the column of infantry behind the tank would be unrealistic. But OTOH, on the tactical level, I am sure exactly that kind of dumb decision happened from time to time. Truth is stranger than fiction can ever hope to be.

Now. TTRL is a long movie. It is also a very ambiguous movie that studies war with ambivalence and curiousity. There are strange moments of clarity (think of Witt's run through the jungle or the soldiers popping out of the grass to fire a few shots).

There *is* character development, and it is relatively close to the book, if you don't mind that some of the characters have been combined into composites and the like (pretty common). Additionally, literary conventions have been replaced by film conventions; the voice-overs are a good example of this. Where these concepts are communicated one way in the book, they are communicated another way in the movie. Doing this successfully is very difficult.

The fact that TTRL is long and rambling doesn't bother me. So is Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago. They are still good movies. TTRL *is* a critics movie, if by that you mean a difficult movie to enjoy. I drink scotches that are also difficult to enjoy -- but they are still very good. The in TTRL cinematography is nothing short of miraculous, the soundtrack (which, strangely enough, I am listening to right now) is one of the best ever written (IMHO); and most importantly, I feel that the slow (glacial) pacing of the movie and its refusal to work with standard narative conventions works in the movie's favor. I think that despite "plot" differences from the book, the movie managed to capture the feel (pacing, among other things) of the book utterly.

My impression is that a lot of the people who didn't like TTRL (though by no means all) are more into "instant gratification media." You know, not having to wait around while the camera dwells on something irrelevant and "artsy." Finally, I do agree with a number of the criticisms level against it: the cameos are distracting and add nothing; it, at times, crosses the line to pretentious; at times the different narrative threads are not as well balanced as they could be. And so forth. But, I think that pushing boundaries like that is the sign of someone with a vision. Maybe it's not always successful, but if it doesn't get done than cinema (or game design or cooking or poetry or whatever) will just stagnate.

I enjoy movies like Conan or Navy Seals where you don't have to wait around for **** to happen, too. To complete the analogy, I drink scotches that are easy to enjoy as well.

Well. That "stumbled on for yet another half hour like a meth addict with a spear through his head."

Sage

[This message has been edited by sage (edited 01-18-2000).]

[sage]

Eridani -- by that method of judgement, "Titanic" was the best movie ever (or at least the most successful). While it certainly was in $$$ terms, I have difficulty in believing Leonardo de Crappio could ever be in anything that was successful in anything other than monetary terms. I would hope there might be a few other ways to definte success.

Sage

[Eridani]

Point taken...

Then A good movie for me is a movie that turns me... that I enjoy...

the point is, I don't give a cr*p what the critics or anyone else thinks, and neither should anyone else when they decide whether or not a movie is good.

-EridanMan

[Compassion]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SS_PanzerLeader:

Yah an Most critics got sugar in their tank :-P

Wasn't referring to you there compassion

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No no, see Im not a critic... Just critical .

It's a fine line between clever and.... er... stupid?

[Guest Paul Roberts]

I think a lot of people went into TTRL expecting to see "Saving Private Ryan in the Pacific," and were duly disappointed. For myself, having read James Jones' book some time before I heard about the movie, I think I went in expecting something different. I was actually pretty satisfied with Malick's treatment of the book, and I thought that most of Jones' ideas made it in.

Of course, Jones' book is not a typical war novel any more than TTRL is a typical war movie. Perhaps there should have been a disclaimer on the poster: "Warning--Slow Content."

[Los]

I think the true tragedy of TTRL is that it has little to do with the book, which was one of the finest pieces of comnbat literature ever written. (OTOH maybe that's a good thing)

I can only liken it to Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, a movie while arguably OK in it's own right, which bears little more than a cosmetic appearance to Heinleins book.(But which could have been great had it even half way followed the book.)

WHat I did like about TTRL, if you splice out the C for Charlie's first contact with the Japanese, and the confusing situation that Stein finds himself in, not knowing where the enemy is, getting his chops busted on the radio, and his company looking to him for guidance, that was good.

But if you read the book, (And those of you who haven't, owe it to yourselves), then you had to be disappointed at how nearly everything about (for instance) 1Sgt Welch's mad personality was left out. Nearly every character was a cardboard representation of himself, when it didn't need to be that way. He could have spliced out the thirty minutes of hore**** in the actually developing the characters and actually giving the viewers a reason to keep watching.

I guess my point is this...It's not like there's very many opportunities to make a good WW2 movie so when the resources are committed to make one, don't piss it away trying to make some bull**** and obscure point that suits only yourself as the director and get on with making a damn war movie.

Los

Los

[MarkEzra]

James Jones wrote a great book...you guys should read it. It's called "A Thin Red Line". It tells the story of ordinary American GI's dealing with the terrible stress of combat. Mr Jones was himself a combat vet and knows where of he speaks. Many WW2 vets have appaulded his work for both sensitivity and accuracy.

Steven Malick has directed a film called a Thin Red Line. It's all about what Malick thinks that James Jones thought. He Hasn't bothered to consult Jones' notes, friends nor combat vets from THAT war.

I want to the movies and saw The Thin Red Line. I walked out in under an hour. I headed straight for a book store...Guess what I bought...

[Guest coolguy101]

This is what I think: (wow I actually can think )

TTRL was made to get the point across about what men in combat go through phscologicaly. It did an average job at that. The only thing I really hated about the movie was the fact that that one dude from E.R. was in it.

SPR was made to show how men act in combat and what they feel about their duties as soldiers. Thats probally why they chose a rescue mission because people would start thinking it's BS if the soldiers hated every mission but the one they chose got people thinking is the Private really worth it.

SPR is my all time favorite movie.

This is how I always viewed the two types of movies.

Peace

coolguy101

------------------

Visit my World War 2 Website:

http://www.angelfire.com/md/wars/index.html

[bauhaus]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by johnma:

I liked "The Thin Red Line": its point (I think) is that in the end war is a defeat for every man. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But it was still boring. Let's see, cut out the 2-3 dozen shots of pretty animals and low angle views looking up into the treetops you might have a movie half as long. Give it a story line or let us at least into some more of the characters you might make it somewhat interesting.

To me the movie was trying to be too much like Apocalypse Now, minus the weirdness. To me that is a classic.

Until then TTRL is three hours of whispering and treeshots. If I want that, I'll go into the woods with my camera and talk to myself. I couldn't stay awake throught the movie to actually see if there was a message.

[Renaud]

I think TTRL could have benefited from at least 1 hour's worth left on the cutting room floor. There were simply too many minutes (hours?) of long panning shots of grass, dirt, the sky, etc. This is the kind of thing can be done well (see Akira Kurosawa's RAN for instance), but in this case it turned out to be merely agonizingly long shots of leaves and the sky.

However I thought the combat scenes and the lead up to and from those scenes were fantastic...equal or superior to SPR. The fight through the tall grass up the hills to that final rocky crest followed by the close combat. The cuts to the japanese perspective were fantastic too. I would like to get a digital video editing system and create my own version from the DVD master. I could edit myself a GREAT movie I tell you (the pointless john travolta cameo would dissappear for instance).

-Ren