I just watched The Thin Red Line on DVD for the first time since I saw it in the theater in 1998. When I saw it in 98, I did not like it all that much. Now, after having grown mentally, especially film wise since then (I am young here people!) TRL is a masterpiece in my mind.

The biggest problem I had in 98 was that it was too hard to tell who the hell was talking throughout the film. The narratives were too hard to put to a face, a character, the voices and people sounded the same. With DVD, one can turn on the ol' English Subtitles addition, and can easily tell who is speaking, and what they are saying. These parts seemed long, and boring in 98, they did not now. This is not your average war film. It is about personal wars, God, nature, it is about so many things. If you did not like the film but feel like it has somtehing to it I urge you to rent the DVD and turn on the Eng Subt. It felt like I was watching a brand new film. The score now seemed to match even better with the emotions on screen, and the flashbacks now matched with the narrator, for what he is saying is reflecting the entire film, not just that flashabck.

Now onto seomthing else Red Planet. I viewed this simple yet entertainging film as well. M2M was crap. It tried to be complex and deep when it was nothing but crap. Red Planet was nothing but simple 50s sci-fi esque get-out-of-a-situtation entertainment, for that I regard it as much better than M2M and the SCORE worked with Red Planet. Whereas with M2M you all know how it is, un less for some odd reason you liked it like few do.

This boils down on opinion. This is mine, I am right in my mind, and right in general SO please no M2M is great and you suck stuff like before. It is not worth debating.

TRL is. It is a flat out MASTERPIECE that is hard to get into. It feels like 2 films in one, and for me the subtitles fixed that problem. I urge you to see it again. It was amazing, and is now one of the best films ever in my opinion. With one of the best scores. It DID seem to drag the first time, but see it again, understand the goal of the film, it is not just another LETS SHOW HOW BAD WAR IS cliche crap fest like SPR and most all war films out there, it is different and challenging.

[Message edited by Kross on 04-08-2001]

I do agree with you on M2M, a terrible waste of film. It did start off somewhat promising but quickly tapered to a dull uninspired ending. Morricone's score however was great and too bad it had to be wasted on the film. I didn't see Red Planet but from what I've heard of Revell's score I can live without it.

Of course these are my humble opinions.

SPR is all about shock. Nothing more.

There are many films, not just Speilberg who have paid tribute or borrowed from Kurosawa.

I personally don't believe Saving Private Ryan was meant to show that war wasn't worth it. That was not the message I got from it nor was it the message most people I've talked to thought the film was trying to deliver. I thought the main characters in the film were developed enough, sometimes you can go into overkill with too much emphesis on plot and character which is what I felt TRL did. The film was meant to focus on the American side of the war, which I have no problem with. Many war films have been made that show the side of each country fighting.

I guess it comes down to this...SPR is all emotions, nothing more. Emotions will not change a thing. Mentally, TRL beats the heck outta SPR. SPR is a cheap and shallow shockfest, like it or not, thats what it is folks, and such films will not change people on war.

dave

Oh yeah one more thing...Kross before you tell us what war is and what heroics is maybe you should experience both of them. I'm not putting you down, but this is one thing I am sure not many of us have experienced. And is very hard to say what the real thing is like...expecialy when your only frame of reference is a movie.

quote:

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This is SPR...War is ugly, Show it as vivid as possibly for 20 minutes, then no plot at all, no character, nothing. Just shock...

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and you have missed the entire point of
Saving Private Ryan. To say there is no character is ludicrous. Look at Upham's cowardice. Hanks' character has oodles of character development, as does the Matt Damon title character. No, it's not historically correct (as the status of "fiction" might indicate), but it's about the cold hard truth of war.

Thin Red Line did NOT do anything for me. For one thing, no character is really there for any length of time other than Caviezel's death-obsessed one, and John Cusack's character. The rest are just there to be cameos. fleeting. no backstories, no plot. a fight or two.
hallucinated-sounding voiceovers.
beautiful photography and music though.

cheers.

TRL has nothing to do with SPR. The first is a clear cry against the insanity of war and the militaries, while the second praises it.

As for RED PLANET is by far one of the most stupid sci-fi movies ever made. Plain and simple. And the score... did I say score? More like someone spaking the keyboard with a dead cat.

But I've heard there are some people who like this kind of crap.

TRL seemed a bit confused...and from what I've read about Malick filming this movie I'm not surprised. It suffers from continuity problems...and too many interior monologues that lose their character focus into the movie. On the plus side the movie was visually engaging, but more so on an emotional level.

SPR, was more a visual marvel, drawing you into war like never before.But for me...it seemed to lack on an emotional level...shock treatment, as mentioned above, seems more appropriate. I'm not overly fond of Spielberg and his manipulative methods of filmmaking...I much prefer him in light-hearted adventure more (ie JP and Indiana Jones). A primary criticism of the film has been its multiple personalities...first 30 minutes...war is awful, how could we allow this to happen? The end, the valiant stand which ensures us that it was worth it. A minor gripe, but a gripe none-the-less.

One of the worst things about SPR was the "cowardice" scenes with Uphum(spelling?). Those scenes may have even killed the film for being so amazingly cliched and stupid. SPR put a happy, and a gritty, yet pride filled mask on that thing we call war. Nothing new.

TRL can be odd, the voice overs are hard to follow, watch it with subtitles and it all seems to fit, perfectly. TRL is not truly about the actualy war, but why we are going to war, why people fight in wars, what drives us into wars, are we all the same, if so, why the heck are we killing each other. These things are amazing compared to SPR. There are many more in TRL, but I do not wanna disect it for you, it is a film that is worth discovering all over again(with subtitles on!)

SPR looked real, but felt completely fake. That is where it dies. Not in battle, but as a film.

I agree with you that unless you have been in a war, you truly have no opinion on it, but it is obvious that SPR is bogus, not in its bloody carnage, but its fakey characters and over the top push.

TRL has characters, that seem real. First time I felt nothing for them. This time they felt like real people. Granted, there is no normal character development, mainly because teh film isn't truly about the characters, or the plot, but those things combined add to the whole.

I guess it comes down to emotions. SPR goes for the simple emotions. After you have seen it twice, it is nothing really. TRL grows, and grows, and grows, because it is a mentally stimulating film, a smart film, while SPR is a normal Hollywood go for the simple pride and shock emotion film.

And I happen to be a character on this board, unmoved by SPR. I can see both points of view. However I felt that SPR, visually, was gripping, and damn near perfectly depicted an outlook of hell on earth. However, it felt (thanx Kross) fake! There were too many characters that tried to cover to broad an emotional spectrum(you know, the young boy, the coward, the pacifist, the hero...). It just felt so routine. A well written script, and wonderful filming, I thought, were the films biggest, if not only assets.

I thought Tom Hanks was a bit boring at times, though his dialogue about returning home, was humbling. The rest of the cast seemed to underrate their roles. It just turned into a movie, with a thin plot spread around to make for a incredible beginning, a decent(He blows the tank up with a handgun?) conclusion, but just wandering, in the middle! All you needed was the first twenty minutes, the middle thirty, and the last fifteen. Everything else was mind-numbing violence that made up for a thought provoking script that had a few potholes, along the way.

I felt that though TRL, was long, talky, and didn't have all that "slam bang! In-your-face-action!", but Characters were depicted far more brilliantly than the mega budget actors in SPR! Elias Koteas was astonishing, as the pacifist commander who refuses to send his soldiers to their certain death, and Nick Nolte was fabulous has the harsh, relentless general who butt heads with him. But then there were the no-names. Jim Cavezil, Ben Chaplin... Oh my goodness, what incredible acting at work. Sean Penn was wonderful as the pacifist soldier, who felt that he had no purpose

"...What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness..."

The war scenes were accurate, and just as real as SPR! The cinematography was more than satisfying, and the emotion was off the charts!! Nothing in SPR(NOTHING!) topped the scene where... oh shoot, forgot his name... The soldier sits on a rock in the rain, and cries, as he spills the teeth of a dead japanese soldier, from his hands. The film was simply gripping, and established an intruiging morale.

As for a comparrison of Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan, I don't think it's neccessary. Yes, they both deal with the Second World War, but their meaning and their impact are totally different. To me, Saving Private Ryan was a film for Americans (which, I am not) to feel some sort of moral justification into sending boys into war; and, thruthfully, there is no justification. The Thin Red Line didn't distinguishe between an evil or a good, but showed how the true insanity and concept of death and killing is a collective feeling and action by any human being; regardless if that person is Japanese or American, in the film. As far as ActionGuy's comments that TTRL is a depiction of the heroics of war, that comment does not fit in line with the film. Simply, the film does not try to portray war in a heroic way, but takes more of an objective portrayal of warfare.

Andre, I am also amazed that we finally AGREE on something!

Dave, ask me if I care what you think of my character?

(Hint, the answer will most likely be NO )

dave

Well summed up. Each line you wrote, I couldn't agree more with. Well said in every respect.

NP: The Passage

As for THE THIN RED LINE, I prefer it to PRIVATE RYAN, but comparing the two is rather specious, as Terrence Malick was making an entirely different kind of movie. If Spielberg was going for a Kurosawa kind of feel in RYAN, then I think Malick was influenced more by Kon Ichikawa, specifically his remarkable 1950s war movies THE BURMESE HARP and FIRES ON THE PLAIN. That both SPR and TRL appeared at roughly the same time is a simultaneous blessing (no one can accuse one of the pictures of imitating the other) and a curse (they'll forever be linked in people's minds even though they have nothing to do with each other).