The Thin Red Line (1998)
The Thin Red Line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Red_Line_(1998_film)) is a 1998 war film which tells a fictional story of United States forces during the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II with the focus on the men in C Company, most notably Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) and his conflicted feelings about fighting in the war, Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) and his desire to win the battle at any cost in order to get a promotion, and Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) and the dissolution of his marriage back home while he fights in the war.
The story takes place on two islands in the Pacific Ocean. The first scenes concern Private Witt, who has gone AWOL from the Army and has fled to an island where the Melanesian islanders live an idyllic existence, free from strife and want. Eventually Witt is located and taken aboard a troop carrier ship, where he is imprisoned, awaiting a court-martial. But his sergeant reconsiders and re-assigns him to Company C, which has been brought to Guadalcanal as reinforcements in the campaign to seize the island from the Japanese.
The action shifts to Guadalcanal, an island of overwhelming beauty torn to pieces by the ravages of war. Again and again throughout the movie the point of view returns to a view from below of great tropical forests under a brilliant tropical Sun, like vast green cathedrals whose silence is filled with birdsong and the sounds of vibrant life. The contrast between those holy living natural refuges and the horror of World War II is unbearable, sending the viewer reeling in ongoing shock. The brutality of war stands in horrifying contrast to the peace and glory of the natural world and natural man's place in it; soldiers on both sides seem lost and stunned as they desperately contest the territory of Guadalcanal. "This is what war does to men; this is what war does to the living world." At that level of action, individual men trying to kill or defeat other individual men over a hideously war-torn territory, nothing seems to make sense, nothing seems to be worth it. Defenses fall apart, men fall apart, minds fall apart, marriages stretched to the break point by over ten thousand miles of distance fall apart, lives fall apart, life itself falls apart -- the world falls apart, and none of it makes any sense.
This film is a powerful comment on the nature of war and its effect on the common soldier who must wage it as well as its impact on the living world in which it is fought. Absolutely magnificent movie.
The story takes place on two islands in the Pacific Ocean. The first scenes concern Private Witt, who has gone AWOL from the Army and has fled to an island where the Melanesian islanders live an idyllic existence, free from strife and want. Eventually Witt is located and taken aboard a troop carrier ship, where he is imprisoned, awaiting a court-martial. But his sergeant reconsiders and re-assigns him to Company C, which has been brought to Guadalcanal as reinforcements in the campaign to seize the island from the Japanese.
The action shifts to Guadalcanal, an island of overwhelming beauty torn to pieces by the ravages of war. Again and again throughout the movie the point of view returns to a view from below of great tropical forests under a brilliant tropical Sun, like vast green cathedrals whose silence is filled with birdsong and the sounds of vibrant life. The contrast between those holy living natural refuges and the horror of World War II is unbearable, sending the viewer reeling in ongoing shock. The brutality of war stands in horrifying contrast to the peace and glory of the natural world and natural man's place in it; soldiers on both sides seem lost and stunned as they desperately contest the territory of Guadalcanal. "This is what war does to men; this is what war does to the living world." At that level of action, individual men trying to kill or defeat other individual men over a hideously war-torn territory, nothing seems to make sense, nothing seems to be worth it. Defenses fall apart, men fall apart, minds fall apart, marriages stretched to the break point by over ten thousand miles of distance fall apart, lives fall apart, life itself falls apart -- the world falls apart, and none of it makes any sense.
This film is a powerful comment on the nature of war and its effect on the common soldier who must wage it as well as its impact on the living world in which it is fought. Absolutely magnificent movie.