you suck… cinema is one of the best things about life… seriously you suck
And very likely it’s just that Malick lays everything on too thick in this film, starts everything at such a highpoint he leaves no head room, there’s nowhere to go from the beginning? Or maybe this is the height of cinema, Malick is an astonishing director in my opinion.
Malick knows nothing about cinema. He thinks stars protect him from interference.
ummm… Malick is cinema.
Yes because you know more than Malick does, right? How many films have you made Jerry?
this is a silly conversation! meaning in cinema does not have to derive from a concrete narrative base. the grace notes seamanly devoid of context are at the heart of malick’s cinema.
I recently watched TRL for the second time (the first having been a fondly remembered theatrical release), and I found that I still loved it for everything it offered, albeit with a handful of unnecessary voice-overs.
I watched it back to back with Bartas’ Few of Us, which is done with zero voiceover and just about zero dialog at all. It’s one of the purest examples of cinema that allows you to form your own judgments. With Few of Us, you get out what you put in.
Malick goes for this a bit—many of the voice-overs are philosophical wanderings without clear answers, offering a guide to the contemplative pieces of the film. It’s also of a piece with that style of film-making, but since it does this guiding, it isn’t as pure an example.
But I wouldn’t deride Malick at all. It’s a beautiful film and well-made. The so-called ‘cameos’ are fine, and Nolte’s a standout.
I don’t quite understand your hypothesis, Drew. How do you get the idea that “film can’t go any further”? Maybe there’s something wrong with your conclusions rather than the medium itself being the problem. Besides, here is an interesting study that links Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” to Heidegger’s philosophy in case that anyone is interested.
“I watched it back to back with Bartas’ Few of Us”
Yes House but Jerry would tell you that no only Malick isn’t cinema…Bartas is the plague of it, HAHAHAHA.
Nonsense. Though not sure that’s what he meant. Anyway, I’m happy enough with my own definitions. Serve me well.
At Apursansar, when I said a film couldn’t go any further, I meant in its conclusions on human existence. I think that this is a film that I perhaps love too much for it to be merely celluloid (or dvd, actually). I think I read into a lot of things very personally, or in a different way than Malick intended, and as a result I was drawn in as far as it could take me…
I’m not entirely sure here, my opening post was simply an attempt to describe the feeling I had for the rest of the day after watching the film.
Cheers for the comments guys…
Ah, the ineffability of inner experience . . .
Drew Kelly
This evening I saw The Thin Red Line (for the second time) and about two hours in I started to feel sort of empty. It wasn’t boredom. I started thinking how this film was as great as cinema was, and yet I was bored. It was as if this film had reached the roof, and was now lazily putting on feats of virtuosic athleticism over an over again. Film couldn’t go any further.
Needless to say, when I thought ‘film can’t go any further’ I was a little scared, but also saw the complete falsity in that. So I’m wondering where this feeling came from. Perhaps subjects so intrinsically dramatic such as human experience through war (Malick’s subject in Red Line) shouldn’t be dealt with by a director so skilled as Malick, that he might make it all feel as though it came to easy for him, taking the freshness out of it all…Any one care to offer their opinion on this thought as it applies to other films?
And very likely it’s just that Malick lays everything on too thick in this film, starts everything at such a highpoint he leaves no head room, there’s nowhere to go from the beginning? Or maybe this is the height of cinema, Malick is an astonishing director in my opinion.
Someone cure me this! I have temporarily lost faith in movies…