Just watched "The Thin Red Line" (the 1998 version)

[ForrestGump]

What the hell? I'm all for philosophication and all that, but all the navelgazing in this film just got too much for me. Maybe I'd feel different if I watched it again, in a more engaged and reflective mood, but the whole seemed a tad overblown and pretentious. Jim Caviezel seemed to already be playing Jesus, too.

The battle scenes were very well executed, the acting was great, and the cinematography (including 'nature shots') was superb throughout. I love that they shot at least some of it on location in the Solomons...I'm familiar with the region and it's refreshing to see the local people and terrain faithfully represented. I love that part of the world and the opening scenes (with Jimsus AWOL in a village) are where I'd love to live. Ironically, I was in that area when I first heard of the film, engaged in film work: the director was raving about the film and so I figured I'd better catch it (only took me seven years). Visually, yes, I see what he was talking about.

To me, the voiceover was largely pointless, distracting, and detrimental to the picture, interfering with the beautiful camera work (especially the nature inserts) and messing up the flow established by onscreen dialog and action. I know what they're trying to do with the philosobabble (and the film's heavily laden with visual symbolism, right from the opening shot) but, as far as I'm concerned, they fail utterly. What a bunch of hooey. Sharp contrast with the way voiceover narrative and onscreen dialog added to Apocalypse Now, a film that is also at heart not really a "war movie." I really do think much of the film is brilliant, but that philosophical side of it, to my mind, got way out of hand and very intrusively and heavy-handedly ate the film. I mean, I even agree with some of it (some is just throwing random words around, though, I think, like the ravings of some bad beat poet), but it's overdone...and, yet...underdone. :-)

Apparently the original cut was six hours long. At almost three hours, this thing is a good hour too long -- some three-hour movies rip by, but some drag, and this is one of the latter kind. Just when I thought it must surely be over I had a look at the time remaining and saw that, nope, I still had another 40 minutes to endure. The cut from six hours to three (not that such cuts are all that unusual) may explain why some of the big-name stars in this film are barely present (and why some had their scenes cut entirely).

I'm sure that true believers would dismiss me as one who was raised on and only relates well to mindless entertainment or Rambo-style war heroics (not true) or who is unequipped to see this as essentially a cinematic poem (also not true). The truth is that I think it's, in part, as pretentious as those who'd say such things -- but it's dichotomous, because it's also a brilliant piece of film, just a film undermined by stylistic elements that I feel are out of place.

I saw the 1960s version of this film when I was a kid and can't remember anything about it now, but I bet it moved a little more tightly.

[HEyHEY]

1. Hey. Terry Malick is a genius....

And so is anyone who understood that movie...

My favourite Dennis Miller joke.

[ForrestGump]

2. "I reach out and touch the face of Irritable Bowel Syndrome"

I think that was my favorite part of the voiceover, accompanying flashback film of somebody's wife (not sure whose, because most of the chracters look alike and, indeed, it's possible they saved money by just using one actor for most of them) cooking cornflake-coated fried chicken.

And it's good to know that Dennis Miller actually used to be witty. The last I've seen of him was his getting shot (no, I didn't play it back in slo-mo, again and again) in Murder at 1600, a film with no philosophical voiceover that I've watched twice lately (and, indeed, could have watched twice during this film).

[Cannikin]

3. I hated that movie. I cant believe I sat all the way through it.