The Thin Red Line

This film is such a time commitment but definitely worth it. With its ensemble cast, ethereal directing and sound, to its colorful cinematography it’s a visual trip for the ages. It’s interesting seeing John C. Reillys old movies, since he almost always plays a serious role which is a good change of pace to experience. As for the story - there’s a famous quote stating that “there’s no such thing as an antiwar film,” and to me this disproves it. The idea of this statement is that the gratuitous violence, intended to shock us, has the opposite effect and leads us to feel excited rather than sad. This film, I believe, disproves that statement. We’re shown the person behind the riffle - we see the soldiers personified in a way that I haven’t ever seen. Normally our hero would be an innocent boy, excited for war, who learns it’s bad. Well, in this, no one is expected for war. We see real people with families at home, who don’t want to be there, forced to be there. We see the calm and the calamity, the grotesque and the innocent clash here, in what is a film that makes the viewer question the worth of violence, and where the loss of innocence should take place. I do think that the film should have been left at 5 hours. So much is missed with only 2 hours 50 minutes. I do understand that films, especially large blockbusters, have to be cut to fit certain times, but I’d rather have the full story and let the film be 5 hours total, or even 2 parts. We shoulda learned not to tell directors to cut films with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, but perhaps that’s just my opinion. It’s also crazy how much I hate The Tree of Life but how much I love this. Probably since there’s no 45 minutes of dinosaurs in the middle of my family drama. This movie is consistent and not stupid.