The Thin Red LineA Terrence Malick Film

• Impressionistic style described as oblique and ethereal

• Heavy use of nature and natural light, specifically the golden hour

• Voice-over used to juxtapose visuals and suggest conflict between nature’s beauty and mankind’s faults

• The Thin Red Line focuses the style towards human’s relationship with God and the environment

• Orchestral music that ebbs and flows with the film

Style

Context • Based on the novel The Thin Red Line written by James Jones in 1963

o Realistic Fiction - draws from Jones’s experience during the

Guadalcanal campaign in the Pacific Theatre of World War II

o Uses the same characters as his first novel, From Here to Eternity,

which won the 1952 National Book Award

• Released six months after Saving Private Ryan, but in 900 fewer theaters

• “Finest contemporary war film I’ve seen, supplanting Saving Private Ryan

from earlier this year” -Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune

• Terrence Malick’s first movie after a 20 year break (1978-1998)

Cast

Jim Caviezel

John Travolta Jared Leto George Clooney

Sean Penn Adriane Brody

• Born November 30, 1943

• American director, screenwriter, and producer

• Studied Philosophy at Harvard

• Rhodes Scholar at Oxford

• Studied Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and

Wittgenstein

• Taught philosophy at MIT and was a freelance

journalist prior to his film career

• F e a t u r e F i l m D i r e c t o r i a l D e b u t -

“Badlands” (1973)

Terrence Malick

• 1969 Lanton Mills (Short)

• 1973 Badlands

• 1978 Days of Heaven

• 1998 The Thin Red Line

• 2005 The New World

• 2011 The Tree of Life

• 2012 To the Wonder

• 2015 Knight of Cups

• 2015 Untitled Terrence Malick Project (post-

production)

• 2016 Voyage of Time (Documentary) (post-production)

• 1969 Lanton Mills (Short) (writer)

• 1971 Drive, He Said (uncredited)

• 1972 Pocket Money (screenplay - as Terry Malick)

• 1973 Deadhead Miles (written by)

• 1973 Badlands (written by)

• 1974 The Gravy Train (as David Whitney)

• 1978 Days of Heaven (written by)

• 1998 The Thin Red Line (screenplay)

• 2002 Bear's Kiss (screenplay - uncredited)

• 2005 The New World (written by)

• 2011 The Tree of Life (written by)

• 2012 To the Wonder (written by)

• 2015 Knight of Cups (written by)

• 2015 Untitled Terrence Malick Project (written by) (post-production)

• 2016 Voyage of Time (Documentary) (post-production)

Career

• Days of Heaven (1978)- Best Director at Cannes

• The Thin Red Line (1998)- Golden Bear, 1999 Berlin

Film Festival

• The Tree of Life- Palm d’Or, 2011 Cannes, FiPRESCI

Award for the Best Film of the Year

Awards

• Draws heavily from biblical stories

• Emphasis on sin (Badlands, The Thin Red Line)

• Grand visuals and use of natural light (Tree of Life)

• The Presence of God vs. the Presence of Science

Themes

• Rotten Tomatoes: 7.2/10

• “The Thin Red Line is a daringly philosophical World War II film with an enormous cast of eager stars”

• “A haunting, scattered reminiscence piece, where the mind is allowed to drift through its memories, and retrieve impressions of the beautiful and the hideous, the serene and the hysterical, the banal and the profound.”

• Metacritic: 78

• “This just may be the greatest war movie ever made.”

• “The movie's schizophrenia keeps it from greatness (this film has no firm idea of what it is about), but doesn't make it bad. It is, in fact, sort of fascinating: a film in the act of becoming, a field trial, an experiment in which a dreamy poet meditates on stark reality.”

Reception