Word: malick
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...Terrence Malick '66, The Thin Red Line: The reclusive, eccentric director has made only two pictures other than the current nominee, but both were hugely influential in the film community. Malick's limited filmography has only made him more of a critical darling--so far, he's three for three. His work in The Thin Red Line is clearly that of a mature artist, but the film's metaphysical slant sticks its creator with an "arty" label that is somewhat limiting...
...critics praising this pseudointellectual, overindulgent mess? Terrence Malick makes his return to the industry he left 20 years ago with this WWII drama which not only is thunderously dull but also completely hollow. Instead of giving us involving drama, Malick shellshocks us with a 3-hour, superficial Discovery Channel special. But the big disappointment is the script--Malick's dialogue is not only empty but just plain silly. Visually stunning, of course, but a resounding failure...
...these guys? There's John Travolta, briefly. And Nick Nolte and a nicely unmannerist Sean Penn. And many young faces we must strain to identify. Malick, a poker player or a mystic, does not easily yield information. His story is a meadow with a minefield...
Some films deal in plot truth; this one expresses emotional truth, the heart's search for saving wisdom, in some of the most luscious imagery since Malick's last film, the 1978 Days of Heaven. The new movie takes up where Days--and his haunting Badlands of 1973--left off. Each film is a tragedy of small folks with too grand goals; each is narrated by a hick with a dreamy touch of the poetic; each sets its tiny humans against Nature in ferocious rhapsody. The Thin Red Line begins with an island idyll, and to Private Witt (Jim Caviezel...
...Malick's palette holds a precise orgy of colors; his camera moves like the sun's rush down a hill (a thrilling shot) that throws a fatal light on the men's position. Most of the G.I.s are doomed to have a past--iridescent memories of the blue Pacific or the wife back home--but no future. And Malick, like a god who made the world so lovely and life so harsh, ornaments their ordeal splendidly. The film is a gorgeous garland on an unknown soldier's grave...