29 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
29 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
what i look for in a movie is not necessarily perfection .
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sometimes a movie has such strong ideas that despite whatever flaws it may have , i will prefer it to a better-made film that is not as thought-provoking .
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the thin red line is flawed but it provokes .
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terence malick returns to filmmaking 20 years after days of heaven and produces this meditative look at war .
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unlike this year's saving private ryan , which dwells on war as a necessary evil and explores the moral ambiguities thereof , the thin red line simply says war is waste .
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while that might seem obvious to some , only after experiencing the film do you realize how profound a waste it is .
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saving private ryan has an underlying and practical acceptance that war will occur and it has a great cost ; the thin red line says idealistically avoid this at all costs .
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one message is not necessarily more correct than the other .
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it just depends on one's point of view .
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in malick's film , war is set in a tropical paradise , and john toll's cinematography is beyond lush .
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the setting poses the question , why are we fighting in the face of such beauty ?
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in saving private ryan , the capture of a german soldier presents the moral quandary of whether to let him go .
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in the thin red line , the japanese present the moral quandary of war in the first place .
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they are just like the americans -- frightened and angry , grieving and praying .
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all that separates them is war .
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the flaw in the thin red line comes in the voice-overs .
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unbelievable as coming from the characters and sometimes pretentious , sometimes corny , the voice-overs tell us what the images before us already do and are completely unnecessary .
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dispensing with them , malick could have achieved a tarkovskian grandeur .
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instead , he gets distracting self-consciousness .
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aside from that , malick's direction is stunning .
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the tracking shots across windswept hills and around transports speeding toward shore are extraordinary .
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sean penn , elias koteas , and nick nolte give the best performances .
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penn is subtle as a sergeant trying to hide his humanism , koteas is genuine as a compassionate captain , and nolte startling as a colonel whose blood vessels are about to burst if he cannot win his battle .
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john travolta and george clooney are the worst in cameo roles .
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ultimately however , the thin red line's interest is not in the characters and it is not in drama .
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it has been frequently criticized for its lack of dramatic structure , but malick clearly has different things on his mind .
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has no one ever thought that getting dramatic entertainment from war is exploitative ?
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what malick is working with is theme , and in that , the thin red line is most provoking .
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