The Thin Red Line

God, why? Why does such a brilliant director so stubbornly refuse to tell a story? The Thin Red Line is not a classic war film, which is something I could appreciate as someone who doesn’t like classic war films. Unfortunately, it’s something even worse: a wannabe spiritual borefest. It’s really funny how many people have Malick as a great philosopher and his films as deep wells of wisdom. Sod that! Philosophy is a scientific discipline and not lengthy bulshitting about the immortality of a git! This was martyrdom. The characters go and go, they shoot for a while, then go again, they utter morsels of wisdom here and there… and that lasts for almost three hours. The film tries to draw a psychological portrait of a lot of characters, and I believe it fails spectacularly because after awhile I lost track of who is saying what. It’s brilliantly crafted, but Malick is not my cup of tea. The more I watch from him, the less I look forward to The Tree of Life (and I was really looking forward to it after the trailer). (18/02/2011)

A war movie as a glorification of the beauties of nature. Malick’s philosophizes more about people than war and the battle of Guadalcanal in his eyes is neither a duel between individuals nor a clash of cultures. But rather another in a row of senseless clashes taking place on Earth, where people can choose to behave toward each other either like humans or dogs. (02/04/2015)

Terrence Malick confirms for me the position of one of the most overrated directors of today. His early films were good, but then he got lost and returned as a film philosopher who actually says nothing in three hours. And when even a war film can be boring, it's questionable, but that's simply because Malick says so much that he actually doesn't say anything at all. (01/04/2016)