Conor Lowery Film Studies Blog: MYST #5: The Thin Red Line

For those of you who don't know me very well, let me start off by telling you something about me. I LOVE history, and have since a kid. So don’t be surprised to see primarily movies that take place in history.

This was a movie I was hoping to watch for quite a long time. For a while, no one I knew had it, and I never go to the library so I knew that wasn't going to happen. Last weekend however, I found it in a book store in one of those "3 movies in one" and so I bought it.

During the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II, the outcome of the battle for Henderson Field will strongly influence the Japanese advance into the Pacific. The Battle of the Gifu is where a group of young soldiers from the 25th Division is brought in as a relief for the battle-weary Marines. The men are dropped off at the base of some mountains and must clear them out. The exhausting fight for a strategically-positioned airfield that allows control over a 1000-mile radius puts the men through hell. The horrors of war form the soldiers into a tight-knit group; their emotions develop into bonds. The reasons for this war get further away as the world for the men gets smaller and smaller until their fighting is for mere survival and the life of the other men with them.

The "Story" itself is somewhat generic of a war movie and somewhat different. The generic part is that everyone is afraid to die and that by the end, the some of the characters become the complete opposite of when there introduced. It is somewhat different because it’s the only movie I've seen where you hear the soldiers thoughts. They vary from things like home, being a leader, combat, and many other things.

Speaking of generic, the majority of the characters were. The over confident colonel, the know it all sergeant, the incapable captain, the vengeful men, the whole lot of generic characters. Another thing I didn't like was that I still don't know characters names. I looked them up after, but during it I just named them myself. My favorites were: shotgun guy, AWOL, Colonel, the kid, the guy who should be dead but isn't, and Sean Penn.

Cinematically, I liked it because it used long shots which aren't seen very much. It’s used heavily in the first battle scenes charging up the mountain and when the senior officers are talking to the men. There is also a lot of close up shots when we hear the soldier’s thoughts. It’s also used in the scenes with the Japanese.

Image result for the thin red line cinematography

Lighting was.... really weird to put it. In some instances, it looked fine, no filters, seemed normal. In other scenes, it looked like you gave a 16 year old girl the camera with all the filters Terrence Malick used. It would go from an orange tint to black and white, to normal in a matter of seconds.

(A not so great example of when there was a filter)

I didn't really have a favorite scene or character; I didn't feel a personal connection with any them. My favorite scene is when a small group sneaks up to the top of the mountain and helps call in an artillery strike.

Something I didn't like was that George Clooney was put on the poster to help promote it when he was in the last two minutes off the movie. The movie was also historically in accurate, there were small things here and there, and the main thing that bothered me was the official after action report listed 250 allied soldiers killed in the battle. That was between 4 nations. In this it looks like they lose that in the first half of the movie alone.

Something I thought that was really cool though was that some of the filming was actually shot on Guadalcanal. This is quite a feat to do because getting the ability to get there is incredibly hard.