By
Raymond Benson
Except
for perhaps Stanley Kubrick, no other American filmmaker has generated more
mystique about himself than Terrence Malick. Famously reclusive, Malick never gives interviews or even allows his photograph
to be taken on the set of any film he directs. In four decades, he’s made only four pictures (although a fifth, The Tree of Life, appears to be finally
set for a release in 2011).
After
a twenty-year absence from filmmaking, the artist returned to Hollywood in 1998
with The Thin Red Line, an
existential, philosophical, and meditative war movie that only Terrence Malick
could make. Critically received, it was
nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director,
and Best Screenplay. It couldn’t have
been more different from Saving Private
Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s “other†war picture of the year and one that was
immensely more popular with theater-goers. Perhaps this was because Malick’s film is mostly about sight and sound
and mood and ideas—not story or characters. Terrence Malick is a cinematic poet, and anyone who doesn’t understand
this will surely have a difficult time with the director’s work.
The
Cadillac of DVD labels, The Criterion Collection, has released a superb two-disc
set in both DVD and Blu-Ray that showcases the beauty and wonderment of The Thin Red Line. All of Malick’s films are technically
gorgeous—Oscar nominee John Toll’s cinematography was arguably the more
deserving work in that year’s category—and the new DVD presents a newly
restored high-definition digital transfer supervised by both Toll and
Malick. Toll, production designer Jack
Fisk, and producer Grant Hill contribute an enlightening audio commentary to
the film. (And Malick himself delivers a
single message to the viewer via text on the screen—he suggests it be played loud.)