Favorite Films: The Thin Red Line

My favorite war picture of all time, The Thin Red Line, gets the Criterion treatment this week in both DVD and Blu-Ray.

Released around the same time as Saving Private Ryan in 1998, it seemed to get stuck in Spielberg’s shadow, and no wonder. Where Ryan delivers on a more base, emotional level (not necessarily a bad thing) that connects more easily with the general public, The Thin Red Line takes a more intellectual, or more appropriately, poetic approach to WWII (Poetry is still popular with the kids, right?).

Directed by Terrence Malick, after a very long hiatus (the brilliant Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 70′s), The Thin Red Line, based on the novel by James Jones about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal, is an epic on a philosophical level (considering the first battle scene doesn’t even happen until roughly an hour into the picture!).

Blaaaaargh… Critic David Sterritt recaps it better than I ever could (SERIOUSLY, click on this for a great read on the picture).

If you haven’t seen this, YOU MUST SEE THIS!

If you’ve already seen The Thin Red Line, love it and want to dig deeper, I recommend Michel Chions’  excellent addition to the BFI Modern Classics book series.

favorite films – dead man

It is preferable not to travel with a dead man – Henri Michaux

And so begins Jim Jarmusch’s masterful (and barely released) 1995 “acid western” Dead Man, shot in gorgeous black & white by Robby Mueller and featuring an incredible score by Neil Young.

Johnny Depp plays mild mannered Cleveland accountant William Blake who thinks he’s making his way out West for a new job in the town of Machine.  In actuality he’s descending into the heart of darkness aka the American West.

As luck would have it, the job is no longer available when he arrives. After getting caught in the middle of a lovers quarrel that results in bloodshed, Blake finds himself on the run.  It is here in the forest that he is discovered by an outcast Indian who goes by the name of Nobody (Gary Farmer), who mistakes him for a reincarnation of the great poet William Blake.

What follows isn’t so easy to summarize in a brief blog post, so just see it already and then read Jonathan Rosenbaum’s excellent analysis in the BFI Modern Classics Series.

If you’re here in the Twin Cities you can see it on the biggish screen this Friday & Saturday night at the Trylon.  For the rest of you, it’s on DVD.