The Thin Red Line (1998)
(Terrence Malick, US 1998, 170 min., 35mm)
After a 20-year hiatus, Malick triumphantly returned to filmmaking in 1998 with The Thin Red Line, which garnered seven Academy Award nominations. Hailed by Gene Siskel as the “greatest contemporary war film I’ve seen,” this epic account of the unforgiving battlefields of World War II features an ensemble of Hollywood greats giving some of their most moving performances. The film follows C-Company, a sundry group of soldiers deployed to defend a strategic airstrip, who offer their individual perspectives on the violence surrounding them and their roles within it. This is the second adaptation of James Jones’s accounts of his time serving on Guadalcanal, the first one being released nearly thirty-five years earlier.