A War On Two Fronts: Steven Spielberg's

Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malick's

The Thin Red Line

by

Tibe Patrick Jordan

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

August 2001 Copyright by Tibe Patrick Jordan 2001

11 A War On Two Fronts: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line by

Tibe Patrick Jordan

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Mike Budd, Department of Communication, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fhlfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Supervisory Committee: A/CL~ ti1eSiSAdViSOr t5vV~

Chairperson, Department o ommurucatton

D Dorothy F _ Schmidt College of Arts and Letters lJe!::- W ~~ Date '7/ v(u I

iii Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank the chair of my committee, Dr. Mike Budd, who has

provided me with direction, guidance, and insight not only on this project but also

throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. He has consistently challenged

me as both a student and a researcher, and his advice, sincerity, and counseling will

stay with me long after this project has been completed. I would also like to

acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Martha Gever and Dr. Eric Freedman on this

project, who kept me focused and organized with their suggestions and ideas. Thank

_you again.

I would also like to thank my fellow teaching assistants who started this

program with me, especially Rebecca Amesbury, who shared with me the joys (and

frustrations) of teaching and graduate school. We finally made it!

Finally, and most importantly, I will attempt to thank my family, although no

words can do justice to the sincere gratitude and love I have for them. Mom, David,

and Chris, thank you for encouraging me, for allowing me to find myself, for always

being there in good times and bad. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. Last, but

never least, thank you Christina, my Sky of Suns, for helping me to always discover.

lV Abstract

Author: Tibe Patrick Jordan

Title: A War on Two Fronts: Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Terrence

Malick's The Thin Red Line

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Mike Budd

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2001

In 1998 Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line debuted in theatres and critics in the popular press were quick to discuss the revival of the World War Two film and to classify both films within this genre. Through an examination of genre, art cinema, the styles of the Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick, and a close textual analysis of both films, this thesis argues that Saving Private Ryan, although updating generic conventions of violence through its opening segment, quickly turns traditional in its depiction of plot, character, masculinity, and nation. The Thin Red Line, however, combines conventions of the war film with elements of art cinema, producing a film that popular critics often labeled in an inadequate or incomplete manner, creating inappropriate generic expectations among viewers.

v Table of Contents

Chapter I: Introduction and Overview ...... 1

Background and Justification ...... 1

Issues to be Addressed ...... 3

The War Genre ...... 3

Spielberg and Malick at War ...... 8

Literature Review ...... 11

Genre and Reception ...... 11

Violence, Masculinity, and Stars ...... 13

Steven Spielberg and Terrence Malick ...... 22

Methodology ...... 23

Conclusion ...... 25

Chapter II: Genre, the War F:il.m, and Art Cinema ...... 28

Genre ...... 29

Conventions of the War Film and the World War II Film ...... 40

Art Cinema: History, Conventions, and Audience ...... 49

Chapter ill: On Spielberg and Malick ...... 57

Steven Spielberg: Narrative and Stylistic Approach ...... 59

Schindler's List, 1993 ...... 65

Amistad, 1997 ...... 71

Terrence Malick: In an Out of Classical Hollywood ...... 76

Badlands, 1973 ...... 79

V1 Days ofHeaven, 1978 ...... 86

Conclusion...... 90

Chapter IV: Textual Analysis of SPR and TRL ...... 92

Opening Salvos: Death vs. Dread ...... 92

The Mission Underway...... 110

A New Battle Begins ...... 122

Against the Odds ...... 135

Aftermath ...... 156

Chapter VI: Conclusion ...... 161

Works Cited ...... 170

V1l To Mom and David Chapter I Introduction and Overview

BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION

A film poster hangs in an enclosed glass case outside of a movie house. The poster reveals a lone soldier, in silhouette, standing off in the distance. He is clearly holding a rifle that points downward, and he is framed against a gray sky. A helmet is visible on his head and he appears to be carrying other equipment on his back. This is the predominant visual image of the poster. The title of the film, Saving Private Ryan, runs across the top of the poster, and below the image of the soldier a line of text reads, "'A film by Steven Spielberg."

A few months later another poster might have hung in the same glass case.

The main visual image has captured a faceless soldier running in mid-stride, rifle at the ready. Long blades of grass whip past him as he moves. The poster's colors are an ominous mix of reds and blacks and grays.

From a quick cursory glance at the teaser posters for these two films, Saving

Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, it seems a safe assumption that one could conclude that these two films would be dealing with war or combat in some respect.

A closer examination of the posters would have revealed the directors and the actors in each film, which in turn might lead to references to other films but not necessarily to what the two films in question deal with specifically. A more detailed assessment might come from television reports, newspaper and magazine articles, and word-of-

1 mouth from other fi.lmgoers. Of course the first assumption, simply by glancing at the teaser posters, is that they are in some respects war films, specifically (from glancing at the uniform, weapons) war in the 20th century.

In the summer and fall of 1998 two epic three-hour films centering on key battles during World War Two premiered. What was certain, what was inevitable about the two films, was that they would be compared to one another by both the press and the public.

Saving Private Ryan went on to become the box office champion of 1998, earning $216-rnillion domestically. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

Sciences nominated it for best picture, and both its star and director received nominations (Spielberg won the award for best director). The Thin Red Line also garnered nominations for best picture and best director, although its final box office revenue totaled a relatively disappointing $36-million. While Spielberg's film became a cultural phenomenon, with near daily reports of war veterans leaving the film in tears, Malick's film became something of a curiosity, a film that left some viewers and critics scratching their heads, partly because they did not know what to make of it. It simply did not fit into a pre-set mold of a World War Two picture.

The issue of genre seems paramount to any attempted comparison of these two films. The Internet Movie Database, for example, lists both as war films. As a matter of fact, both rank in the top fifty ofthe best- reviewed films in the war genre, although Saving Private Ryan ranks much higher.

2 ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED

THE WAR GENRE

The answer to the above questions will be found in the concept of genre, in

both generic expectation and convention as well as promotion by the studios (trailers,

posters, and press releases) and categorization by reviewers and critics. Janet Staiger writes in Interpreting Films that studying responses to films requires not only a close examination of the films themselves, but other texts both internal and external to the genre (138). For my purposes, this includes an analysis of not only the films and promotional material, but the discourse surrounding them in the popular press, the stories of shaken veterans leaving the theatre during and after Saving Private Ryan, and critical and commercial reaction to these films from the mainstream press and academic critics.

David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson write in Film Art that genres can be thought of as '"a rough category shared by audience and filmmaker" (52). Rick

Altman adds in Film/Genre that genre study involves all aspects of the film economy: production, message or text, and consumption (14), and he describes the connection between filmmaker and audience as "symbiotic" (16). Filmmakers know generally what audiences expect in a certain type of film, and audiences oblige by attending films that meet generic expectation. Genres typically utilize conventions that appear in film after film that fall into a specific category. Rick Altman argues that while studios tend to mix genres together in an effort to create as broad-based an appeal as possible, audiences bring certain visual, stylistic, and narrative expectations to the genre films in which they invest time and money (149). 3 Genres are recurrent in our moving-going experience. "Genre pleasures are familiar pleasures. Genre conventions encourage the repetition, reconfiguration, and renewal of familiar forms in order to cultivate audience investment and engagement"

(Lipsitz 208). Filmmaking is a risky business, and studios must be sure (or somewhat sure) they can lure people through well-known and well-established images. Genre is, in effect, a contract between the audience and filmmaker as Bordwell and Thompson describe. Barry Keith Grant argues that what makes genres so interesting is the exploration ofthe "psychological and sociological interplay between filmmaker. film, and audience" (7). Filmmakers supply the audience with familiar fare and audiences oblige by seeing these films and purchasing a ticket.

What happens when the publicity depicts one thing and the film delivers another, perhaps even violating the contract agreed upon by audience and filmmaker?

What happens when the press adds fuel to this fire? Judith Hess Wright argues that genre films produce satisfaction rather than action (41 ). A genre film meets the pre­ set expectation of the audience. Sit back, enjoy, and there is no need to question what you see. In fact, classical Hollywood genre filmmaking "depends on an audience's assent to its formal and substantive conventions and an acceptance-indeed belief­ in the illusory fullness and presence of the fictive world these conventions create"

(Kolker 287-288).

What happens when a film is labeled a genre film and turns out not to be one or is labeled in the wrong genre? What would be responsible for such mis­ categorization? How is this mis-categorization possible in the first place? Jeffery

Sconce, writing about horror films, wonders, "If you experience exhilaration rather

4 than fear, is it still a horror film?" (118). If you do the same in a war film (or if you do just the opposite) is it still a war film?

Do genres incorporate radical elements that question generic form? David

Sanjek argues that they do not. ""Admittedly, genre cinema ... rarely if ever incorporates an overt radical or revolutionary agenda. More commonly, they reflect and respond to that body of common knowledge born of a lifetime of spectatorship possessed by their aficionados" (114). I am not directly suggesting that The Thin Red

Line incorporates an overly radical agenda, but I will argue it certainly violates the traditional conventions of war films, and that Malick may be first in the incorporation of several stylistic and narrative devices in a war genre film. For example, Malick intentionally blurs the identification of several of his main characters both visually and through voice-over, making it difficult to discern who is who and to differentiate characters, something that is much more easily perceptible in Saving Private Ryan.

What is the link between character identification and genre? Murray Smith argues in

Engaging Characters that recognition is the first stage of engaging fictionalized characters, the others being alignment and allegiance (82). Recognition refers to the spectator's construction of a character, and I would argue it is a process Malick intentionally plays within his film. Smith argues that the body individuates characters, but in Malick's film the bodies become de-individualized.

Sharon Willis argues in High Contrast that the popular press rewrites films as events. "They rewrite them ... within the same discursive machineries that frame historical events as spectacles or images and that replace political debate or analysis with opinion polls generated around "controversies"' (159). Altman argues that "our

5 terms and our conceptions (of genre) derive not so much from cinema itself, but from those who represent cinema to us" (124). What was the discourse in the media often about and who was making it? Did the critics and press bring about a certain type of expectation? It appears that the discourse often centered on whether Malick's film measured up to Spielberg's film as spectacle. Was it truly a gigantic cinematic and epic experience only to be enjoyed on the big screen, or some hybrid art film with a bloated budget? I will return to Malick's use of art cinema and modernist film strategies later.

With these types of comparisons running through the popular press, it is easy to see how Rick Altman can write that critics lie at the heart of the discussion of genre (127). In part, their job is to label and categorize for the benefit of the audience.

Newspaper and magazine critics, it seems, have a difficult time with films that cannot easily be placed in any specific category. Although I would argue this would apply to a film like The Thin Red Line, many critics, perhaps because they knew no other way, placed the film squarely in the category of a war film, leading to its inevitable and often unsatisfying comparison with Saving Private Ryan. I will argue that Spielberg's film more clearly follows the conventions ofthe war genre while Malick's film does not. I will also argue that this type of categorization was misleading for filmgoers unfamiliar with Malick's previous work, which, in all honesty, was a vast number of filmgoers.

Altman does add, however, that studios attempt to create and promote films with as much cross-genrefication as possible in order to ensure the largest possible audience (117). Again, early posters for Spielberg's film depict only a lone soldier. In

6 later posters for Saving Private Ryan, as well as a cover box for the VHS tape, the

faces of the actors were added. Mugshots ofTom Hanks and the actors in his

fictionalized Army Ranger squad surround the silhouette of the lone soldier. Clearly it

seems to promote star actor Tom Hanks, certainly in an attempt to lure fans of his

other films into the theatre. The poster for the film still clearly grounds itself in the

war genre, yet fans ofTom Hanks, who might otherwise not be attracted to a war

film, may have been more apt to see the film when it premiered. This seems

important because Altman also argues that "genre's capacity for positive

identification is matched by a tendency to view certain genres, and thus genre

production in general, as bad objects" (113). Some film-goers, for example, may have

avoided a war film had an actor like Hanks or Matt Damon or Nick Nolte or Sean

Penn not starred.

Again, 20th Century Fox does much the same for The Thin Red Line. The

original poster of the silhouetted, nameless, faceless soldier in mid stride also evolved

into later posters and the video box containing mug shots of the actors and stars of the

film. For The Thin Red Line, however, this was somewhat misleading. Actors like

John Travolta and George Clooney, well-known actors in their own right, were given

mug shots on the poster although they receive scant screen time during the film. The

films, it seems, were both promoted as war films by the studios, with both later using their respective stars to help lure audiences.

7 SPIELBERG AND MALICK AT WAR

Rick Altman argues, ''"The function of publicity is as much to advertise a film's makers as the film itself' (117). As noted earlier, much of the attention in the

press revolved around Spielberg and Malick, for very different reasons. The most

prominent text on the teaser poster for Saving Private Ryan was the tagline, '"A film

by Steven Spielberg." Most casual filmgoers are familiar with Spielberg and perhaps even with the fact that he has done several World War Two era films, specifically

Schindler's List. That he is one ofthe most well-known directors in Hollywood lent

Saving Private Ryan instant interest from critics and movie-goers alike. Many viewers know of Spielberg as perhaps the preeminent storyteller of his generation. It

is important to note here that, "The action-adventure formula (was) fine-tuned and sophisticated by such directors as ... Steven Spielberg during the 1980's ... " (Welsh

166).

Robert Kolker writes of Spielberg:

The Spielbergian world is absorptive and distributive, forcing the spectator into it, obsessively replacing discontent with satisfaction, insisting that the man-child's desire for comfort and companionship is a persistent stage that cannot be fulfilled in a mature, earthbound communal environment (307).

I plan to show how Spielberg draws his viewers into the narrative (the opening battle sequence in Saving Private Ryan) and that this could be considered his unique signature. One has only to think of Jaws and the Indiana Jones films that have similar shocking openings that lead you directly into the film's world. Ultimately Spielberg

8 concludes his film in a redemptive, often self-sacrificLng manner that audiences come back to again and again. Christopher Sharret argues Scaving Private Ryan,

... with its Last Stand that evokes the Alamo, is another sentimental valorization of sacrificial violence within the: fractious climate of post­ modernity. Spielberg's much-praised film otYers a nostalgic image of Norman Rockwell America, with windmills perched on waving fields of Iowa grain, an uncontentious America preserved by the sacrifices of the Good War (416).

In a critique of the film, Wheeler Winston Dix:on argues that Saving Private

Ryan "works best during the opening forty-minute action sequence ... When the action dwindles, Spielberg falls back on war-film genre clicbes so numerous to defy enumeration" ( 4). I will be comparing the opening of .Saving Private Ryan, which so draws the viewer into its diegesis with its shocking Op:lening battle sequence, with the opening segments of The Thin Red Line, which Malic~k uses to build tension for more than an hour.

Malick is much less well known to most film~oers. Those unfamiliar with his previous work may have been ill prepared for the nan:::ative of The Thin Red Line. I will also do a close textual analysis of Malick's film. ::-By doing so I believe I will show that Malick, as in his previous work in the 1970•'s, incorporates aspects of the modernist and art cinemas (fragmented narrative, clearr lack of cause and effect, characters not as the main causal agents) into The ThCn Red Line. Because of this any categorization of The Thin Red Line as a war film bec::omes problematic. I believe it certainly can be classified under Justin Wyatt's term ~'low concept" (159), meaning a film difficult to describe in a paragraph summary and difficult to market effectively.

This may run counter to a more high concept film like Spielberg's.

9 Samuel Hynes, writing for the New Statesmen, even ponders whether Malick

attempted to make the Pacific version of Spielberg's film. ''Perhaps he knew that his

film would arrive in the theatres on the heels of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private

Ryan, and aimed to do for the Pacific war what Spielberg had done for D-Day and the

invasion of Europe" (42). This is a generally favorable review of Malick's work, but

the reading into Malick's intent on making the film seems to be way off. It does not

seem, in any sense, that Malick was attempting to make a Saving Private Ryan set in

the Pacific. The review in fact picks up on the vast differences between the two films: the disparity in how the enemy is portrayed, the openings of the two films, the shots

of the flora and fauna in The_Thin Red Line. Hynes even writes that Malick's work is the superior film. He claims, "Malick was thinking about war when Spielberg was only thinking about movies" (42). It seems, however, that Hynes was only thinking about war, and the war genre, when he wrote this review, needed to connect the films through the war genre, and did not go further in exploring the differences between the two films to discover that simply classifying The Thin Red Line in the war genre may have been insufficient.

In what is perhaps a giant misreading of the film, Stanley Kauffman ofThe

New Republic, in a negative critique, argues that Malick's film fails because he

"waited twenty years to move and then decided to make the definitive war epic" (24).

Yet is this what Malick was really attempting to make? As I have shown, the film lacks many of the conventions of the World War Two film and incorporates art cinema conventions as well, and would I argue that Malick was not trying to set the

10 standard for war films, which is a claim made by many reviews and articles written

about Saving Private Ryan.

LITERATURE REVIEW

My thesis will primarily revolve around the issue of genre, how generic

convention and expectation came into play when Saving Private Ryan and The Thin

Red Line landed in theaters, and how one clearly employs a more traditional war film

formula. I will also be looking at issues ofviolence, masculinity, and nationalism,

specifically how they relate to the war film genre.

GENRE AND RECEPTION

Again, I will attempt to analyze the nature of who classifies films as part of a

genre and how generic convention and expectation came into play for both Saving

Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. How did both the press and the studios play a

role in this? Does labeling The Thin Red Line an ''anti-war" film make it a war film

under generic classification? Rick Altman's Film/Genre will be of paramount

importance to this study. Altman writes that genre covers all phases of a film: production, message, and consumption (14). Genre thrives in part because of critics who label in order to supply their readers with some type of reference, allowing the reader to conjure up images of similar films they have seen in the past. This drives 11 into the heart of one of my major issues for this thesis: that the press treated both

films, at least in much pre-screening rhetoric, as equals under the label'"war film" and

post-screening reviews tallied which film better fit into that category.

I will also deal with critical reviews, because they help influence box office

performance and word-of-mouth, which, in part, determined the relative success and

failure of these films. Judith Mayne, in her book Cinema and Spectatorship, writes

that the notion of cinema includes the spectator ( 13). She also argue~ that films are

intertextual, that issues surrounding any one specific film go beyond the film itself

(64). Again, I will argue that some of the discourse surrounding these films was a

comparison of one against the other.

A review of The Thin Red Line in Maclean's, several months after its debut,

seems to sum up the words of many critics. Although the review argues that the two

films are very different, "Comparisons to Saving Private Ryan are inevitable. Both

are visceral epics about scared Americans marching to slaughter in the Second World

War. And both contain some of the most compelling battle scenes e-ver filmed"

(Johnson 52). For the critic here, the films are still similar generically: they are both war and combat films with ultra-impressive battle sequences, although I contended in

Chapter Four that both films update the genre through their use of c<>mbat: Saving

Private Ryan with its ultra-realism and The Thin Red Line through its depiction of the effects of combat on soldiers. Again, I am not asserting that The Thin Red Line does not incorporate war genre conventions, but, as I maintained in the previous chapter, it also violates others and incorporates aspects of art cinema producing a film that, ultimately, should have been more problematic for critics and reviewers to classify.

12 An essay that appeared in the March 15, 1999 edition oflnsicllt on the News was dedicated to a generic comparison of the two films, and, from the very first sentence, never questions the generic placement of either film. ••There's nothing like a

World War II movie made in the 1990's to separate the men from the mice" (Gorin

28). The review champions Saving Private Ryan's domination of the box office, especially in comparison to The Thin Red Line, as a sign of cultural success for

Spielberg's film' then spends the majority of the critique demonizing Malick's film for making an anti-war World War Two film. Again, the review is important because

Gorin attacks Malick's film for being anti-war, but also because she still refers to it as a World War Two film. Gorin never questions that labeling The Thin Red Line specifically as a war film is an inadequate and incomplete classification.

VIOLENCE. MASCULINITY, AND STARDOM

Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line have been classified, for better or worse, as war films under a single generic signifier. Kathryn Kane writes of the general themes of American war films in Visions of War. She argues that American war films portray combat as the protection of the home from an often-generalized enemy, and that the protectors are often a disparate group designed to serve as a microcosm of U.S. society ( 17, 20-21, 69-80). She adds that U.S. war films often center on self-sacrifice and the notion of honor, group consciousness, and the

13 sentimental longing (which includes an underlying sexual strain) for women. (122,

88-90, 18).

Rebirth through trial also seems to be a recurrent theme in World War Two

films. Initiation into the dirtiness of war, especially for the young and naive, is often a topic in American war films (Slotkin 324-5). Films in this sub-genre share '"a single common belief... the strength of ordinary people to look optimistically beyond war to

a time when democracy and freedom would again prevail. .. and good will eventually triumph over evil" (Ferrell 30).

Jeanine Basinger adds in her book The World War Two Combat Film that these films often employ an "Alamo" type last stand, the absence of women, the need to discuss home (and the inherent danger in doing so), and again, the group as a democratic mix of ethnicities and personalities (30, 61-62). It will be important to examine how Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line incorporate or challenge these and other conventions of the classic U.S. war film. It is also important to ask whether these generic conventions change over time, and even if Spielberg and

Malick's films use the conventions in ways similar to previous war films, whether all of these conventions have the same meanings to audiences now then they did during the war or immediately after it.

Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E. Zonn write, "While image-events are predominantly organized in the interests of assuring narrative significance, they also develop as something fascinating in themselves, a source of visual pleasure, a spectacle" (19). Certainly in the case of Saving Private Ryan the most talked about image in the film is the opening D-Day sequence, which will receive ample analysis

14 in my paper. The opening serves to identify us with the principle characters of the film, while nearly numbing us into shock. This in turn affects the way we see the rest of the film. Again, this is a convenient way for Spielberg to draw movie-goers into his rescue-operation plot which constitutes the majority of the film's running time, again a device he uses in several other of his films. This opening \\ill be contrasted to

The Thin Red Line's invasion sequence on Guadalcanal, in which not one shot is fired. This is not to say that spectacle is not a key element in The Thin Red Line.

Several reviews and critiques of the film focused on that issue. Perhaps the film employs spectacle in ways different than that of Saving Private Ryan.

Violence, and its role in these films, will constitute a major portion of my film analysis. By the 1990's violence "has become more prominent and increasingly graphic, exaggerated to such a degree that it no longer provides ... the catharsis and narrative closure that characterized previous areas in motion picture history"

(Tomasulo, 1999, 175). How is violence treated in these films? Is it a source of catharsis or redemption for either the characters or the viewer? Is violence treated differently between the two pictures? Is violence treated in a conventional way for a war film?

Since the "Other" plays such a major role in any American war film, how does this issue tie in to the use of violence in this genre? Richard Slatkin, for instance, locates violence at the heart of American mythology and it is this mythology that creates "a rationale for the violence enacted on, and excused by, a monstrous Other"

(McLarty 346). I will argue that the Germans, as well as French civilians in Saving

Private Ryan, are created as a direct and challenging Other to the microcosmic

15 American platoon ofG.L's. In Saving Private Ryan "the Germans are blatantly inhuman bastards ... " ( Conley 194). The Thin Red Line, on the other hand, treats the

Japanese combatants in a way that differs in large part from the way Nazi soldiers are depicted in Saving Private Ryan, and certainly in the way Japanese soldiers have been depicted in previous Hollywood World War Two films. In Malick's film the Japanese are often seen as starving, half-naked, and as utterly disaffected as some of their

American counterparts, although at times they are seen as the shado-wy Other lurking in the tall grass just out of rifle range.

Mark Gallagher argues, "Viewers learn to enjoy displays of violence as displays rather than as violence" (205). Again, much of the discourse about Saving

Private Ryan revolves around the opening assault on Omaha Beach and the fact that it puts you right into the action. From this it is perhaps not too difficult to discern how some reviews of the film argued the only truly enjoyable way to see the film was to see it on widescreen with Dolby sound.

It is an imperative of the genre to be male exclusive. As I mentioned earlier,

Kathryn Kane argues that war films include both a longing for, and a sexual strain regarding, women. This longing is replaced in large part by the microcosmic, multi­ ethnic, tight-nit, all-male platoon. "The war genre-following closely on the ideological imperative of the military itself-demands that men leave their families to form homosocial groups" (Kolker 306). Domesticity is replaced with an all-male hierarchy. It is through institutions like the media, and genres like the war film (and war and the military as institutions) and the action/adventure film, that a particular kind of masculinity is achieved (Connell213).

16 The films have an overwhelming array of male characters. Both films have minor female characters, which are of relatively minor importance, although I will argue they are there, in part, to define masculinity. R.W. Connell argues that masculinity does not exist except in contrast to femininity (68). Perhaps that is also the role Corporal Upham plays, in part, in Spielberg's movie, to offset the more traditional character types found in this genre. He is, as Connell writes, expelled from the circle oflegitimacy (79). Private Witt in The Thin Red Line, the often AWOL GI,

is perhaps another good example of this. Both characters will receive close analysis in

my paper.

Tomasulo writes, '"Masculinity is a term of history and culture, not biology. It

is a sign of social identity linked to the nexus of patriarchy" (1999, 185). I will examine how masculinity plays a role in both of these films, especially in the case of

Corporal Upham in Saving Private Ryan. In her book Spectacular Bodies Yvonne

Tasker writes of the military setting as a space for male rites of passage (104). This

seems to be the case with Upham, to an extent Private Ryan himself, and perhaps one

or more characters in Malick's film as well. R.W. Connell argues in Masculinities that the, "Masculine gender is (among other things) a certain feel to the skin, certain

muscular shapes and tensions, certain postures and ways of moving, certain

possibilities in sex" (53). The war genre, certainly, has its stock masculine characters, and again there is a prominent character in both films that stands out

because neither one seems to fit this category.

Gallagher adds that 1990's action/adventure films .. provide a space for more interiorized and emotive male heroes ... action films more frequently narrate the

17 exploits of psychologically and emotionally complex males ... " (207-208). This certainly seems to be the case in both films. In Saving Private Ryan we get Hanks' character, who has the shakes from shell shock and who cries at the carnage all around him, albeit privately where his men cannot see him. In The Thin Red Line

Private Witt contemplates the beauty he can see where others see only destruction.

This also seems to correlate with the changing notion of the masculine in such a setting as combat. Images of the lone gunman and hard-fighting superhero had by the nineties "disappeared and are being replaced by the more sensitive, loving, nurturing, protective family men of the nineties" (Jeffords 197). Jeffords argues that historically in the United States "masculinity is defined in and through the white male body"

(205). This seems to be the case for both films, although I will argue less so for The

Thin Red Line.

Gallagher argues, "In an all-male world, gradations of masculinity are apparent, and characters are defjned through their relationships to off-screen women or to more feminized male characters ... " (220). Again, an interesting comparison can be made of say, Sergeant Horvath and Corporal Upham in this respect. Indeed, the most disturbing segment in Saving Private Ryan is the highly sexualized killing of a

Jewish G.I. by a German soldier as the meek Corporal Upham listens (but cannot bear to look) on. The military setting also allows for a rite of passage for Upham, a rite of passage toward a narratively-defined masculinity which is outlined and created through violence.

I will also be looking at how stars, particularly Tom Hanks, come into play here. Richard Dyer writes that the phenomenon of stardom is "never at a point of rest

18 or equilibrium, constantly lurching from one formulation of -what is being human to another" (18). The ""Star" in itself is intertextual, an amalgarmation of past performances, interviews, and celebrity appearances. Hanks was already considered the ""modem-day Jimmy Stewart" for Oscar wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, an American everyman who, in Saving Private Ryan, playeci the symbolic representation of his own father. There is also a difference b-etween the star and the performer-actor, which revolve around masculine and artisti-<: identity (Tasker 74).

Tasker argues that, "'the territory of the star image is also the territory of identity, the process of the forging and reforging of ways of "being hum~' or "being a man' ... "

(76). Tom Hanks, just a few years removed from a double Oscar run in which he won two best acting awards, is mentioned in several reviews as the quintessential

American actor. ""Hanks is surely our age's Everyman, as co-mpelling as any star of the classic era and for the same reason: the reserve beneath bis openness, hinting at unspoken competencies that make us, like the troops he coii'ilmands, willing to follow"

(Schickel 57). Here, Hanks is looked upon in a somewhat contradictory manner: he is the representation of the average man, yet he commands the star power of screen legends so much that we are willing to follow him anywhere, even to hell and back.

The theme is picked up in a Maclean's review. "'Hanks subnnerges his everyman persona into the role of an embittered soldier struggling to ~reserve his decency" ( 4 7).

Again, Hanks, one of the most famous film stars in the worl

Heroes reinforce their image by embodying dominant values (Dyer 25). Here

Hanks, praised as the representation of the American everyrman, symbolizes the

19 predominant beliefs, ideals, and stereotypes of the World War Two hero, nobility, honor, and self-sacrifice, and his fmal act in the film epitomizes these values.

The audience also comes to the cinema with something of a foreknowledge of stars and their actions (Dyer 107). Through exposure to promotion, advertising, and past films, we learn to expect certain stars to act a certain way. Hanks, for example, was already considered an ''everyman" in the press. What we knew of his star persona, and what we knew of World War Two heroes through past films and television, shaped how we expected Hanks' character to act: heroic, brave, and self­ sacrificing.

Did this foreknowledge work against The Thin Red Line? I would argue that it did. Several critiques I mention below comment on the fact that the characters in the film do not act like those they expected in a World War Two film: they spend too much time wondering, thinking, and looking at the nature around them. Moreover, the actors they are familiar with don't do much simply because they aren't in the film very long. If you expect to see George Clooney's character acting a certain way, perhaps like Hanks' character, forget it. He's only got about three minutes ofscreen time.

Richard Dyer believes that stars are not a requirement for a film's success

(12). "Stars may be less crucial than they were twenty, thirty, or forty years ago" (12).

This may be true, yet Fox still chose to publicize the performances of some well­ known actors even though their screen time amounts to only several minutes in a three hour film.

20 Even in the face of the spectacle ofwar, the critic's genrefying frame often reverts back to the star's image. The spectacle, in fact, is centered on the star and his or her image (Dyer 12). I will connect this in Chapter Four to the D-Day assault sequence in Saving Private Ryan. In the seemingly random and chaotic death of the landing Spielberg turns to close-ups ofHanks more than any other actor, and we see several moments of the battle from his subjective point-of-view. The assault, for the most part, is centered around him. It is perhaps for this reason that David Ansen argues in Newsweek that ''Spielberg and his actors make us care deeply about their fate" (57). Of course Hanks' Miller is the last American character to die in the film.

He is the star and gets to portray the ultimate attempt at self-sacrifice and honor.

Comments dealing with the actors in The Thin Red Line run along two lines: that there are distracting cameos from big stars who were billed in publicity hype as having larger roles than they were actually given in the finished product, and that the characters with the most screen time were played by lesser-known actors. As well as violating war genre conventions the film also breaks apart conventional expectations about stars and their performances, about who will be in the film and for how long.

Still, with the tag of"distracting cameos" it appears that in order to justify a star's billing on a poster, his or her character must have a substantial role. In the case of the war genre one that also includes themes ofhonor and sacrifice. This position is occupied by Hanks' Captain John Miller, whose death in Saving Private Ryan symbolizes the sacrifice of all Americans in the war. Moreover, this justification of a star's importance in a film is not natural, but instead a creation of the dominant

Hollywood system, which generates expectations through studio promotion. We

21 come to expect to see stars in prominent roles in films because of previous expectations set up by the Hollywood system. This apparatus seems unequipped to deal with a film like The Thin Red Line, which so clearly breaches the conventions set up by this Hollywood system.

STEVEN SPIELBERG AND TERRENCE MALICK

The heart of my paper will revolve directly around Steven Spielberg, Terrence

Malick, their respective "war" films, and the reception that provided part of the discourse.

James Welsh writes that Spielberg fine-tuned the action formula in the 1980's, which in turn set the style for 1990's action-adventure filmmaking (166). Spielberg is the consummate storyteller, weaving his way in and out of fantasy and history, going back and forth from dinosaurs to the Second World War. Of course Spielberg has been extremely successful commercially and has influenced the way Hollywood makes films, promotes and distributes them, and constructs them narratively, and stylistically. When considering this, however, it is important to remember that

Hollywood, for the most part, only incorporates a limited range of narrative and stylistic devices from the entire spectrum.

22 In the eyes of the media Spielberg seemed to mature as a director in the

1990's. Schindler's List is referred to as a '"consequential event" (Schickel 74).

Thomas Doherty writes in Cineaste, "That Steven Spielberg, the balladeer of suburbia, the director with twenty-twenty eyesight into the motion picture soul of

America, should bridge that gulf is impressive" (1993).

Malick's first film in twenty years brought out a plethora of actors interested in working with the reclusive director. Some actors (Billy Bob Thornton, Lukas Haas,

Gary Oldman) never made it past the cutting room floor. Again, I believe that Malick incorporates elements of art cinema and modernism into his films, which leads to comments like Jack Kroll's ofNewsweek: ''Malick's style, a distinctive detente between original and traditional elements, asks viewers to be alert but helps to create alertness" (97,99). It almost certainly led to comments like this from Todd McCarthy ofVariety, who labels The Thin Red Line an '"art film" which will need good word of mouth from mainstream reviews or else the film will be left only to what McCarthy calls the "highbrow elite" (73). McCarthy, like other reviewers and critics of this film, tends to label Malick's third picture as either art or war, but still attempts to put it in some type of classification. A question I will ask is: why do we have to choose? I hope to show that it was this type of classification (either as art or war) that was paramount in the performance of the film while it had a life in the nation's theatres.

METHODOLOGY

Much of this thesis will revolve around the close textual analysis of Saving

Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. My procedure for such a textual analysis will 23 consist of repeated and systematic viewings of the films following narrative form, cinematography, sound, mise-en-scene, and editing. I will look at how well both

Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line fit into the classical patterns ofthe

Hollywood war film, especially World War Two film conventions, and how The Thin

Red Line incorporates aspects of art cinema, which in tum led to incomplete and inadequate critiques in the popular press, which was not equipped to handle a film that did not so easily fit into a prearranged generic category.

I think some aspects of these films can be related to the previous work of these two directors, in part to uncover the two filmmakers' particular styles. For example, Spielberg's use of an opening shock or spectacle sequence (in Jaws and

Raiders_ofthe Lost Ark) to draw viewers into the diegesis, which is again the technique he takes to new extremes with the twenty-five minute 0-Day sequence that opens Saving Private Ryan, or Terrence Malick squarely dealing as much with the idea of place as a main character (as he does in his films Badlands and Days of

Heaven) as much as any of his human agents that travel through it.

Both Spielberg and Malick, although they employ many different filmmaking devices and techniques, are both products of production factors as well as social and cultural trends. I will look at how Hollywood production has allowed Spielberg and

Malick to make their respective films (both their war films and their previous ones as well). Why would a studio, for example, give Malick $50-million to make The Thin

Red Line? Spielberg, again, helped perfect the idea of high-concept filmmaking, a technique I will argue he employs to near perfection in Saving Private Ryan.

24 I will also look at the discourses that surrounded these films as found in

reviews, critiques, articles about the films and their directors. I will look at the

discussions of these films and how they were fairly or unfairly compared to one

another, as well as the social and cultural issues (nostalgia, veterans reliving their

experiences cinematically) and thematic issues (masculinity, violence, narratives of

cultural identity) that surrounded both films upon their respective releases into the

nation's theatres, and how well this all fits into the concept of the war genre.

CONCLUSION

The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan debuted in theatres just months

apart, both with a nearly equal running time and a focus on two of the most important

and well-known battles of the Second World War. Just as important, both films had

talented, intriguing directors at the helm, and both received ample publicity from the

studios who released and distributed the films and critics and reviewers in the

mainstream press.

My goal will be to examine the issue of genre and how it allowed Saving

Private_Ryan to so thoroughly leave its mark on the U.S. film-going public in 1998 while the same did not happen for The Thin Red Line.

A headline in a literary column in the July 30, 1998 New York Times read

'"Private Ryan Revives a Genre" (Arnold E3). Martin Arnold argues that Spielberg's film is ••arguably the best combat film ever made by an American" (Arnold E3), then details how the film not only revived interest in books already written about the subject but also inspired authors to write the literary equivalent of Spielberg's film. In

25 one telling paragraph the film is not only credited with restarting the World War Two genre but another war genre as well.

Mr. Spielberg~s movie has only been out six days~ and ever­ quick book publishers have seen the opportunity and are al­ ready trying to get it. One executive said he was at a meeting when someone wondered aloud whether the movie's pop­ ularity might not "provide a commercial opportunity' for a gory Civil War novel (Arnold E3).

The film's depiction of hyper-realistic death and gore, seemed poised to put an array of World War Two books into circulation, and perhaps even revive interest in The

Red Badge of Courage as well.

RichardT. Jameson argues in Film Comment that, "'One of the most heartening things about Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is the extent to which it's succeeded in restoring WWII as a decade to the continuum of American experience" (20). He also argues, much like the Commentary review discussed above, that the film is ""untainted by anything suggesting a nineties sensibility" (20). For

Jameson, in a critique that seems much too simple and ignores decades of cinematic, generic, and cultural changes, the film is a good-old-fashioned war film straight out ofthe 1940's.

Saving Private Ryan understands "'the rightness of World War Two" (Cohen

83). This review, which ran in The National Interest, suggests that the Baby Boomer

Generation, through Saving Private Ryan, will come to understand the rightness and goodness of the war, even if they, according to Cohen, probably could not have, or would not have, fought the war themselves. For Cohen, the film seems to be devoid of anything post-1945.

26 John Meacham's review in Newsweek argues that our desire for true good guys in the cynical 1990's accounts in part for Saving Private Ryan's success.

''Americans still hunger for heroes. So we are forced into the past, and World War

Two seems a safe, sentimental refuge" (49). Why is World War Two such a refuge for American heroes?

I hope to use the concept of genre critically to help answer these questions.

What is it about our expectations and what and what does not constitute a war film and an art film? Is the art film in itself a genre or its antithesis? How might we react when they are violated? How do the press and critics shape how we define genre and what films fit where?

I will analyze both films to bring to the surface underlying issues of violence, masculinity, and nationalism, among other concerns. I will look to see if these films treat these issues differently, and if I can uncover recurring themes, concerns, style, form, and strategies of narration in the work of Spielberg and Malick by referencing some of their previous work. For example, is it problematic to be able to connect three different portrayals of the Third Reich in Spielberg's films? Are The Thin Red

Line's fragmented (yet collectively connected) characters more easily discernible by understanding how Malick shapes his characters in Badlands and Days ofHeaven?

These are some of the questions I hope to answer and, by doing so, contribute to a fuller understanding of the relationship of genre, its use by critics, its understanding by the public, and its effect on film-goers.

27 Chapter II Genre, the War Film, and Art Cinema

The December 21, 1998 edition ofVariety carried a review of The Thin Red

Line. The review, written by Todd McCarthy, presents a generally favorable critique of the film, although his most interesting comments lie in the opening paragraph.

McCarthy begins his review by guessing that Malick's work will frustrate mainstream film-goers and hopes that the film's studio, 20th Century Fox, has a strategic marketing plan to lure this audience into the theatres.

Fox's only hope with this large-canvas art film is to get enough strong reviews to engage the attention of the up­ scale viewers beyond the small portion of them familiar with Malick's outstanding 1970's work, then give it enough breathing room to allow for word-of-mouth to have effect. Otherwise, the highbrow elite will be its only constituency (McCarthy 73).

McCarthy makes several interesting and important assumptions at the beginning ofhis review. One, that The Thin Red Line is an art film. Two, that the art film. which he does not really defme, will draw the attention of what he refers to as

"upscale viewers" and confuse those not in this category. Finally, that the film should not be classified in the war film genre with a film like Saving Private Ryan. Later in his review he admits that another problem with The Thin Red Line will lie in audience expectation and how the film "stacks up against the year's previous World War II epic" (73 ). McCarthy's review was not a completely atypical one. The question here seems to be why any of these assumptions are made in the first place, and what purpose do they serve? 28 What aspects of Malick's film would lead McCarthy to label the film as an art

film and not a war film? Why does the film have to be one or the other? Can it not

possibly be both? Why does McCarthy so clearly demarcate the two films, putting

one into one genre and one into another? Is the art film a genre at all? How do all of

these concepts play into what will draw certain segments of an audience into one film

and not another?

Another interesting review of the film ran in Maclean's, which described

Malick's film as the ""least conventional war movie since 1979's Apocalypse Now"

(Johnson 52). Here the review places the film in the war genre, but without many of

the conventions that would seemingly put it there in the first place. If the film lacks so

many conventions of a genre, how is it still in that genre? Is it perhaps because the

reviewer did not know what else to do with it?

In order t<> answer these questions, I break down the issues of genre, the war

film, and art cinema, specifically as they relate to The Thin Red Line and Saving

Private Ryan. I t1.lm first to genre.

GENRE

Genre works as an interaction, and intersection, between filmmaker, film, and

audience. Bordwell and Thompson describe genre in Film Art as ••a rough category

shared by audience and filmmaker" (52). According to Bordwell and Thompson,

filmmakers geneially know what audiences expect in a certain type of film, and

audiences oblige by attending films that meet generic expectation. Genres, according to Steve Neale, work to bind films together (1980, 49). They typically display

29 conventions that appear in film after film, and the pleasures we derive from them are

"familiar pleasures" (Lipstiz 208). These conventions ''encourage the repetition, reconfiguration, and renewal of familiar forms in order to cultivate audience investment and engagement" (Lipstiz 208). They also exist to make films more easily marketable to audiences.

Genres also have ideological effects. Rick Altman quotes Leo Braudy as saying that genre films ask the audience, "Do you still want to believe in this?" (16).

A genre thrives when the audience answers a resounding "yes." It withers and falters, like the American western, when the audience answers negatively.

This leads to an interesting point made by Altman at the end of Film/Genre.

Altman argues that genres serve a memorial purpose, to recall a society's collective experience (Spielberg actually described his film as a memorial [Caldwell 48]). Yet they also serve a pseudo-memorial purpose as welL Genres help to recall not only a society's collective experience, but they serve as memorials to other genre films, which are in turn a part of society's collective experience. This is an experience, a past, the film industry needs to memorialize. The industry is also very good at it.

These films will bring about our remembrance of past films within the same genre. In

Saving Private Ryan we are not only reminded of the actual Normandy invasion, but of a film like The Longest Day as welL When dealing with genres, their meanings expand beyond a single film (Schatz, 1981, 10).

Altman adds that genre raises the stakes of reviewing (127). For critics in the popular media, reviewing films connects cinema to well-established and deeply-rooted categories (127). In this instance the notion of the war film, especially

30 the World War Two film, brings to mind many of the cultural notions (honor, bravery, sacrifice) that Will argued Saving Private Ryan brought to the forefront. The genre, and sub-genre, means something to viewers, and critics, interpreting the films through their own particular political and cultural points of view, are quick to connect the genre to these cultural notions.

Altmfu."l says critics lie at the heart of generic categorization, and argue that, when dealing with these two films, there is no exception. Many of the critics I examined lauded Spielberg's film for reviving an entire genre, while reviewers of The

Thin Red Line seemed to attack the film after placing it within the war genre or called the film an art film. Either way, it was never both. Altman argues that critics try to keep genre films in tightly-defined borders (16-18). The Thin Red Line, for critics, had to fit into some rigidly-held category.

For example, the July 13, 1998 edition ofNewsweek carried an article detailing how Saving Private Ryan would force Americans to re-examine the horrors of World War Two. The film was still two weeks from opening, and The Thin Red

Line was several months away from seeing the theatre, yet the article, before either film premiered, grouped the films in the same generic category. "Saving Private Ryan is only the first wave: six other World War II movies are in the works in Hollywood, including Terrence Malick's version of James Jones's The Thin Red Line with John

Travolta, George Clooney, Nick Nolte, and Sean Penn" ( Meacham 49). The quote is important because it not only places the two films together generically, but also trumpets the importance of several prominent actors who have little screen time,

31 perhaps hyping viewer expectations that would only be thwarted upon actually seeing

Malick's film.

Perhaps because of articles like the ones above, viewers were faced with what Staiger refers to as ••horizons of expectations". What one expects from a film is constantly changed by previous receptions (96). Spielberg's film debuted several months before

Malick's, and with national publications categorizing the two in the same genre most viewers surely had definite expectations about what to expect when seeing both films, but even more so with The Thin Red Line, which debuted several months after Saving

Private Ryan. These articles helped to create even more definite expectation, which, again, was often wrong in the case of The Thin Red Line.

One review concentrated specifically on the generic satisfaction gained from viewing both films. ··weighted against the frame of comparison, The Thin Red Line offers few of the dramatic or cultural satisfactions of Saving Private Ryan. Malick lacks Spielberg's sure sense ofthe narrative drive, ofluring an audience into the fabula, even of creating a convincing historical past or compelling genre film"

(Doherty 84). The review, which appeared in Cineaste in 1999, seems almost to bemoan the generic comparisons but then connects the films generically several times during the review. Saving Private Ryan is actually mentioned first during the critique, although the article is mostly an evaluation of Malick's work. Doherty's argument is that The Thin Red Line does not offer the generic satisfaction, convention, or resolution of Saving Private Ryan. Yet the review never questions the generic category in which Malick's film has been placed. It simply takes that for granted and

32 ignores how the film violates some conventions of the genre and does not consider the inclusion of art cinema conventions.

So it seems that, for many reviewers, generic comparisons between the two films, both before and after the two films premiered, were inevitable. As Altman suggests, our terms and conceptions of genre derive not from cinema, but from the critics and reviewers who represent cinema to us (124). For critics, genre films must share certain topics, characteristics, and structure (Altman 23-24). While both films follow various conventions ofthe genre, there are obvious differences, which some critics touched upon. Although some critics even contested their compulsory comparisons, others simply pointed out the differences between the two films yet still labeled both with the war film genre and never questioned that the categorization of The Thin Red

Line in this respect may have been deficient. Tightly-defined generic categorization is what seems inevitable here.

There also exists, according to Richard Slotkin, the "genre genre" (640). The genre genre originated in the late 1970's and began flourishing in the 1980's.

Spielberg's Raiders ofthe Lost Ark is a good example. These films

invoke images of the American past, [and] their primary appeal is not to the memory ofhistorical experience but to the remembrance of old movies, and above all to the mood of naive acceptance with which these fictions were once (presumably) received (640).

These films create not only a desire for movie images of the past but also for the uncomplicated and "'better" times of the past (640).

Both The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan debuted in 1998, at a time when, at the close of the century, Americans began looking back on the important

33 events of the past one hundred years, often referred to as "the American Century."

Certainly in many media discussions World War Two stood out as the most important historical event of the twentieth century. Genres were modified in part "by the industry's need to reflect timely concerns and current situations" (Slotkin 258).

Perhaps Americans were eager at this time for a film to honor what the media has dubbed "The Greatest Generation." Perhaps they also wanted a film that harkened back to a film like The Longest Day after more than a decade of Vietnam-era films.

In a critique of Saving Private Ryan in Film Comment, RichardT. Jameson concludes that, "One ofthe most heartening things about Steven Spielberg's new movie Saving Private Ryan is the extent to which it's [sic] succeeded in restoring

WWII and its decade to the continuum of American experience" (20). The film becomes a memorial to those who actually fought in the war, although in this version it is done with actors and blanks.

I have mentioned previously that Altman argues that genre covers all aspects of film economy: production, message, and consumption (14). Certainly all aspects of film economy are covered in the Variety and Maclean's reviews I mentioned earlier, with both dealing with the issue in their critiques. Again, both reviews seem to prompt more questions about the concept of genre than they answer.

Perhaps this is because, as Altman argues, studios attempt to sell a film's individuality rather than links to a specific genre, while at the same time film critics use and promote most generic language (126-7). Altman adds that the function of studio publicity is as much to advertise a film's makers as the film itself (117). Here a tagline such as "A Film by Steven Spielberg" comes into play on a Saving Private

34 Ryan movie poster. While the original poster displays a lone, anonymous soldier with a rifle, the tagline will bring past films by Spielberg to the minds of many filmgoers.

Moreover, it brings a certain kind of storytelling and narrative structure to mind, a kind that has been extremely successful with moviegoers in the past. According to

Altman, studios will attempt to associate films with past films through stars and directors (115).

Much of the publicity revolving around The Thin Red Line dealt "vith the fact that it was Malick's first film since 1978's Days ofHeaven. ''A Director Who

Dropped Out Drops Back In" reads the October 5, 1997 headline from the New York

Times. The article, appearing nearly a full year before the debut of The Thin Red

Line, profiles what the paper calls a skillful and enigmatic director and cites the enormous desire among actors to work with him (Farnsworth 28). Interestingly enough, a subheading in the article refers to Malick's film as a "wartime tale" (28).

Twentieth Century Fox may have been attempting to encourage the promotion ofMalick's return to filmmaking and the number of famous people who wanted to work with him as a selling point. Yet it is also true that while studios will shy away from generic claims for the most part, they will use this strategy when capitalizing on some other studio's success (Altman 117). Perhaps this might explain the similarity between the two film's original posters, even though the films' narrative and stylistic content, as I will show, differs drastically. One would be hard pressed not to think of

Saving Private Ryan after looking at a poster for The Thin Red Line hanging on a movie house wall. Perhaps this is exactly what 20th Century Fox wanted viewers to think.

35 So while genre may be an agreement between audience and filmmaker, it thrives through the work of critics and reviewers, who keep generic terms and references alive and fresh in the minds of the movie-going public. The title of one review of Saving Private Ryan found in Commentary is "'Spielberg at War" (48). The

Washington Post labeled the film one of the greatest war films ever made and one of the great American movies and some "have applauded it for reviving the classic war film" (Caldwell 48).

While The Washington Post lauded Spielberg for reviving a classic genre, mostly, I would assume, through the adherence to cliches and conventions that moviegoers had experienced through similar films, it is important to note that this type of generic identification makes genres appear to be transhistorical (Altman 19).

Comparing a film like Saving Private Ryan, or The Thin Red Line, to "classic" war films and/or those actually made during the war puts genre films '"in a timeless holding area as if they were all contemporaries" (Altman 19). Although it allows a critic easy access to similarities and differences among texts, it does not take into consideration changes of genre conventions and historical changes as a whole.

Altman does add, however, that it is common for critics to take one version of the genre as representative of the whole without taking into consideration generic developments (79). Perhaps it is an empty (although useful) label, then, one used to compare Spielberg or Malick's film to one from fifty years earlier without noting cultural and generic changes over that time.

Yet it is also true that films within a genre share certain fundamental characteristics. According to Altman, they must share a common topic and structure

36 (23). '"Even when films share a common topic, they vvill not be perceived as members of a genre unless that topic systematically receives treatment of the same type"

(Altman 23). So genre films must be more than just about the same thing, in this case

World War Two. They must also share similar narrative and stylistic characteristics.

Altman's treatment of genre seems to differ from several of the reviews mentioned earlier. These reviewers attempted to place the two films in question in the war genre based mostly on the topic ofthe films and less so on narrative and stylistic content.

Genres also funnel a "homogenous experience to those viewers who invest in a similar type of generic pleasure" (Altman 151). Certainly this seems to be based on prior experience with films employing similar conventions. The question, perhaps, is what kind of homogenous experience, if any, is gained when a film divests the conventions of a genre?

Convention, however, plays a large part not just in the use of genre by critics, but also by audiences. "The conventions of... genre are known and recognized by the audience and such recognition is in itself a pleasure" (Buscombe 43). Tom Schatz argues,

The cinema's commercial feedback system rarely affords the audience any direct or immediate creative input. Rather it allows it to affect future variations by voicing collective approval or disapproval of a current film. Such a response has a cumulative effect, first isolating and then progressively refining a film story into a familiar narrative pattern (13).

It is important to note that this argument on genre perhaps gives the audience too much power on the supply end of the equation. The audience, after all, still must choose from a supply made available (mostly) by Hollywood.

37 The structures of a specific genre are in part continued through the repeated and systematic viewing of similar films by the movie-going public. Hollywood supplies the audience with films they have mostly seen before, providing a familiar pattern, a "home away from home" as Altman describes it, and the audience obliges by supporting such films. Moreover, audiences often depend on inter-textual references, referring back to previous films within the genre (Altman 25). So while it is true that it would be difficult to analyze a World War Two era film and its 1998 counterparts without taking into consideration historical, cultural, and generic developments, many mainstream critics and many film-goers would attempt to connect them by memory of past viewing and convention.

When dealing with narrative and genre, many genre films deal with "the interruption of an initial equilibrium and the tracing of the dispersal and refiguration of its components" (Neale, 1981, 20). Genre films that follow the conventions of

Classical Hollywood Cinema incorporate a protagonist(s) who has a goal to reach by the end of the film. That goal is opposed by some type of counteragent, and this conflict supplies cause and effect and change within the film itself (Bordwell and

Thompson 108-9). The goal is usually accomplished, and the film ends with a strong degree of closure. It would seem, narratively at least, that this is what many film­ goers would expect from any film labeled by the press as being distinctly within a major genre.

Is genre strictly opposed to experimentation? Do genre films only insist on the familiar? Are they all familiarity or is there any novelty and invention involved?

According to Schatz, genre films "must be sufficiently inventive to attract attention

38 and satisfy the audience's demand for novelty, and on the other hand, they must protect their initial investment by relying to some extent upon established conventions that have been proven through previous exposure and repetition"

(1981,5).

Altman takes this a step further, adding that the practice of genre mixing is necessary to the very process whereby genres are created in the first place (136).

Hollywood studios work to mesh genres in order to attract a wider variety of film­ goers, some attracted to the various generic aspects within a single film. Is this perhaps an explanation of a film like The Thin Red Line, which seems to have conventions of the war film and, perhaps, the art film?

David Sanjek argues it is rare for a genre film to break radically from the conventions of a genre (114). Genre films, according to Sanjek, do not incorporate radical narrative or stylistic elements. Instead, they develop a body of"shared perceptions [that] assists an audience either in making sense of the illogical or anticipating the twists and turns a generic narrative will take before they occur" (114).

Many films, however, bend or play with generic conventions, something Malick does with his films.

What happens when a single film plays with and bends the conventions of its parent genre? Is it still part of that genre? How do critics handle a film that does this, or a film that incorporates unusual narrative or other devices, especially when they are attempting to compare it to another genre film? Again, one method of critical interpretation seems to be how the films employ tried-and-true conventions of a

39 genre, in this case, the conventions of the war film, and the World War Two film in particular.

CONVENTIONS OF THE WAR FILM

AND THE WWII FILM

It is interesting that in a book about the Vietnam War film, a defining statement about the World War Two film emerges. Writing about marketing war films, Kevin Bowen argues, ''We have a good idea what World War II movies will be about; their context is set and their advertisements are framed against the great recruitment posters and images of that war" (228). He adds that Vietnam films are

"often quite different from the large scale dramas ofWorld War II... where almost everyone in the audience could be counted on to know the battles and the generals' names and bear common images" (227). Certainly the audience Bowen refers to is the

World War Two generation, but it seems certain as well that many younger movie­ goers attending Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line in the summer and fall of

1998 had some idea, or some expectation, of what they would see, based on documentary and cinematic images of the war, from school, and through stories from family and friends. When images such as these become collective, they are

"especially potent," although for younger generations it is an experience largely developed "via the television screen and newspaper column" (Shaw 193, 200).

Memory exists, Martin Evans and Ken Lunn argue, at an intersection between individuals and institutions to connect the past with the present and the future (xvii).

40 Epic war films on the scale of The Longest Day. The Battle ofthe Bulge. and certainly Saving Private Ryan and to a much lesser extent The Thin Red Line remove almost all vestiges of the true war, replacing them with filmed replica and making the war "a legendary story-fully distanced and mythic-suitable to be one of our national stories for all time" (Basinger 188).

World War Two has often been seen and described as the "'Good War." It is

"understood almost universally as honourable and noble, fought with right and justice exclusively on the Allied side" (Cesarani 28). It is the one event thought of by many

Americans as uniting the entire country under a common cause. Hollywood quickly incorporated the "'Good War" belief and expanded it to the individual soldiers.

Hollywood filmmakers of the day predicated the Noble Warrior stereotype on the belief that World War II veterans were heroes and should be rewarded for their sacrifices and struggles. These ex-soldiers automatically wore a mantle of heroism as a result ofhaving participated in a "good' and 'just war' (Norden 219).

Slatkin argues that the complexities of social and historical problems are often reduced and projected onto a group ofheroes (13). There certainly seems to be an image-myth built around the war and those who fought in it, at least on the Allied side. How does that influence the conventions of the World War Two film, and what happens to audience expectation when those conventions are bent or even shattered?

War in general brings about moral and ethical concerns, and these dilemmas have led a surprisingly high number of American war films to focus entirely or in at least in part on American defeats (Kane 13). ''And even the majority of films, those depicting victory, are most concerned with the cost of success in humiliation,

41 suffering, brutalization, and death. Victory, it is implied, is justified to some extent if one suffers sufficiently for it (Kane 13). This seems to be tied in to Slatkin's notion of

"'regeneration through violence," which he argues is one ofthe preeminent building

blocks of American ideology and mythology. William K. Ferrell argues that World

War Two films deal with rebirth and restoration as the basis for defeating the evil

(Axis) powers during the war (30). Again, I would argue that this is a central theme in

Saving Private Ryan, in the case of Corporal Upham, and is also developed with

Private Witt in The Thin Red Line.

Chambers and Culbert argue war films function in large part to organize war and make sense of what is often random violence (148). "'They provide a story with a beginning, middle, and end. All of this offers coherence and meaning to viewers"

(148). So if a war film fails to do this, is it violating one of the principle aspects of being a war film in the first place?

More often than not, the genre portrays war as ''idealistic, courageous, heroic, and glorious" (Chambers and Culbert 7). Certainly, when The Thin Red Line and

Saving Private Ryan debuted, there was talk that the films were not only reviving the genre, but making war good again after more than a decade of Vietnam-related films.

Bowen argues that Vietnam films are seen more as social statements and are less clear-cut thematically than World War Two films (228). It is interesting to note that several mainstream reviewers remarked that The Thin Red Line seemed more of a

Vietnam War film than a World War Two film.

American World War Two films deal with "glum acceptance and grim determination" (Butler 55). They require that "the twin deities of individualism and

42 populism be served" (Cawley 70). This is a fo·iemost generic convention of the U.S.

war film and one that will be explored with regard to both films in the next chapter.

Soldiers are individualized (important in both films I will be discussing, especially

The Thin Red Line) and take with them a grim determination to do their duty for the

betterment of all Americans.

Protection of the home is the most commonly understood reason for fighting

the war (Kane 17). Soldiers are not only fighting to protect themselves and their

families (especially their wives/girlfriends/mothers) but also a way oflife (17). In this

situation "men are aware of certain differences in their backgrounds but also learn

with some surprise oftheir similarities" (Kane 17). I will argue this generic

convention differs significantly in the two films. This is among several issues I will

discuss in Chapter Four: the constant talk in Saving Private Ryan of fighting in order

to get home (to his wife, in Captain Miller's case) and the argument between Witt and

Welsh in The Thin Red Line that the war is being fought over "dirt" and ''"property."

Kane adds that, "In the combat films, Americans are never anywhere but in their own

land except involuntarily; when in other countries, they want to go home" (26).

Honor, cooperation, and duty are also common themes stressed in World War

Two films. Honor among American soldiers becomes a counterpoint to the treacherous, vicious, barren nature ofthe enemy. The enemy is displayed as barren, for example, because he lacks any flashback scenes of his own family. "In contrast, the Americans adhere to honorable rules of conduct based on morality" (Kane 21 ).

This becomes an important point in Saving Private Ryan during the near-mutiny against Captain Miller and especially during the Last Stand sequence involving

43 Corporal Upham and the death of Private Mellish. The Thin Red Line, moreover, begins with one of its central characters arrested and sent to the brig after being AWOL

The unity of effort, of cooperation, is paramount in World War Two films

(Kane 22). More importantly, "'Cooperation often requires self-sacrifice" (22). This type of sacrifice can be personal as well, meaning men often delay marriages because ofthe war. This is the central issue around Private Bell in The Thin Red Line, for example, which ends, knowingly enough, with his wife leaving him for another man.

The ultimate form of self-sacrifice, giving your life for another, constitutes the climax of both films, and in the case of Saving Private Ryan, carries over into the epilogue as welL

Slotkin argues that World War Two films largely have been able to integrate the contradictory notions of racist ideology (in their depiction of non-Americans, especially Japanese and Asians) and the disavowal of racism with the incorporation of the multi-ethnic platoon (320). War films in general focus their point of view mainly on grunts, not on generals (Tasker 104). In World War Two films, it is often centered around the platoon. Here the platoon, the mainstay of this type of war film, becomes a microcosm and representation of America.

With this type of platoon we learn ''how very important the concept of the unified group is to the World War Two combat film" (Basinger 36-7). According to

Basinger, "The obvious interpretation is that the war brings a need for us to work together as a group, to set aside individual needs, and to bring our melting pot

44 tradition together to function as a true democracy" (37). The platoon comes to represent exactly what we are fighting for in the first place.

The diversity of the platoon can be represented with ethnicity as the evident variable with subsidiary variables such as regional or geographic differences, age, social class, education, rank, and differing attitudes toward the war (Kane 66). I will analyze specific ways Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line incorporate (or disavow) some or all of these aspects of diversity in Chapter Four, but here I will give a brief overview of how the films activate this convention.

Saving Private Ryan, for instance, uses an eight-man rescue unit composed mostly of Army Rangers to locate Private Ryan. The platoon includes Captain Miller

(Tom Hanks), an educated high school English teacher and baseball coach from

Connecticut; Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore), the older, experienced dog-face and confidant of Miller; Private Reiben (Edward Bums), the tough-talking Brooklynite who nearly quits his mission; Private Jackson (Barry Pepper), the Southern, Bible­ quoting sniper who might enjoy his job a little too much; Private Mellish (Adam

Goldberg), the Jew whose fate is sealed through Upham's cowardice; Private Carpazo

(Vin Diesel), the big, hulking Italian, whose fate is sealed through his kindness to a group of non-Americans; Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), the compassionate and caring one ofthe group; and Upham (Jeremy Davies), the most problematic of all the characters in the film. It truly is a standard, diverse unit that seeks out Private Ryan

(Matt Damon). It might be appropriate to note that the Ranger unit in Saving Private

Ryan is not only diverse ethnically, religiously, and geographically, it is also diverse in its treatment of masculinity. This, diverse, but ultimately unified platoon,

45 represents multiple masculinities that are displayed as a hierarchy, with a clear gradation of what type of personality and character represents true masculinity as defined by the narrative and diegesis.

The situation is complicated extensively in The Thin Red Line however. Two of the main characters~ Privates Bell (Ben Chaplin) and Witt (James Caviezel), look remarkably similar~ and I would argue that this is intentional on Malick's part.

Moreover, their internal subjectivity is blurred as well, making it at times difficult for the viewer to discern which character's thoughts they are seeing and hearing. Perhaps the next most prominent ""grunt" in the film is Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn), notable mainly for being Witt~ s philosophical opposite. A main segment of the film develops the tension between Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) and Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), and although the film highlights the regional and ethnic differences between the two men, the conflict is not resolved in any traditional sense and the convention of cooperation is not installed at this point in the film. As in Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line offers levels of masculinity as well, from the Alpha male portrait of Colonel Tall to the introspective Private Witt.

This lack of cooperation in The Thin Red Line seems significant because "The activity of the men as a group is so important. .. they develop close friendships even to the extent that the group becomes a family" (Kane 88-89). Kane describes this as

.. brotherly affection" (89). This is a brotherly love that, depending on the war (or film), transcends race, personality, and education (Jeffords 208). These films depend upon "the eradication of difference through the institution of the masculine bond"

(Jeffords 208). Both films deal with attempting to overcome these differences, Saving

46 Private Ryan with Upham and to a lesser extent Reiben and The Thin Red Line with

Witt and Welsh.

With these films so heavily incorporating male bonding and masculinity the role of women will be limited. World War Two films "'evince a preoccupation with male bonding and ... undervalue the female presence" (Harper 172). In these films women are '"viewed as the embodiment of the civilization left behind" (Kane 18). She adds that while the attachment is strongly romantic and sentimental, that there is a clear sexual strain which underlies it ( 18). This can be seen in Captain Miller's speech about returning to his wife and especially with Private Bell's longing for his wife, who is seen in subjective flashbacks.

R.W. Connell argues that '•Masculinity does not exist except in contrast to femininity" (68). Masculinity in The Thin Red Line, for example, may be compared to femininity, especially in the flashbacks that depict the sexuality of Bell's wife.

However, the films also set up gradations of masculinity, with some levels clearly more feminized than others. Again, Private Witt can be compared to Colonel Tall, with one character clearly more masculine than the other, and with Tall's character, a gruff, hard-driven, win-at-all-costs commander a generic convention of the war film.

Susan Jeffords quotes Judith Hicks Stiehm as saying, "Were women to enter combat, men would lose a crucial identity-warrior. This is the only role now exclusively theirs, the one that is as male-defining as child bearing" (204). The military and war, both in real life and as it is portrayed in generic war films, often deal with a "rites of passage" narrative, in which a character becomes a man through

47 his experience in combat (Tasker 96, I 04). Initiation into manhood through violence is a key part of American mythology (Slotkin 324).

This ties in to Kane's assertion that the war film often includes what she terms

"misfits" (87). These are a ""collection of men who actively refuse to cooperate with others unless forced" and can be broken down into three distinct groups: the lone­ wolf, the malcontent, and the cynic (87-88). If these men refuse to become part of the group, and part of the group consciousness, they are also not an active part of male bonding and probably not enduring the necessary rites of passage.

This ties in to Connell's assertion that some men may be expelled from the normative order of masculinity. "The process is marked by a rich vocabulary of abuse: wimp, milksop, nerd, turkey, sissy... Here too the symbolic blurring with femininity is obvious" (79). Both films feature a prominent character that exists on the fringes of masculinity acceptable for the norm in a combat platoon.

Certainly the two characters that stand out here are Corporal Upham in Saving

Private Ryan and Private Witt in The Thin Red Line. I examine both characters closely in Chapter Four, and I will argue that Upham, a malcontent, does experience his rite of passage by film's end, while Witt, a lone-wolf/malcontent, does not.

Neither character fits the acceptable range of masculinities for this genre, and both stand out so readily because they can be compared to their more masculine counterparts.

Finally, I would like to discuss what Slotkin calls "the last stand" (336). This is the conclusion of the film when Americans, facing overwhelming odds, conduct an

Alamo-type defense against the enemy. This becomes a major set piece in Saving

48 Private Ryan, and narratively important in the cases ofUpham, Miller, and Private

Ryan himself, who refuses to leave his comrades behind and decides to fight the overwhelming odds against a mechanized German battalion.

War films often conclude with powerful and cathartic endings (Tomasulo,

1990, 155). Even those about defeat and the disintegration of the group '"end for the most part hopefully; despite the losses the survivors are committed to victory" (Kane

129). Saving Private Ryan ends with the self-sacrifice of one character for another and its implication decades later. The film also deals with the rite of passage of another character. The Thin Red Line ends with the death of one-half of an ongoing philosophical argument between two characters. I examine both endings in detail to see how they fit the conventions of closure the genre demands.

Because I have mentioned several times that The Thin Red Line incorporates aspects of art cinema, and that several critics have labeled it an art film, I would now tum briefly to the notion of art cinema and how it is distinctive from conventional

Hollywood cinema.

ART CINEMA: HISTORY, CONVENTIONS,

AND AUDIENCE

The art cinema, while not a specific genre unto itself, does have certain kinds of narrative devices and stylistic characteristics. It is these elements that Malick 49 incorporates into his films and combines with aspects of Classical Hollywood

Cinema. The art cinema may in fact be considered an anti-genre since many (at least mainstream) reviewers do not know how to classify some art cinema films or films that incorporate some aspects or conventions of the art cinema and do deviate from the conventions of Classical Hollywood Cinema. To begin, I look briefly at the development of art cinema.

The first place to look, it seems, is Europe after the Second World War. A number of"new waves" or "young cinemas" emerged in various countries after the war (Bordwell and Thompson 464). Many young directors were allied to film journals, had been trained in film schools, and began to rebel against the type of films being made by the elder filmmakers in their respective nations. Steve Neale adds in

"Art Cinema as Institution" that the emergence of leftist and social democratic governments after the war allowed for the emergence of an art cinema. '"The result was an efflorescence of art cinema, the production of the films and figures and the movements with which art cinema tends massively to be associated today" (30).

In the 1950's television had not yet emerged to distract post-war viewers from attending the theatres on a wide scale (Thompson and Bordwell411). On a broad scale film artists began to continue the modernist tradition that had begun in the earlier decades of the century in literature and painting as well as film (Thompson and

Bordwell 412).

By the 1960's cinema ''signaled the vigour of European recovery" (de Grazia

21 ). Yet the art cinema at this time can also be considered as a direct opposition, narratively and stylistically, to the Hollywood mode of production. Neale argues that

50 the art cinema is hostile to Hollywood for a number of reasons, hence the type of art films varied considerably: from the Neo-realism of De Sica to the experimentation of

Godard (1981, 15). Neale adds, however, that the heterogeneity of the European art cinema was constrained by production and distribution forces that sought to place them in a homogeneous group as a single commodity for exhibition purposes and aimed at a specific target audience in the United States (1981, 15). So it seems that distribution and exhibition factors began to control the way a wide variety of films were perceived in the U.S. and may have been grouped together for primarily economic and distribution reasons.

Art cinema took on an increasing significance in the United States. ""With thousands ofveterans going to college through the GI Bill, an ... educated audience, many of whose members had traveled in Europe during the war, emerged, and art films held some appeal for it" (Thompson and Bordwell384).

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith argues that the market for foreign language films has always been a minority one in this country, but because the United States is a diverse nation minority markets are not necessarily insignificant (15). At early art house screenings European cinema was endowed, through an educated audience, with a certain cachet that kept the enthusiasm for these films alive (Izod 147). At this point perhaps, Hollywood began to see the power in specialty and niche audiences, although it is less certain whether this was a homogeneous audience seeing a collection of films that could be construed as a genre.

Janet Staiger addresses the issue of audiences becoming segmented, along with Hollywood attempting to capitalize on this as an opportunity to make money.

51 "With art houses doing a steady business, researchers investigated who was going to these films and why they went" (185). Hollywood quickly began doing market research on art house movie-goers.

During the two decades following World War Two, films as a whole were appealing to a more limited portion of society, and in turn were targeted to specific tastes, the art film being one example (Schatz, 1981, 24 ). ''There was a core of younger, better educated, and more cineliterate viewers who were attracted to ... more experimental, modernist, and foreign films as well" (Schatz, 1981, 24). The popularity of the burgeoning art cinema in the United States drew from cultural and demographic factors such as age and education, but also from economic factors related to exhibition and distribution.

So it appears art cinema is at least a different kind or type of film. and arose that way partly for economic reasons. Yet are there narrative and stylistic traditions to the art cinema? What are the differences between the classical Hollywood tradition and the art cinema? I would argue that, even if art cinema is not a distinct genre

(perhaps an anti-genre) it still incorporates certain narrative and stylistic elements.

It is possible to consider the art cinema as a '"distinct mode of film practice, possessing a definite historical experience, a set of formal conventions and implicit viewing procedures (Bordwell, 1979, 56). Bordwell argues that art cinema defines itself directly against classical narrative and works against the tight cause-effect chain that Hollywood films so thoroughly rely on, attempting to create a loose, disconnected chain of events instead (1979, 57). The characters of art cinema are psychologically complex and lack the clear-cut goals of Hollywood characters. ''The

52 Hollywood protagonist speeds directly toward the target; lacking a goal~ the art-film character slides passively from one situation to another" (Neale, 1981 ~ 59).

Neale adds that art films tend to rely more on visual style, a reduction in action, and a stress on character rather than plot and conflict (1981, 13). Neale argues that these signifiers of an authorial voice tie the notion of the art cinema to the author.

This can be used commercially as a selling point and brand name. Neale elaborates:

"It [authorship] can exist as a means of accounting for and unifying conceptually the multiplicity of differences that can exist between Art films and Hollywood films, reducing that plurality to a single homogeneous principle" (36). An art film~ Neale argues~ can be sold to a specific audience familiar with a director's past work. This may have prepared certain segments of the audience for what to expect when seeing

The Thin Red Line. A familiarity with Malick's earlier work, Badlands and Days of

Heaven, may have prepared them for the unconventional narrative and stylistic aspects of The Thin Red Line. However, it is important to note that Spielberg is used in much the same way; much of the audience of Saving Private Ryan would have been familiar with at least some of his past films. I explore the differences between

Spielberg's and Malick's authorial innovations in the next chapter.

Chance encounter also plays a large factor in art cinema (Bordwell~ 1985,

206). "The art film can thus become episodic, akin to picaresque and processional forms" (206). Bordwell argues that the art film, instead of linking a clearly defined cause and effect chain of events, loosely connects a series of disparate episodes that are connected, often as not, by chance, which tends to happen much less often in the narrative design of Classical Hollywood Cinema. The audience, moreover, is much

53 more restricted in its range of knowledge than it is in a classical Hollywood narrative

(209).

Mise-en-scene also holds a prominent place in art cinema films. '"The art cinema has developed a range of mise-en-scene cues for expressing character mood: static posture, covert glances, smiles that fade, aimless walks, emotion-filled landscapes, and associated objects" (Bordwell, 1985, 208). The mise-en-scene becomes a signifier not only of the director's control of what is in front of the camera, but an active part ofthe interpretation of the narrative. Again, I argue that Malick combines the narrative and stylistic elements ofboth Classical Hollywood Cinema and the art film into his movies, including The Thin Red Line.

Janet Staiger writes that spectators (and perhaps reviewers as well) will look first towards verisimilitude and then towards authorship as a signifying point (180).

Viewers will look to continuity and realism, but will, as in the case of art cinema, to the director and his or her other films as a reading strategy in which to make sense of a film, to unify a text through stylistic repetitions. One review of The Thin Red Line even remarks that viewers should '"look elsewhere for the verisimilitude of wartime newsreels" (Doherty 83). Spielberg's film was lauded for its realism; Malick's received some praise for this, but much less. For example, the following critics turn towards Malick's cinematography as a unifying point of authorship among his three films.

A review in Time claims that The Thin Red Line contains some of the most beautiful imagery since, well, Malick's last film twenty years before (Corliss and

Schickel 173 ). The review also offers a thematic connection among all three of

54 Malick's films. '"Each film is a tragedy of small folks with too grand goals; each is narrated by a hick with a dreamy touch of the poetic; each sets its tiny humans against

Nature in ferocious rhapsody" (173). Here an authorial connection is made among all ofMalick's works.

Janet Maslin writes in the New York Times that if you have seen Badlands and Days ofHeaven, the imagery in The Thin Red Line should be easily recognizable as Malick's. "It's as if a familiar voice had never left off' (Dl).

So there appears to be a set of exhibition and distribution factors as well as narrative and stylistic devices that set off art cinema films from the dominant

Hollywood cinema. Yet what is a reviewer saying when he or she labels The Thin Red

Line an art film? The reviewer makes a distinct point of saying that art cinema is a distinct type of film and cannot be amalgamated to a specific genre like the war film, and that Malick's film does not follow enough of the conventions listed earlier to be considered a part of the World War Two sub-genre or even the war genre in general.

The reviewer does not consider the option that the film could be both, that elements from both can be combined. It is either one or the other.

The review also indicates what type of audience is expected. Will a war film draw one segment of the audience and an art film another? Todd McCarthy's review in Variety theorized that the highbrow, educated elite of film-goers would be the primary patrons of Malick's film because, to him, the film incorporated aspects of art cinema.

I argue that The Thin Red Line incorporates some aspects of the art cinema conventions listed above, and I analyze this issue in detail in Chapter Four. It will

55 also help, I think, to take a brieflook at Malick's previous films as welL In the next chapter, I analyze the careers ofTerrence Malick and Steven Spielberg.

56 Chapter Ill On Spielberg and Malick

In 1999 Time dedicated an issue to its interpretation of the one hundred greatest artists and entertainers of the 20th Century. Steven Spielberg made the lis~ and film critic Roger Ebert wrote the magazine's comments on the filmmaker. His comments on Spielberg are worth examining. Ebert argues that Spielberg brings two things to his films: "the sense of wonder and hope, and the identification with a child's point of view" (128). Ebert then strangely comments, "Even Oskar Schindler has something of that in his makeu~the boy's delight in pulling off a daring scheme and getting away with it' (128). Ebert seems to be referring to a film like E. T. in his initial comment but then connects it to Schindler's List with his second. Ebert seems to have no problem connecting these films in some kind of Spielbergian universe, proposing a kind of Spielberg style and narrative that is distinctive to the director.

However, Ebert writes about ••wonder and hope" and a "boy's delight in pulling off a daring scheme" in a film that deals with the Holocaust with no apparent irony. What seems important to him is that the films are stylistically and narratively connected through Spielberg.

This reminds me of Spielberg's depiction of Hitler in Indiana Jones and the

Last Crusade. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), the archeologist and adventurer, fmds himself trapped in Berlin amid a massive Nazi rally. Jones turns a comer and runs into Hitler. Jones has camouflaged himself in the garb of a Third Reich officer and is holding onto his father's diary, which Hitler mistakes for a copy ofMein Kampf or an

57 autograph book. Hitler takes the book and signs it for Jones. The twentieth century's

most infamous person becomes, in one quick sequence, a darkly ominous comic book

character that audiences nervously laugh off. Morever, in both instances there seems

to be a trivialization of serious and important historical material.

I mention this because just four years later audiences and critics alike heaped

mountains of praise on Spielberg for another portrayal of the Nazi regime and the

Holocaust in Schindler's List. For many the film seemed to mark a turning point, or

perhaps even a climax (he won the Oscar for Best Director for the film) in Spielberg's

career, even though he had attempted other ''serious" films in the past. Ebert, for

example, points out that Spielberg is capable of films like The Color Purple as well as

his fantasy films (128). It would be interesting to see if Ebert would connect the Nazis

in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with those in Schindler 's List in that same

Spielberg universe of films.

In this chapter I look at the careers of Spielberg and Terrence Malick. I

examine the styles of both directors and how they use narrative. I focus on how

Spielberg's use of narrative has influenced the way Hollywood tells a story and how

Malick incorporates Classical Hollywood narrative and elements of the art cinema

into his films. I briefly analyze two films by each director: Schindler's List and

Amistad, Spielberg's "serious" films ofthe 1990's, and Malick's first two films,

Badlands and Days ofHeaven. I also look at what some critics, both popular and

academic, have written about these films. To begin, I examine the style and narrative technique of Steven Spielberg.

58 STEVEN SPIELBERG: NARRATIVE AND STYUSTIC APP"'ROACH

From a purely commercial standpoint Steven Spielberg is the 1111.0st successful

movie director in history. Spielberg's films have collectively grossed n::ine billion

dollars (Savoring Private Ryan 49). Because of this enormous commercial success,

his narrative and stylistic approach has shaped how Hollywood has told stories for the

past twenty-five years and continues to do so today. His films of the 1~70's and

1980's helped to create the conventions blockbuster and event films folllow today.

According to Bill Nichols Spielberg has "recapitulate[d] the tre-nd in big­

budget Hollywood filmmaking to take the trappings of B genre films amd stylize them

into something more aesthetically appealing to "mature', middle-class taste (10). One

only has to think of films like Jaws and Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, the latter based on

old B-grade serials, to see the truth in this statement. Jaws was one of tthe key films in

the transition to the blockbuster strategy in the 1970's as well.

According to James Welsh, in the 1980's the action-adventure :formula was

""fme-tuned and sophisticated by such directors as Richard Donner ancL Steven

Spielberg" (166). Yvonne Tasker argues this type of action film is ""tiet

popularity ofthe big-budget cinema of spectacle that developed in the late 1970's and

1980's (59). These films include a certain'" 'knowing' quality, a kno\V.,..ledge of

cinema and popular culture which is shared between texts and the audiiences which they address" (Tasker 59). Tasker believes that those who make these rtypes of big­

budget blockbusters are aware of their escapist qualities and their roles as spectacle, which in turn invites audience complicity (59). Again, Raiders ofthe Lost Ark is a

59 good example here. The film itself is meant to be viewed as fantasy, not as an

indication of contemporary American-Arabic tension.

Robert Kolker argues that Spielberg has perfected the art of encapsulating the

viewer inside the narrative (255). He is "an innovator, a master at suturing the viewer

so tightly into the narrative and spatial flow that he seems to become a part of it"

(Kolker 255). He is also a director who "uses his popularity and influence to make,

from time to time, films about large and historically significant subjects, turning his

viewers into the subjects of narratives that presume to represent the Nazi destruction

of the Jews or the visceral experiences of World War II combat" (Kolker 255).

Viewers are presented with a narrative that elides much of the complex history that

surrounds Spielberg's films.

Spielberg often turns to technological wonder or a shocking opening to draw

the viewer into his world (Kolker 307). Writing of Saving Private Ryan's 0-Day

invasion sequence, Kolker argues that Spielberg "turn[s] to technological spectacle to

divert the viewer into the mise-en-scene, providing aural and visual wonder and fear

to make up for the moral uncertainty that very mise-en-scene creates" (307). This

seems to be a pattern that Spielberg has repeated from his previous films. In Saving

Private Ryan, the twenty-minute invasion sequence presents mechanized death on a

never-before seen scale before the narrative turns to a very conventional rescue­ mission narrative.

The opening of Jaws, for example, begins with the camera ominously cruising beneath the water to the famous John Williams score, then cuts to a young couple on the beach. The boy is too drunk to make it into the water; the girl, of course, does, and

60 Spielberg's shark quickly dispatches her without the audience ever catching a glimpse of the animal, building the suspense even more. The girl's death, one of the most memorable moments of the film, polishes off one of the few female portrayals in the film.

This type of opening can be connected to Saving Private Ryan, with its shocking opening that draws viewers quickly into the narrative. ''Spielberg is such a master of the craft of film-making that, to the extent that you can invade Omaha

Beach from the comfort of a cinema seat, and realism is your bag, he's done it"

(Kaufman 39). This New Statesman critique seems to have it only half right though.

Kaufman writes that, "what has been less subject to comment is its surpassing technical virtuosity, scarcely noticed because the subject matter is so engrossing and horrifying" (39). I would argue that the technical virtuosity here can be connected to other Spielberg films such as E.T., Jaws, and Close Encounters ofthe Third Kind in which the technology overwhelms viewers and obscures and masks conventions.

Kaufinan argues that the film is free of cliches, and uses the example of

Americans shooting Germans after they have surrendered to validate his claim, but I claim the opposite: that the film reproduces many of the cliches of the war film and by doing so helps revive the World War Two sub-genre and the feelings (honor, self­ sacrifice, patriotism) that go with it. Spielberg's film follows convention, and his success as a director, from Jaws, Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, E. T., and Schindler's List to

Saving Private Ryan, comes in part from reading the dominant cultural beliefs of the time and narrating them back to the audience. Spielberg believes he knows what the

61 audience wants and knows the form, style, and content to supply it back to viewers. In generic terms, with Saving Private Ryan jast one example, he succeeds.

In terms of narrative, the centrality of male and masculine images is central to

Spielberg, from the main characters of Jaws battling the shark, to Indiana Jones rescuing '"maid Marion" in Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, to the lack of female representation in Schindler's List, Amistacl, and Saving Private Ryan.

If Jaws is ""itself predicated on a ruthless notion of movie as roller coaster"

(Hoberman 13) then the girl's killing is the first drop after a very quick ascent. The film helped redefine ""the nature, scope, and profit potential of the blockbuster movie, and [laid] the foundation for the films and filmmaking practices of the New

Hollywood" (Schatz, 1983, 10).

Part of Spielberg's technique includes the ideological structure of his films.

""The form and structure of the films prodace images and narratives that respond or give shape to the current ideological needs, offering a safe and secure ideological heaven" (Kolker 256). They create a comfortable surrogate universe in what is otherwise an uncomfortable outside world_ This works, in part, because even in his films that include issues of major historical importance, many of the larger, far­ reaching concerns are left unsaid (or un-filmed). Spielberg never spends time on why the Allies storm the beach at Normandy. He reduces the issue of American slavery in

Amistad to a courtroom thriller in which Anthony Hopkins must come to the rescue of a mostly nameless, faceless collection of victims whose native tongue does not even warrant subtitles.

62 In a fantasy film like Close Encounters ofthe Third Kind anything remotely resembling a complex situation is reduced to childlike divisions of good and eviL

••The wise aliens find their true affinity with the good earth people; not the government. But politics has been drained almost entirely from Close Encounters.

The nearest character to a government representative is played by Francois Truffaut"

(Braudy 290). Even the aliens, creators of star-traveling spacecraft, can only communicate through music.

The existence of Classical Hollywood Cinema depends on the audience's assent to its narrative and stylistic techniques of illusion and continuity. For the film to work, the audience can never question that what they are watching is artificial, a series of still images run through a projector at twenty-four frames per second. The type of narratives Spielberg creates fit neatly into this approach. Spielberg's storytelling draws the viewer into the narrative early and offers a compelling story that keeps the interest of the viewer for the two-plus hours that follow.

His narrative discourse continues to speak to yearnings for security, help, reclamation, and amelioration; the formal articulation of this discourse still situates the viewer in order to make both the yearning and Spielberg's assuring response to it irresistible (Kolker 287).

Spielberg's films give us easily identifiable heroes and villains, and the division between good and evil is clearly demarcated. Again, these are things clearly evident in Saving Private Ryan.

The themes ofSpielberg's films often revolve around the oppositions of threat versus protection and fear versus security (Kolker 289). The threat comes from the menacing shark in Jaws to the (driverless?) semi of Duel to the aliens in Close

63 Encounters ofthe Third Kind to the Germans in Saving Private Ryan. This theme is played out again and again with only shift in setting and perhaps scope. With the exception of Duel, all of Spielberg's fllm.s involve characters who, when threatened by external forces, have friends and companions on which to rely, often against the backdrop of an indifferent or even antagonistic community (Kolker 298-299). This can certainly be seen in Amistad, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan where the

"heroes" are pitted against an often-hostile community or landscape.

The threat in Spielberg's films seems always to impede domesticity. Even in

Saving Private Ryan the Rangers' conversation often turns to the subject of what they are fighting for. The prevailing opinion, echoed by Captain Miller, is that fighting will allow him to return home to his wife, to the domestic life that awaits him and is seemingly threatened by the war. The underlying echo, of course, is that of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity being threatened and finally restored.

Even though some critics consider that Spielberg's more "serious" films in the

1990's "suggest[ed] a shift in Spielberg's location within the Hollywood pantheon,"

(Nichols 9) his technique seems much the same, from the opening segments that draw the viewer into the narrative to the technological wonder to his "white male heroes of gentle character, empathetic nature and altruistic impulse" (Nichols 9). Much of

Spielberg's approach remains constant, be it on Amity Island or Omaha Beach.

Before turning to Terrence Malick, I will briefly analyze two of the three

''socially-conscious" Spielberg films of the 1990's, Amistad and Schindler's List.

64 SCHINDLER~S LIST, 1993

Schindler's List opens with a brief summary of what is happening in Poland

just after the Nazi occupation in 1939 but then quickly cuts to a scene of Oskar

Schindler preparing for a big night on the town. The camera sweeps across his

clothing on the bed, his large billfold, even his cufflinks, before finally settling into a

close-up of his gold-laced Nazi party pin, which he wears on the fold of his jacket.

The camera then pans across his face. Of course, Spielberg utilizes this scene to show

us how Schindler, with not nearly as much money or power as he pretends to have,

manages to win the favor of several prominent members ofthe military by putting on

airs. At this point, very early in the film, his actions most directly control the cause

and effect of the narrative. He becomes more familiar to the audience in the first ten

or fifteen minutes than any single Jewish character will be in the entire film. One

critic argues that these scenes are designed to show how "'ordinary" Schindler's life

really was (Gilman 71). I would argue just the opposite: Schindler/Neeson's life is

depicted as anything but ordinary, even at the outset of the film. He is clearly the

most important figure in the film, and follows a pattern set up in other Spielberg

films, including Amistad and Saving Private Ryan: the heroic, patriotic figure.

Schindler is described as a "gallant, high-minded mercenary, •a la Rhett

Butler" (Sharrett 43). The film seems to be problematic from the beginning: do we need Rhett Butler in a film dealing with the Holocaust? Even at his most "serious",

Spielberg trivializes and over-simplifies profound and complex moral, political, and historical issues. The film is not really about the Holocaust, but about the adventures of a con-artist and manipulator caught up in the middle of it.

65 The film lets audiences know who the star of the show really is. In a scene early in the film Schindler is in his office talking with his accountant Itzhak Stem

(Ben Kingsley). The scene develops in shot/reverse shot of the men talking across the table. Kingsley's character is framed in medium close-up shots, while Neeson is given almost exclusively close-ups ofhis face. The disparity is quite noticeable and unbalanced: Schindler, not Stem, is the hero of the tale.

The Schindler and Stern pairing is a type of relationship common in

Spielberg's films, revolving around a patriarchal imperative (Kolker 305). Amistad, for example, is precisely about the loss of familial (namely patriarchal) protection

(Kolker 305). The same situation continues in the narrative of Spielberg's Holocaust film, "where Jews, analogous to Amistad's Africans, are reduced to helpless gratitude before Schindler, who, learning compassion against his worst nature, reaches through the Nazi hierarchy to save a few people to work in his factories" (Kolker 305). Kolker argues that Spielberg's representation of patriarchy becomes complicated in Saving

Private Ryan, where men leave their families to form homosocial groups and heroism is either set against, or absorbed into, the work of these harmonious groups (306). For example, Corporal Upham in Saving Private Ryan spends the film trying to bond with the other men in the squad, but the film continuously sets him apart, and it is his lack of heroism that ultimately separates him from the others. Private Ryan is presented as heroic because he chooses to fight with the others during the Last Stand sequence.

Nichols argues that "Women have no more place in the Spielbergian universe than in the Christ narrative" (1 0). This goes for films such as Jaws and E. T., where mothers and wives are reduced to background characters, and for Schindler's List,

66 where "Spielberg has found ways to eliminate one ofhis weaknesses--exploring

complex interpersonal relationships and male-female intimacy-entirely" (Nichols

10). That is certainly a pattern that continues in Saving Private Ryan. The women in that film either type death notices for the War Office or collapse when learning a son

has been killed. Even in a film like Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, where Spielberg reverses

feminine conventions by having Karen Allen portray a woman "who can drink men

under the table" (Tasker 27), by the midpoint of the film her tough-guy exterior has

evaporated and she becomes a helpless damsel in distress pleading for Indiana Jones

to save her.

During the sequence in Schindler's List in which the Nazis liquidate the Lodz

ghetto, Schindler has ridden by horseback to the top of a hill overlooking the ghetto,

accompanied by an unnamed young woman. Both watch in horror as they view, from

their lofty perch above the slaughter, the actions below them. Schindler is shot from a

low angle, and the camera records his dismay. The young woman, whom we assume

is one of Schindler's mistresses, is afforded one close-up, during which she turns to

look at Schindler. She completely defers to him during the scene. The portrayal of

women in the film follows this pattern; they are relegated to onlookers and

background characters, a situation followed in Saving Private Ryan.

Schindler's List also attempts to use age-old cinematic devices of irony to

arouse emotion. At one point Stern persuades Schindler to allow a factory worker,

who has one arm, to thank him for the job, which in turn probably saved his life.

Schindler then berates Stem for the man's very presence in his factory. How is the man making money for Schindler when he has one arm? In the next sequence German

67 troops put a bullet in the man's brain when Schindler's Jewish workers are forced to clear the roadway of snow. The film suggests the scene may have some personal effect on Schindler, perhaps by influencing his decision to save the Jewish workers at the expense of much of his personal wealth. He becomes the benevolent father figure to the Jews he saves. The theme of fathers and sons is played out in Saving Private

Ryan between Captain Miller, Corporal Upham, and Private Ryan himself.

When the film does attempt to show the wider-ranging consequences of the

Holocaust the result "diminishes the human figure" (Kolker 320). "He is able to encapsulate the whole process of genocide in the overwhelming image of the cattle train with its cargo of women entering the gates of Auschwitz" (Kolker 320). In this scene the film attempts to add tension by following the Jewish women as they are herded, presumably, to the gas chamber. The scene cuts from long shots ofthe screaming women to close-ups as we expect the gas to tum on, but in the end only water sprays from the nozzles. The tension is built, creating expectation, and then that expectation is thwarted and we can breathe a sigh of relief. More importantly, this seems to continue the pattern set up in Spielberg films: the trivialization of historical events. Here the issue of the death camps is treated with the conventions of a

Hitchcock thriller.

If Schindler dominates the narrative (more than the Jewish characters) a close second would be his shadowy doppleganger Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the labor camp commandant. Richard Schickel argues in Time that Goeth is "the film's most compelling performance ... He is evil in all its banality, all its primal ferocity" (75).

Thomas Doherty suggests disturbingly that, "British actor Ralph Fiennes confirms

68 again the fascination with fascism~ the way evil outperforms good as a focus for

narrative interest" (50). The film certainly spends an inordinate amount oftime

following Goeth's character, and many sequences detail his murderous actions.

One sequence seems particularly heavy-handed. Goeth, with several junior

officers in tow, drags a Jewish worker outside to shoot him because he isn't working

fast enough. The image frames both figures as Goeth repeatedly attempts to shoot the

man, only to become more and more frustrated as his gun malfunctions. During the thirty seconds it takes for this to unfold, we await the moment when the gun will work. It never does, and Goeth eventually screams out in rage and walks off. The

scene builds tension toward a seemingly-inevitable conclusion and then thwarts our expectations, much like the shower sequence described above, but the important point

is that several sequences follow his individual murders in exacting detail, and he is a major focal point of the narrative.

The film crosscuts several scenes of Schindler and Goeth (for example the two characters shaving) and Schindler even remarks to Stem that Goeth isn't all that bad, that he likes many of the same things Schindler does (to which Stern replies, ""Except he kills people").

Goeth is a "weakling" in the film (Barta 139), and his demise, which is capture by the allies and a hanging~ is presented as especially pathetic. Yet while

Goeth may be sickening and reprehensible, he is still a focal point in the narrative because he is presented as fascinating to the audience. In fact, after his introduction into the narrative he receives nearly as much screen time as Schindler, and certainly more than any Jewish character.

69 The film~ s narrative oscillates between the larger scope of the Holocaust and the heroic story of Schindler (Kolker 321 ). The narrative centers as much on

Schindler's exploits to manipulate others as it does on the Holocaust itself. Spielberg cannot concentrate on the former too much because that would disrupt the flow of the narrative fable he has created, and at the same time cannot make the narrative too complex "because that would endanger the emotional bond that Spielberg must build between audience and film. Depth and ambiguity are not acceptable qualities of popular cultural artifacts" (Kolker 321). This implies that the box office is a consideration in how the narrative is presented and how a subject like the Holocaust is handled. "The amoral power of spectacle makes for better box office than the ethical constraints of documentary" (Nichols 10). Nichols seems to imply that a good story seems to win out over the idea of objective truth that most take documentary filmmaking to represent. Again, the film does elide most of the larger historical, social, and moral considerations of the Holocaust and the war, instead focusing on a single dramatic incident. This is a pattern repeated in Saving Private Ryan.

Fred Bruning, writing in Maclean's. makes an important point by arguing,

"The least politically correct opinion in America these days is that Schindler's List is a movie with problems" (9). Speaking of the Holocaust as narrative, Bruning adds,

"Those unfamiliar with the Holocaust story-and scores of Americans have only the dimmest notion of what went on-suddenly are able not only to grasp Hitler's Final

Solution but to survive the debacle themselves!" (9). This is important because just a few years later, in 1998, the least politically correct opinion in the United States may have been that Saving Private Ryan was a movie with problems. The film was so

70 often portrayed in the media as validating the World War Two generation in the minds of Americans that many questions were not asked. Did the film elide complex historical issues? How did the film portray violence and masculinity? Was the film, through its reliance on generic convention, making war good again? These are questions I will answer in the next chapter.

AMISTAD, 1997

Spielberg attempts to bring the issue of slavery to light in Amistad by focusing on a specific incident in 1839. In this film, perhaps even more than in Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg touches on the wide-ranging consequences that frame his particular narrative. I use the word "touches," because the film "displaces political and economic concerns with the legal, turning a difficult, painful subject into a courtroom melodrama" (Kolker 314). The film becomes, as I will show, as much. about how a young lawyer and a former president take on the U.S. legal system as on the issue of slavery.

Amistad uses the cinematic technique of developing expectations, then delaying fulfillment for maximum cinematic pleasure. The film opens with the revolt aboard the Amistad, and the audience must wait for more than an hour before the film actually depicts the trans-Atlantic journey of the slaves. Armond White writes in Film

Comment that the West Africans' journey is "deeply sorrowful, shocking and, when beautiful, awesome" (39). Even more important, it is played to maximum narrative effect. We have been waiting to see their passage across the Atlantic, and halfway

71 through the narrative the film grants us this wish with the use of a flashback. The flashback, moreover, represents hundreds of years oftrans-Atlantic slave trading.

For some reason, Amistad waits twenty to thirty minutes before it begins to translate the Mende speech of the slaves (even the Spanish of the slave traders is subtitled from the beginning). For the most part the slaves are an undifferentiated mass, with the exception of Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) who becomes the voice for the slaves over the course of the film. This is a pattern that is repeated in Saving Private

Ryan when none of the German spoken in the film is actually translated, leading to misinterpretations both by the American characters in the film and critics reviewing the film itsel£ The Germans, with the exception of one character, are much like the

West Africans in Amistad: except for one character, they are all alike.

Amistad's narrative works, however, to gradually show the audience that

Cinque and the other West Africans are really no different than the rest of us.

'"Spielberg has to show that they are, beneath it all, obviously "just like us.' Inside every non-Christian is a Christian waiting to get out" (Kolker 318). Yet is this the case? Spielberg works to set the West Africans up as the Other and then humanize them, but again, they are a nameless, faceless mass whose native tongue is not even decipherable to English-speaking audiences.

The film often frames the West Africans behind bars, making them even more undifferentiated. Inside the dark, damp cells they are, with the exception of Cinque, pushed to into the background walls of the prison, there to be saved by sympathetic

American characters.

72 The complex issue of slavery is reduced to a courtroom drama where Cinque and his companions are pushed aside as onlookers. It is John Quincy Adams

(Anthony Hopkins) who receives the climactic closing argument speech that runs nearly ten minutes with the John Williams' score playing in the background. Hopkins is afforded the vast majority of close-ups as the film occasionally cuts to a silent

Cinque in medium shot, his face a mostly blank stare.

Kolker describes a sequence in which Cinque does standup in a courtroom demanding his freedom:

A sequence like this occurs because Spielberg can't quite escape necessities of convention and will never consciously escape the demand of dominant cultural beliefs. His popularity depends on them. [Spielberg] is by now a creation of his own renown and a function both ofhis success and his films. These films ... are all based on certain givens of cinematic form and content, which are themselves guided by the unshakable beliefs about what an audience wants or needs to see (3 18).

Although Kolker argues that Spielberg relies on a certain type of convention to meet audience expectation, it is important to state that Spielberg's narrative style, developed in the 1970's and 1980's, helped create the industry conventions and givens of the blockbuster. In fact, I would argue that Spielberg' conventions helped to create the audience's expectations. In Amistad, we expect the one West African with a voice to make a heartbreaking call for freedom in the courtroom, with the same type of sympathetic score playing in the background. The film delivers on this, but during the climax, he is a silent onlooker.

In his book Flatlining on the Field of Dreams Alan Nadel argues that popular films privilege some narratives while overlooking others, and that often "'large

73 conflicts such as wars become, with the audience's tacit assent. the backdrop of the

few people whose successes and failures are measured on a rather narrow matrix of

romantic values" (6). In Amistad Spielberg not only reduces the issue of slavery to

one specific incident, but privileges some characters over others, dropping them from

the narrative midway through the film to specifically focus on a the young, white

lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey).

In the beginning of the narrative the slaves' plight is taken up by two

abolitionists, Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman) and John Tappen (Stellen

Skarsgard), who dominate the story early in the film. The turning point, however,

seems to be when the two decide on Baldwin, a bright, young, aggressive lawyer

(aren't they always in Hollywood films?) to handle the case. In one scene, the three

have lunch together, with Baldwin in the middle. In every medium shot of the three

characters, he dominates the frame, with the other two positioned on the outside.

From this point on Baldwin becomes the narrative's focal point, until the other two

are reduced to mere shadows lurking in the background. One ofTappen's last lines in

the film, an ironic one, is to suggest to Joadson the abolitionist cause might be better

served if the slaves were executed, which goes against most traits the character had

presented earlier in the film. At any rate, he is cast aside for Baldwin's young dashing

lawyer. He is the young, white, male hero central to so many of Spielberg's

narratives.

After the somewhat upbeat ending, in which Cinque and the others are freed

and allowed to go home, Spielberg ends with a montage of events around the world that are tied into the film's narrative. One sequence includes the British navy

74 destroying the slave fortress that Cinque and the others passed through earlier. The

British warship is commanded by the same officer who testified at the trial, portrayed as rabidly anti-slavery, as if the very idea sickened him. Spielberg focuses on him in close-up, a look of complete satisfaction on his face, as he orders the warships cannons to fire on the slave fortress. This scene may be read as suggesting the British are heroes, die-hard proponents of equal rights for all. Yet the film of course fails to

include any notion of British colonial domination, its own important role in the slave trade, or of its subjugation of other nations around the world for its own benefit. It

seems that one pattern that exists between Schindler's List, Amistad, and Saving

Private Ryan is the occlusion of major historical episodes and events.

The fmal images are of Cinque and the others, now in clean, white-pressed shirts and dresses, sailing east on their way back home. Cinque is at the helm, the others, again, pushed silently behind him. We have no idea what any of them have thought about their ordeaL We have only been allowed to identify with Cinque.

As the film ends the sun shines through the white sails of their ship, not unlike the sun shining through the American flag in the final image of Saving Private Ryan or even of the sun shining on the waves as Brody and Hooper paddle to the shore at the conclusion of Jaws. Light, in Spielberg's world, triumphs over the dark.

Again, even in his more "'serious" films ofthe 1990's Spielberg continues to reduce and simplify complex historical and political events, and the films are presented through a white, masculine, point of view. His storytelling technique, of easily identifiable characters, of clear divisions between good and evil, of building

75 tension throughout the narrative and ending with a satisfying conclusion, certainly has won him praise, especially for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.

I will now focus on Terrence Malick by taking a brieflook at his career as a filmmaker and doing a short textual analysis of his first two films.

TERRENCE MALICK: IN AND OUT OF CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD

In the December 14, 1998 issue of Time, in a short article dealing with The

Thin Red Line, Michele Oreklin refers to Terrence Malick as an "'anti-social" filmmaker (123). Oreklin does not elaborate on whether she means Malick has a reputation for many films that deal with anti-social issues and themes or whether

Malick himself is anti-social. In any case it seems Malick, fairly or not, has been cast in this role.

Malick, the "anti-social" filmmaker, studied at Harvard and won a Rhodes

Scholarship to Oxford, has written for Newsweek and The New Yorker, and has taught at MIT (Vancher 1 0). These are not the credentials, perhaps, of the average film director in Hollywood. Malick left MIT to become part of the inaugural class of the American Film Institute and took to script doctoring to make money (Creamer

348). Malick fmally asked for financial assistance from his brother (who raised $350,

000) for his first feature film, Badlands, which debuted in 1973 (Creamer 348).

A 1997 article in Time argued that the film put Malick in a prominent spot among young film school directors (Port 93), yet Malick, like his contemporaries,

76 was forced to deal with major Hollywood studios. Malick once quipped, '~The hardest

part of making movies is getting the money and controlling your destiny"

(Farnsworth 30).

Badlands received its share of critical praise but did not do particularly well at

the box office (Creamer 349). Malick sold a B-movie script to make extra money then

wrote and directed the $3 million Days ofHeaven (1978). The film won several

prominent honors (Best Director at Cannes, New York Film Critics Circle, and the

National Society of Film Critics) but was not a box-office success (Creamer 349).

Still, Paramount gave Malick $1 million for the rights to his next picture, which was

first to be a biopic of John Merrick, the "Elephant Man" (David Lynch beat him to it)

and then a film which was to be entitled Q, ostensibly a film dealing with the First

World War but which was to include a lengthy prologue dealing with the creation of

the universe and the evolution of earth (the film never came to fruition). Paramount's

support of Malick ended, and he again turned to scriptwriting to make money

(Creamer 350).

Perhaps in a youthful, naive moment Malick told Rolling Stone in 1978 that the way to make movies is elementary: simply get the financing and do it, that anyone can make films (Hodenfield 22). Obviously this is an extreme exaggeration on

Malick's part. In an interesting side note, the article also mentions that the astounding

success of Grease (a film that couldn't be more different from Days ofHeaven) encouraged Paramount to spend the $2 to $3 million cost to finance Malick's second film (22). The article insinuates that the studio was riding so high financially and emotionally from the success of its blockbuster musical that it decided to use a

77 "relatively" small sum on a less easily-defined film. Certainly Malick's budget jumped drastically during the making of The Thin Red Line, up to $50 million. Again,

Badlands was made for $350,000.

Twenty years elapsed between his second and third films. His decision to write and direct a film based on James Jones' novel interested several prominent actors (Kevin Costner, Martin Sheen, Johnny Depp) who wanted to work with Malick

(Creamer 350). Malick's original shooting script was rumored at 300 pages (rumors that the original cut of the film runs four hours in length persist). Perhaps in an ironic twist to Malick's youthful comment on how easy it is to make films, the director faced several studio-related problems before shooting began. At first the producers could not garner sufficient funding (Farnsworth 30). On the eve of shooting Sony pulled its funding from the project, which was then picked up by Fox 2000 with the insistence that Malick, who had decided on a mostly-unknown cast, put several prominent actors into supporting and cameo roles. As I mentioned earlier these cameos (John Travolta, George Clooney) annoyed both critics and movie-goers alike who felt like they were cheated or deceived by the studio, that the "stars" of the film received insignificant screen time. I examine this in more detail in the next chapter.

The desire ofbig stars to want to work with Malick speaks of his reputation as a director that up until that time included only two features. His reputation was enough to garner a $50 million budget from a major studio, despite making films in the past that were not easy sells to mainstream audiences and that differed, in some ways, from the narrative and stylistic conventions of Classical Hollywood Cinema. I will do brief textual analysis of Malick's first two films, Badlands and Days of

78 Heaven, films that incorporate modernist elements: a emphasis on visuals and sound over a linear narrative, which is often disconnected and fragmented, and the inclusion of detached characters. It is important to look at these films because these are stylistic elements he continues to use in The Thin Red Line.

BADLANDS, 1 973

Michael Dempsey's review of the film for Commentarv in 1974 argues that,

"Badlands is in essence a series of vignettes about dead animals" (239). I would argue that includes humans as welL The first thirty minutes or so of the film spends a great amount oftime loosely connecting shots of dead or dying creatures. Again, this loose association of shots ties into aspects of art cinema, that shots lack the traditional notion of causality. The film's anti-hero, Kit (Martin Sheen), begins the film as a garbage truck worker, and in one of the opening scenes prods and pokes a dead dog someone has left on his garbage route. Sometime later, Kit quits his job and gets another working with cattle. Malick cuts to a scene of Kit poking and prodding a dying cow as we hear Holly's (Sissy Spacek) voice-over narration speaking of their relationship: "Ifi didn't have a lot to say, well that was ok too." As he does throughout the film, Malick does not always connect the image we see on the screen with the sound we are hearing, a pattern that is repeated frequently in The Thin Red

Line.

The film is loosely based on a real life case of mass murderers Charles

Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate in the 1950's, but Malick always seems more

79 interested in focusing on a specific time and place in American history, rather than on

the individuals. I will show that this is a device Malick employs in all three of his

films. Although most of the dialogue comes from Holly in a voice-over narration

(telling the story in the naive way a fifteen year old might tell the tale of senseless

violence and destruction), we never really learn why either of the characters become

caught up in their series of violent acts. David Thompson writes in American Film

that the film ••was always more interested in dissociated tone than psychology" (10).

Again, this"" dissociated tone," which is clearly part of Malick's style, is also an

element of art cinema in general. This goes back to Bordwell's claims about art

cinema: characters often lack dearly-defmed goals and traits, and the narrative is a

rather loosely-collected group of episodes (in this case Kit's murders) rather than a

continuous story. Interspersed with Kit and Holly's crime spree are enigmatic

episodes: Holly throwing a catfish onto the lawn because she thinks it is sick, Kit

telling Holly he found a toaster in the basement (where he has just placed Holly's

father's body), a shot of a red balloon that Kit releases into the air, and numerous

close-ups ofbugs, leaves and trees throughout the American western landscape,

which resembles the types of shots and close-ups of Guadalcanal that would appear in

The Thin Red Line. William Johnson, writing in Film Quarterly, argues that Malick

"'uses the more modem narrative approach which rejects a smooth flow in favor of terse, self-contained sequences" (43). The film makes it difficult to connect these

sequences in any traditional sense, something that is repeated in The Thin Red Line and also follows notions of art cinema.

80 Holly narrates early on that what initially attracted her to Kit is his resemblance to James Dean (in fact she mentions it to him early in the film). This leads to a main point of the film: it is about the American fascination not only with

''outlaw" types but also with their representation in the media. Sheen's performance is of an ex-garbageman trying to impersonate James Dean, and what comes across is

slurred mumbling and a lot of confused and anxious looks from Kit (it becomes ironic when a national guardsmen tells Kit near the end of the film: '"You're a real

individual"). Characteristically, one of the longest sequences of dialogue between the

two central characters (who rarely rattle off more than one or two word sentences at

one another every few minutes) involves Holly reading the Hollywood gossip page in

a magazine to Kit to pass the time while they are driving on the interstate.

To return to Bordwell's comment on the prominence of mise-en-scene in

works of art cinema, Badlands is a picture about the very American landscape that

these two characters traverse rather than the two characters who make the journey. It

is almost as if the characters' actions are simply the excuse Malick uses to shoot the

landscape, which becomes more lonely and disconnected from civilization the farther

along the movie goes.

When Kit first spies Holly, the film frames her in medium long shot twirling

her baton outside her Small Town, U.S.A. home. Like Kit, she is not so much an

individual person, but rather a collection of traits, an amalgamation of youth and

naive impulses. While the characters of dominant cinema are often collections of

psychological traits as well, this is often hidden behind illusions of unity and

continuity. Here, the film does not hide this quality of the characters.

81 Kit and Holly make their break with civilization. when Kit kills Holly's father

(who has objected to their relationship) in what can only be called a :fme line between an accidental and deliberate shooting. Kit and Holly show no emotion and decide to burn down the home, hoping the authorities will think, :for a time, that they have perished in the :frre (Kit has even made a recording of his voice, a suicide note, in which he tells children to listen to their elders). The film then spends several minutes framing various parts of the home in flames: a shot of Holly's doll house cuts to a shot offlarnes leaping around the head of Holly's fathe:r tucked away in the basement

(Malick will use the purge-by-fire montage again in Days ofHeaven).

Badlands spends much of its time framing characters in long shot against progressively bleaker landscapes which often dwarf the characters as they continue to run from the authorities, from their "treehouse" in the woods which they build shortly after Holly's father is murdered to Holly and Kit in a field with two potential victims.

Here, like in other scenes, Badlands plays with the con-vention of realism by not allowing us to listen to the conversation once the characters move far enough away from the camera and we are not privileged in the way Classical Hollywood Cinema often privileges its audiences. In one sequence Kit throws a stick to determine which direction they go. Malick even frames Kit in one sequence to look like a scarecrow, which corresponds to another shot of an actual scarecrow in a field and even resembles a famous shot of Kit's hero, James Dean.

The actual killings themselves, which might have been the focal point in another film, are portrayed here in an offhand way that does not leave them at the center of the narrative. Kit "never kills in anger, and only on one occasion from what

82 might be called necessity; in general, he kills for convenience" (Hatch 477). Viewers might almost be surprised when Kit does kill; except for one sequence in which he shoots a former co-worker (then opens the door for him so he can go inside and lie down) the shooting is done quickly and with little or no emotion. Everything is done with an emotional dissociation between the characters so that we are not even made to feel anything, be it horror, repulsion, or fascination, with the action or the characters that are involved in it. Malick never attempts to romanticize his killers, except for one scene in which Kit and Holly dance to the headlights of their car one moonless night in the Dakota badlands. In many films the scene might seem out of place, but

Badlands, again, continuously links scenes that do not seem connected by narrative logic, a pattern repeated in The Thin Red Line.

While we are never allowed the perspective of a subjective camera during the film, we hear a voice-over narration, but, as Marsha Kinder argues, "Malick accentuates the flatness of her affect by making her the ironic narrator who tells this story of horror in passionless tones" (7). Holly's narration is never emotional: not after her father's death, not after the deaths of several others. We are never allowed to really see inside her, and what we do see seems opaque. We know through her voice­ over that these events are happening in the past, but we do not even get a hint of how she feels about them until the closing moments ofthe film. She is apathetic, emotionally dissociated, closed off, and directionless. When she finally decides to stop running, to simply sit down and decide she wants to go no further, it is tough to say whether you are surprised or not. The film's characters really have no motivation, and in this case, no goals. Moreover, the two central characters move farther and

83 farther away from others, as well as each other, never truly figuring out what they

want to do with their lives. Malick will complicate his use of characters in The Thin

Red Line. I argue in Chapter Four that the film lets us see, and hear, parts of various

characters, creating, in effect, one soldier.

As Altman says, it is the critics and not the studios (who attempt to sell a

film's uniqueness) who are at the heart of most generic language (127). Several

reviews of Badlands attempted to connect the film to others that had a similar story of

lovers-turned-killers on the run, regardless of the fact that the films may have been

otherwise dissimilar, a pattern repeated when The Thin Red Line and Saving Private

Ryan were released.

For example, Steven Farber of the New York Times linked the film \Vith

Steven Spielberg's Sugar/and Express in a 1974 article (it is interesting to note that

the two directors would be associated some twenty-five years later with similar generic claims from the media about Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line).

Farber at first connects the films because of their directors' respective ages. "Hoping to cultivate an American New Wave, critics have recently given considerable attention to several young directors" (Section 2, 11 ). Farber believes it is critics, not any changes in production, distribution, exhibition, or audience that allowed young directors like Spielberg and Malick to succeed by giving them attention in the media.

Critics seem very powerful in this type of assessment.

This seems to be the case even in an academic journal like Film Quarterly.

Marsha Kinder's article "The Return of the Outlaw Couple" focuses on three films:

Badlands, Sugarland Express, and Thieves Like Us. Kinder writes, "What kind of

84 trend do they represent and why has it arisen at this particular time?"(2). Again. the films are connected through their plot, and she seems to want to delve into the reasons for this rebirth of a genre cycle.

Kinder writes, 'These films seem to be reacting against trends that currently dominate Hollywood" (2). She adds, '"In describing this genre, one can exaggerate the similarities among the three films" (7). She writes that Sugarland Express is a good debut film, Badlands a remarkable one, but the important thing, as Altman suggests, is that she connects the films in some sort of generic fraternity, despite their differences.

Badlands combines conventions of both Hollywood and the art cinema, producing a film with characters to whom it is difficult to relate. Following conventions of art cinema, the film relies heavily on visual style, a reduction in action, and subsumes plot, rather than placing it in the foreground. Badlands relies on an episodic narrative, where events are connected like vignettes. The film is a series of loosely connected, disparate events that are often connected by chance. Mise-en­ scene becomes critical. "The art cinema developed a range of mise-en-scene cues for expressing character mood" (Neale 208). Finally, the ending is left ambiguous. It does not have the closure of classical Hollywood. TJle film challenges the standards of Hollywood cinema, departing from dominant conventions. These challenges to the worldview of Hollywood narrative are a pattern repeated in Days ofHeaven and in

The Thin Red Line.

85 DAYS OF HEAVEN, 1 978

Bordwell writes how characters in art cinema tend to lack the clear motivation found in classically-oriented narratives. At the outset of Days ofHeaven we see Bill

(Richard Gere) in a dispute with his boss at a mill, a dispute that results in violence, but to what extent we do not know. The noise of the mill obscures the dispute between Bill and his boss, and Malick never lets us know what happens after blows are exchanged. This led to several interpretations among contemporary reviews, with some interpreting that Bill had killed his boss, others that it was only a simple fistfight. In any event, the violence leads Bill, his lover Abby (Brooke Adams), posing as his sister, and his real sister Linda (Linda Manz) from the mills of Chicago to the wheat fields of the Texas Panhandle on the eve of America's entry into World

War One. Again, Malick has crafted a film more about a specific time and place in the United States than about the characters who travel through the narrative. Again, events follow notions of art cinema: they are connected by chance and do not rely on traditional patterns of cause and effect. Moreover, as in Badlands and in The Thin Red

Line, the landscape and natural world become paramount, connecting a series of episodes that seem to involve archetypal characters.

Jack Kroll ofNewsweek comments on Malick's style by suggesting it is "a distinctive detente between original and traditional elements, and asks viewers to be alert but helps to create that alertness" (97,99). I would argue that Kroll is saying

Malick's films seem to meld dominant and art cinema conventions, and that because the film brings style to the forefront it helps to create the awareness, in the audience, that the film is often not following the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema.

86 The plot of Days ofHeaven, however, is a basically conventional one: a love

triangle ensues between Bill, Abby and the Farmer (Sam Shepard). the rich. lonely

and seemingly dying landlord of the fields Bill and Abby are working on.

Days ofHeaven, like Badlands, has a voice-over narration. Linda. a young but

wise and philosophical twelve-year old relates the events of the film in a more

emotional manner than Holly's narration in Badlands. yet also in a disconnected way:

at times her narration fits with the visuals we see. at times it does not. Again, this

seems to work in a way that it works in Badlands: it is subjective in a sense because

Linda is relating events from the past, but in a disjointed way that leaves much open

for interpretation. The disjointed narrative is a technique that is repeated and even

expanded upon in The Thin Red Line: we hear a multitude of voice-overs from major

and minor characters.

We do not get a point of view from Bill or Abby or The Farmer. It is often

difficult to identify with them, seeing them at times from a distanced point of view, at times from the guarded memories of Linda.

The film spends a vast amount of time on other kinds of images during the narrative. The camera lingers longingly on the vast fields of wheat, on the machines of the harvest, the main characters of the film pushed to the periphery or out of the shot altogether, on buffalo or on birds, and down to a grasshopper on a leaf. Days of

Heaven pays a lot of attention to the actual work and process of harvesting wheat, in sequences that in many films would only be implied through editing. Here the camera turns it into visual splendor without overly romanticizing it: the field is framed by the lonely, slightly gothic home of the Farmer, which sits in the center of the wheat field,

87 and the field itself is filled with field hands whose wanderings are only temporarily

put on hold during the harvest. Kroll added in his review that Malick rmds beauty in

everything (99). It is an important comment because the narrative of The Thin Red

Line often revolves around the beauty in nature versus the destruction and chaos of

the battle around it. In The Thin Red Line, beauty can be found even amid horrific

combat.

The film uses visual style partly for its own sake, not to support the narrative

as many other rums do. To this emphasis on visuals the film adds a lack of dialogue

between characters. Lines between characters are often mumbled and difficult to

discern. Days ofHeaven does not tum down the noise ofthe machines: if characters

are too close to one, it becomes all the more difficult to hear what they are saying,

and characters usually only have two or three lines of dialogue in a scene. Sometimes

conversations end abruptly and the image cuts away to rabbits or roosters sitting idly

in the fields, a pattern repeated in Malick's third film. At one point near the end of the film Linda comments, "It was far off and you couldn't see what they were doing."

She was referring to the fire among the wheat fields, but it seems an appropriate statement for the whole film. We are privileged to images the characters do not see but often not the characters themselves. Again, this is a major stylistic device employed in The Thin Red Line, when we are afforded shots of treetops or dying birds at the same time that characters drop in and out of the narrative.

The climax of Days ofHeaven comes with a swarm of locusts and a resulting fire that destroys most of the crop. What begins as a violent confrontation between

Bill and The farmer turns into something else, as Abby picks off a locust, and

88 suddenly they are everywhere. Much of this sequence is shot with close-ups oflocusts

on the wheat rather than on the actions of the characters. This is similar to the close­

ups of dead animals Malick frames in Badlands or the shots of flowers and insects in

The Thin Red Line. In fact, the characters, the main characters as well as the field

hands, become silhouetted against the night and the fire, becoming one nameless,

faceless mass of people. They in effect become a collective consciousness, which is

what I argue in Chapter Four that The Thin Red Line develops among its characters.

There are surreal moments in the film. After Abby marries The Farmer, and

she and Bill and Linda all move into the house, and just when dramatic tension begins

to build, the "family" is visited by a flying circus. The first scenes of this segment are

long shots (as the home is often presented) with the biplanes flying overhead, a splash

of color against all the wheat. The small circus stays for a while, a brier interlude

before the next harvest.

The film ends in a seemingly-conventional way, much more so tllan the rest of

the film: with tragedy. Bill accidentally kills The Farmer, making his "dying" of

cancer all the more ironic, and is in turn gunned down by the authorities. Abby

apparently inherits the Farmer's land and places Linda in a boarding school of some

kind, from which she promptly escapes and hooks up with a former friend from the

wheat fields (it is possible that her narration is her relating the events to her friend)

and heads off to parts unknown; we watch them disappear in long shot.

Stanley Kauffman of The New Republic writes in his review that the characters and story become background for the scenery, and critiques Malick's take on modernist filmmaking:

89 Which brings us to the second new hazard that hits Malick: modernity in the script. This isn't a matter only, or mainly, of sex and liberated language: it's the presumed imperative to bring film-writing into line with modem fiction and drama through ellipsis and obliqueness and astringency, plus truth-telling about established genres. The overall intent is anti the old Hollywood (16).

Kauffman critiques the film specifically for its modernist undertakings and the fact

that it goes against many conventions of conventional storytelling (at least

conventional storytelling in the sense of classical Hollywood cinema). Again, though,

the film offers an alternative to the worldview and narrative technique employed in

dominant Hollywood cinema.

Days ofHeaven is very much a visual experience, grounding us in a very

specific time and place in American history. Characters represent much more than

themselves and become archetypes of a certain kind American experience, and in turn

we do not get to know them, their goals, or their inner drives all that well. It is a

pattern Malick used in Badlands and would rework with his third film, The Thin Red

Line by making it, at times, difficult to discern exactly which character we are seeing

or hearing.

CONCLUSION

In 1973 Steven Spielberg's film Sugarland Express and Terrence Malick's

Badlands were both mentioned in articles detailing the revival of a sub-genre of the

crime film, although the films differed in their narrative and style. Spielberg and

Malick's careers stayed divergent, with Spielberg going on to help shape the high concept approach to filmmaking and the creation of the blockbuster and event film

90 and Malick waiting twenty-five years, after Days ofHeaven in 1978, to continue his filmmaking career.

So it is somewhat ironic that Spielberg and Malick were again grouped together by the media with talk of reviving yet another genre a quarter-of-a-century later. Their respective approaches to narrative and style, however, have remained much the same. In the next chapter I do a detailed textual analysis of Saving Private

Ryan and The Thin Red Line.

91 Chapter IV Textual Analysis of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line

OPENING SALVOS: DEATH VS. DREAD

Saving Private Ryan opens not with the harrowing Normandy invasion sequence that encompassed so much of the media discourse but rather with a close-up of a rippling American Flag. "First, there's the flag," Richard Schickel wrote in his review for Time. He could not be more right. The audience can hear the flag as it ripples crisply in the breeze, a bright stream of sunshine radiating behind it. The camera lingers on the flag for a few more seconds before the scene cuts to rows of crosses interspersed with Stars of David. The camera then cuts to a longer shot of an

American flag and then a French flag. This action grounds us in time and place. Many of those familiar with the history of the war would know this is present-day France, and that we are looking at a military cemetery, filled (presumably) with American servicemen.

If genre films affirm "Americanism" ( 1981, 31) as Tom Schatz argues, there can be no more typical opening than this one. Despite the fact that Tom Hanks argued that Saving_Private Ryan had "no overt sort of patriotic statement or even curve"

(Meacham 49) the opening shots clearly display the patriotic tone the film will take.

One review argued that, "In Saving Private Ryan, there is never any doubt that the cause is just. This is the good war" (Zinn 39). We are immediately shown the

92 sacrifice that has been made through the long rows of marked graves, that they gave their lives for what the American flag, shown in the very first shot, represents.

After these first few seconds, Spielberg individuates several characters among those filtering through the cemetery. An older man shuffles ponderously along one of the cemetery's trails, followed somewhat hesitantly by his wife, children, and grandchildren. We see several close-ups ofhis solemn face and sad eyes as he begins to move through the graves, apparently looking for an individual grave. The prologue serves to set up a question in the minds of viewers. '"The framing episode serves the purpose of posing a mystery ... that trivializes the film it brackets: namely, who is this guy?" (Jameson 23). One assumption, based on pre-publicity hype, is that it is Tom

Hanks' Captain Miller, which, because it turns out to be Matt Damon's Private Ryan instead, makes Miller's death at the end of the film all the more tragic, shocking, and meaningfuL In any even, Spielberg has the viewer guessing from the outset.

The themes of populism and individualism, so important in American war films, are played out early in Saving Private Ryan. Of the thousands of graves that mark the heroism ofD-Day, the older character looks for a single marker. Overcome with emotion, he collapses onto the neatly manicured lawn and is quickly surrounded by members ofhis family. The image changes into an extreme close-up of his haunted-looking blue eyes, and then we begin to hear the sounds of waves crashing.

A few more seconds of this and a sound bridge transports us back to Normandy on

June 6, 1944.

The next shots are of landing craft smashing into rough seas as they move headlong towards the beaches ofNormandy. Everything is cold and gray; the film

93 almost seems to have a gray tint to it. We hear the crashing of waves and we see the coldness ofthe dark sky above. Spielberg then cuts to shots of soldiers throwing up over the sides of the landing craft, into their helmets, and on the floor of the boat.

Amidst the tension and vomiting the camera cuts to several close-ups of petrified­ looking soldiers and then a close-up of a shaking hand attempting to unscrew a canteen top. The camera pans up and we see Tom Hanks, looking grim, determined, and a little scared.

A review in Commonweal argued that during the invasion sequence a "'dose­ up is a harbinger of death" (29). Basically, if Spielberg focused the camera on any one individual, it was to present them to the audience holding in their intestines or exploding into flames. Yet that does not necessarily seem to be the case. Hanks'

Captain John Miller gets the bulk of the close-ups before and after the landing craft hit the beach. Richard Dyer writes that the close-up seems to reveal the "'unmediated personality of the individual, and this belief in the "capturing' ofthe "unique' "person' of a performer is probably central to the star phenomenon" (15). It certainly differentiates Hanks from many of the soldiers around him very early in the film. In

The Thin Red Line, this situation is complicated, because, as I will show, the film provides close-ups of many soldiers who are only marginally related to the narrative

(or not at all) and at times shows us the close-up of one soldier's face while we hear the voice or thoughts of another.

Because of star power and pre-publicity hype by the studio and the media, never for a second do we believe that Hanks will be killed in the battle that is about to begin. Spielberg also privileges us with close-ups of the tough Sgt. Horvath (Tom

94 Sizemore) stuffing a wad of tobacco into his mouth as the troops around him vomit

from fear, seasickness, or a combination ofboth. Less often, we see several others

who will help make up Miller's rescue squad in the bulk ofthe film: the bible-quoting

sniper Private Jackson (Barry Pepper) and the defiant Brooklyn native Private Reiben

(Edward Bums). This technique "bond[s] us" (Schickel 56) with certain characters

early in the narrative. The close-up may be a forerunner of death for some, but for

others, those that will live it is a technique of identification as the more anonymous

souls around them are blown to smithereens.

War films often shift from the personal to the impersonal, moving from a character we have identified with to someone else. Jeanine Basinger argues that, "By cutting from a personal view of characters involved in a dialogue and action as individual human beings to a more distanced and impersonal view, the film shows us the larger situation its characters are in" (20). Hanks' Miller, for example, is clearly caught up in a wave of death and destruction in the opening of the film.

Here, the place itself becomes spectacle. The very notion ofD-Day conjures up horrifying images. According to Aitken and Zonn in a film place can become

"spectacle, a signifier of the film's subject, a metaphor for the state of mind of the protagonist" (17). Here Normandy becomes Spielberg's cinematic representation of the entire war. As the ships approach the beach Spielberg allows us to see a point-of­ view shot from the German perspective. We do not actually see any Germans but instead are given a literal shot of perceptual subjectivity from inside a machine gun bunker, the barrel of the gun menacingly waiting for its prey. Horvath and Miller begin to relay instructions to their men, which sometimes are difficult to understand

95 thorough the sounds of the crashing waves. Miller calls out rather unenthusiastically,

''See you on the beach.'" The soldiers tensely wait for the doors to open, and when they do, the carnage begins.

A German machine gun cuts the first several rows of Americans in a landing craft into ribbons. We can hear the sounds ofbullets ripping into bodies and whizzing past the Americans still standing. Soldiers begin jumping over the side to escape the craft, which has become a death trap. Under water, the grunts struggle with their equipment and weapons. Designed to save their lives, the material now weighs them down. Bullets pierce into the water, breaking the relative silence and slicing into GI's struggling with their gear. The camera lingers on one man, gripped with panic and fear and weighed down by his equipment, who sinks to the bottom, his face a mask of shock and horror.

Several do make it to the surface and we immediately hear the explosions and machine-gun fire that seem to come from every direction. At this point Spielberg begins using a hand-held camera, and it bobs and weaves above and below the surface of the water (much as it did during several beach sequences in Jaws). The camera storms the beach at the eye level of the men attempting to take Omaha Beach, and then cuts back to the point of view of the German machine gun nest, this time with the barrel wildly blazing away at the Americans on the beach below. Spielberg will cut back to this point of view several times in the next few minutes, yet the

Germans remain, at best, shadowy figures on the edges of the frame.

Kolker argues that Spielberg uses technological wonder to draw viewers into his films (307). Yet here this technological prowess has reached never-before-seen

96 levels. The opening segment of the film fits into the treatment of violence in many

post -classical Hollywood films. The violence becomes "an artistic substitute for the

meaningful power of characterization and narrative in the traditional tragedy. The

celebratory aspects of this bloody excess and choreographed mayhem constitute a

veritable 'iconography of death"' (Tomasulo, 1999, 175). While Spielberg attempts to

identify his heroes by close-ups during the invasion sequence, the main focal point in

this scene rests on the overwhelming destruction filling nearly every inch of the frame

for twenty-plus minutes, shocking the audience and drawing them firmly into the diegesis.

Spielberg turns to spectacle to "'divert the viewer into the mise-en-scene,

providing aural and visual wonder and fear to make up for the moral uncertainty that very mise-en-scene creates" (Kolker 307). For the most part, Spielberg neglects the

larger perspectives of the war and makes us part of the invasion. Viewers are suddenly caught up in massive cinematic slaughter, pulled in by images never before seen in a war film.

Spielberg cuts back to Miller fighting his way onto the beach. An explosion knocks Miller down and, for a few moments, ends the realism of the invasion sequence that critics so highly praised. As Miller attempts to right himself. the film moves into slow motion as we begin to see things from Miller's perceptual and mental subjectivity, now altered by shock. From Miller's view we see a soldier attempting to hold his guts in and another picking up his own arm after it has been blown off. Miller, in a state of momentary shell shock, is brought back around by

97 another soldier, and the film returns to normal speed and back to an objective point of view.

Miller orders his men to advance further up the beach, and the film again turns to the use of a hand-held camera. Miller and some of his men make it to a sand dune, and despite all the noise around them, we begin to hear dialogue. Miller orders his radio man several times to relay that the beach is not yet secured (on the third time

Miller realizes his radio man has had his face blown off, and the radio itself has been shot up). The film is not without its use of dark comedy in the face of violence. One soldier is shot in the head, only to be saved by his helmet. "Geez, lucky bastard!" a nearby soldier exclaims. The soldier takes off his helmet to gaze at it in amazement.

He is then shot in the forehead.

Miller and his Rangers attempt to take out a German bunker, which is the key to opening their section of the beach. During the ensuing firefight, Miller is nearly shot, to which Sgt. Horvath responds, "Your mother would be very angry at you if she knew you did that." Miller replies, "I thought you were my mother." The familial relationship between the men is set up early in the narrative.

With the help of Private Jackson, who quotes scripture as he takes out German soldiers, the Americans destroy the bunker and begin to systematically eradicate the enemy. At this point, the film does something that few, if any, contemporary World

War Two pictures would have done. Several German soldiers surrender, their hands above their heads. They attempt to communicate to the GI's (which is not translated).

An American soldier replies, "I'm sorry I can't understand what you are saying," and laughingly guns down the Germans. This strand of the film seems in the tradition of

98 American Vietnam films, which often depict American soldiers in a less-than­ favorable light_ However, the shooting could perhaps be read as justifiable by an

American audience after seeing so many Americans gunned down in the opening moments of the film.

The issue of Saving Private Ryan not translating the German dialogue is taken up by Karen Jaehne in Film Ouarterlv: "Why the German dialogue was not shared with English-speaking, or rather, non-German-speaking audiences rais.es an issue that has not yet been addressed" (39). It certainly helps to make the Germans the shadowy other. We are very much like the Gis in the film, replying, "I'm sorry I can't understand what you are saying." Jaehne's point about the lack of translation becomes even more important during the subsequent battle between Mellish and a

German solider, in which the two, engaged in hand to hand combat, scream back and forth at one another.

The battle concludes with Private Mellish, the Jewish enlisted man, retrieving a Hitler Youth knife from a dead German and, surrounded by death and destruction, begins to sob and break down. Spielberg alternates a close-up ofMelli.sh with close­ ups of others (Horvath, Reiben) looking on in pity. It is the only time a solider shows this type of emotion in the film in front of others, and the men, as a wbole, seem uncertain how to react.

Miller, in close-up, his hand shaking again, turns to Horvath and says, '"ThaC s quite a view." The shot switches not to an expected extreme long shot of the magnitude of the invasion, but a medium long shot of dead bodies face-down in the sand, bloody salt water, and dead fish. The camera tracks through the carnage onto

99 the body of one of the dead brothers of James Ryan (Matt Damon). Through all of the death and destruction, we are given a close-up of the name Ryan on the uniform. Here the issues of populism and individualism, an important convention of the war film explained in Chapter Two, are played out. Again, this is important because, as Leo

Cawley argues, "The American war film requires that the twin deities of individualism and populism be served" (71). Individuals unite, and through combined effort, win the war for everyone back home.

The sequence was widely praised by critics. For John Meacham ofNewsweek it was a "brilliant re-creation of the assault on Omaha Beach; it is as close to combat as most of us will ever get" ( 49). According to a critic in Film Comment the combat sequences force the audience to "participate in the shock and pain of killing"

(Jameson 21) and give the kids and grandkids "some sense of what it was like" (Snow

9). Perhaps the most interesting comment comes from The National Interest. Eliot

Cohen argues that, "Spielberg has captured battle with as much fidelity as one can outside of pure documentary, and in some ways better" (83).

The opening segment is lauded for its realism and even gets kudos for somehow capturing the horror of combat more accurately than a combat cameraman.

Spielberg, of course, has the opportunity to set the shots up just the way he wants, to add the sound of bullets zipping overhead and mortar shells exploding all around the audience. He has the opportunity to switch to the point-of-view of Miller at critical moments and cut to any number of American servicemen at the exact moment of climactic horror. It is a sequence so carefully choreographed that it is praised for its ultra-realism. Time, in fact, refers to it as "quite possibly the greatest combat

100 sequence ever filmed, in part because it is so fanatically detailed, in part because the action is so compressed" (Schickel 56). In twenty minutes Spielberg captures the day­ long destruction of the invasion, shocking the viewer, pulling him or her into the narrative (as I mentioned in Chapter Three, a technique often employed by

Spielberg), and securing our involvement in the film.

Yet some critics argued the entire sequence would not have been possible before Vietnam, that the war in Southeast Asia made the cinematic realism possible and allowable. The war in Vietnam "fundamentally changed Hollywood's approach to the war film" (Ansen 52). Spielberg even wrote an essay for Newsweek arguing,

'"In the 1940's, realism in war movies didn't really matter. After Vietnam, it was all that mattered" (Ansen 52). The film seems to be saying the daily body counts on the evening news effectively changed the nature of how the genre would handle the issue of violence in combat. From then on it could not be someone simply gripping their chest and falling over; it would have to be intestines, blood, and suffering if the audience was ever going to buy it.

Through the shock and horror of the twenty-minute invasion sequence, the film is able to promote the identification of most of the audience with the main characters and set the stage for the mission to rescue Private Ryan. Through its explosions and shock and horror the opening softens us up for the cliches and conventional story to come. "But the film wasn't made solely to recreate that invasion, which is where the bafflement sets in. The film acts as if, from that large beginning, it moves to a special point; but it doesn't" (Kauffman 24). Stanley

Kauffman argues that after the invasion sequence the film becomes conventional very

101 quickly, setting up a standard rescue mission dealing with the issues of comradeship and sacrifice. Perhaps this is why Commentary argued Saving Private Ryan revives the "classic war film" (48). A review in Maclean's argues that after the invasion sequence, Spielberg is "free to call on his strengths as a storyteller" (47). Film

Comment argues that the film not only revives the genre but the entire war, "restoring

WWII and its decade to the continuum of the American experience" (Jameson 20).

The film accomplishes this by shocking us in the extreme and the setting up a story we have seen before: a rescue mission with an ethnically and geographically disparate group of Americans who learn about the notions of bravery and self-sacrifice in the face of combat.

The Thin Red Line begins, not with the overwhelming enormity of realistic death on a grand scale, but rather with the fear and tension of its impending arrival and inevitability. Whereas Saving Private Ryan begins with an opening shot of the stars and stripes, Malick instead opens with a shot of a crocodile warily eyeing the camera as it moves down from a lake bank, into the murky water, and then below the surface, all the while accompanied by eerie non-diegetic music, signaling, perhaps, that we are treading in areas of natural otherness. It is interesting to note thatjust as

Saving Private Ryan returns to its opening image at the end ofthe film, The Thin Red

Line returns to its as welL Much later Malick cuts to a shot of a crocodile strapped to the back of a truck, a soldier idly running a stick across its head as others look on.

Humans, and their war-making instinct, are a threat and intrusion into nature in this film.

102 Americans are often depicted as being uneasy in foreign lands during their

tours of combat. Kathryn Kane argues that 'The desolation of the areas they find

themselves in-either the natural state of the land or the destroyed

condition ... produces a contempt for it. Such places are not totally lacking in beauty,

but are rather monotonous, endless, inscrutable, hostile" (26). In fact, American

World War Two combat films often depict the land as "barren, sterile [and] the

aberration ofNature" (Kane 46). The Thin Red Line does the opposite, focusing on

close-ups of flora and fauna while destruction rages around it. One American

character in particular appears at home in his surroundings and has found a paradise

amid all the chaos.

After several more shots of what appears to be a nearly primeval jungle, the

sun shining through the treetops, illuminating plants, leaves, and bushes, we hear

someone ask, "What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with

itself?" The voice turns out to be that of Private Witt (James Caviezel), who has gone

AWOL from his company and taken up residence with a group of South Pacific

Islanders. The film runs through a montage of images of the natives, especially native

children, playing games, dancing, and swimming. According to Gavin Smith Witt's

"apartness and affinity for Otherness is clear from the outset" (8). Witt is seen

canoeing through pristine blue waters, apparently without a care in the world,

although his voice over belies it, his dog-tags a constant reference to why he is really

in this paradise, and the one thing, along with his skin color, that sets him apart from the others.

103 The opening segment of Witt living with the islanders is virtually unique within the genre, given the convention that Americans distrust all things foreign and native. According to Kane "Foreign things are, by definition, almost certainly inferior and so have little to offer Americans. The natives of any country they happen to be in are regarded more or less condescendingly" (44). This is not the case in The Thin Red

Line, where Witt would rather live among the natives than among the men of Charlie

Company, and the natives themselves are depicted as living an idyllic existence even as a war surrounds them. One critic argues that Witt '"isn't the protagonist of a war film, however, but of an adventure in sensory and spiritual wonder" (Gavin Smith 8).

The film, according to Smith, is too unconventional to be categorized in the genre. It is something else entirely.

Setting plays an unusual role in this film. Aitken and Zonn argue that '"Places can be represented so as to cut against descriptive meaning and narrative flow'' (17).

As with Badlands and Days ofHeaven, The Thin Red Line is as much about a certain place as it is the characters that populate it. As in his earlier films the place becomes the story. The film often focuses on the place and does not work to identify us with many of the individual characters that traverse through it. Thomas Doherty of

Cineaste argues, "The Thin Red Line luxuriates in a sense of place, not history or politics" (83). Malick spends a considerable amount of time photographing the surrounding environment, even as battles rage as part of the narrative. A review in

Time argues that the film "takes up where Days-and his haunting Badlands of

1973-left off. Each film is a tragedy of small folks with too grand goals; each is

104 narrated by a hick with a dreamy touch of the poetic; each sets its tiny humans against

Nature in ferocious rhapsody" (Corliss and Schickel173).

As with his other films, Malick again relies heavily on the use ofvoiceover,

yet this time uses it in extreme and often unfamiliar ways. Several characters are

allowed interior monologues, and at times it is difficult to figure out exactly who is

thinking or even talking. Several characters are granted voice-overs without even

being named in the film. Later, the film shows the visions of one character with the

voice-over of another in an effort to connect the men of Charlie Company. The point

of the film is to de-individualize, to work against traditional identification. This seems

to run counter to the conventions of the genre, where, as I laid out in Chapter Two,

identification with a clearly diverse, but also very recognizable, platoon or squad is

laid out very early in the film.

According to Richard Dyer, close-ups and voice-overs give the audience '"an

insight into the inner thoughts/feelings of that character" ( 119). Yet that distinction

becomes blurred in this film, and we are sometimes not sure whose thoughts and

feelings we have been allowed to see. Again, the soldiers become de-individualized.

A critique in America argues that, "Malick reminds us that endangered warriors are tied together by affection" (Coles 7). Malick visually and aurally ties the men together as welL As I mentioned in Chapter Two, audience knowledge is usually more restricted in art cinema than in classical Hollywood cinema. Again, there are times in this film we are not even sure who is speaking.

Witt's voice-over continues as he plays and works with the natives: "I remember my mother when she was dying ... I couldn't find nothing beautiful or

105 uplifting." The film then cuts to a woman in bed, surrounded by people young and old, and shifts to a ticking clock on the wall and then to a birdcage. Witt, however, is absent from the vision. A question to ask is if the vision is his at all or some collective one. "I just hope I can meet the end the same way she did. With the same calm.

That's where it's hidden. The immortality I hadn't seen." Is this a preview of Witt's death at the end of the film, when he knows, in the final few seconds of his life, that he is going to die?

Witt's respite from the war is brie£ A navy patrol boat cruises along the shore and he is picked up for going AWOL and sent to the brig. The person to interrogate him is one of the sergeants of Charlie Company, Welsh (Sean Penn). Welsh becomes

Witt's biggest detractor during the film, although through their conversations it is apparent the two have more in common than they believe. Welsh's first words to Witt are, "You haven't changed at alL You haven't learned a thing." Welsh refers to

Captain Staros (Elias Koteas) as the father of the company (again the familial pattern is picked up here). Witt is to be relegated to stretcher carrier, to which he replies, "I can handle anything you dish out. I'm twice the man you are." Welsh's response is,

"In this world, a man himself is nothing." This snippet of dialogue early in the film becomes a major theme in the narrative: the consciousness, the life, the soul of one individual versus that of a platoon, a company, a regiment, of everyone. During their discussion, the scene cuts to an idyllic shot of a young boy playing in a wheat field, but the director does not clarify if it is Witt, Welsh, or neither of them. The two characters will continue their debate throughout the rest of the film.

106 Witt is in part what Kane refers to as a "misfit", as I mentioned in Chapter

Two a conventional genre character. (87). He seems to fit two different variations of the war film misfit I mentioned in Chapter Two, a malcontent and a cynic (88). He is a malcontent because he resents the military, perhaps because it took him away from his adopted island home. He is a cynic because he has no faith the war will solve anything. Yet he is also, from time to time, depicted as a good soldier, whether caring for the wounded after he becomes a stretcher carrier, or leading the Japanese away from a wounded comrade at the conclusion of the film. The Thin Red Line's characters seem to resist straight-forward categorization and are often difficult to classify into the familiar genre patterns.

The film moves to the deck of the troop transport, to a close-up of Colonel

Tall (Nick Nolte) gazing out across the water at Guadalcanal. Tall's first words to the audience are also that of a voice-over. "Degraded myself... All I might have given for love's sake. Too late." Tall is forced to endure the smugness of a younger superior officer (John Travolta), who is planning the attack on the Island. Tall's voice-over constantly interrupts the dialogue between the two officers. His disillusion about being passed over for a higher rank will play into his decision to later order Staros to send his men on what amounts to a suicide mission.

The narrative then moves back to the bowels of the ship where the grunts await the invasion. The camera tracks through the long rows ofbunks, introducing us to a variety of characters, only a few of which will actually become important in the narrative. We see two soldiers discussing American air raids on the island, a soldier

(Private Train, who is only seen again in the last few seconds of the film) nervously

107 talking to Welsh about how he will survive the impending battle, a soldier cowering

in his bunk, another (Private Doll, a major character in Jones' novel, is not even

named in the film) looking to pilfer a pistol from another soldier, and Captain Staros,

moving cautiously through his men in an effort to buck them up. During this

sequence the camera does not necessarily focus on a character as we hear him speak;

we hear one character and see another. The scene develops group consciousness, a theme continued throughout the film. The men are connected visually (they look

similar) and through dialogue as well as voiceover.

The sequence cuts to another soldier, Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) lying on his

bed. Bell, a major character in the film, gets the same type of close-ups as some of the

more anonymous characters did in previous shots, but at this point we see a flashback or vision of Bell and his wife. Bell's wife exudes sexuality, and nearly all of his visions in the film reflect this. In a film where women are mostly absent, this

becomes significant. "In an all-male world, gradations of masculinity are apparent, and characters are defined through their relationships to off-screen women"

(Gallagher 220). Bell is defined in large part through his visions and flashbacks of his wife, his masculinity affirmed through his sexual longing for a woman. R.W. Connell argues that masculinity does not exist except in contrast to femininity (60). Here

Bell's masculinity is defined through his wife's sexuality and femininity, which is the one and only way she is portrayed throughout the film. In a voice-over Bell asks,

"Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you." This seems to be an unconventional thought, because most characters in war films would find this a reason to live, to get

108 back home. Most of Bell's world, even in the face of death and destruction, revolves around these images.

At this point the film is more than a half-hour into the narrative, and some might expect that, as the troops begin to scale the ropes from the transport onto the landing craft, that the soldiers of Charlie Company will meet the same fate as Miller's

Rangers. The landing craft head to the beach. At this point, anyone expecting a massive battle on the beaches of Guadalcanal will be quite disappointed. Todd

McCarthy writes in Variety, "'The new picture's counterpart to Ryan's stunning opening act is an armed beach landing in which not even a shot is fired" (73 ). The film is more content to let the tension build. It cuts from men praying to Sergeant

Keck (Woody Harrelson) putting chew in his mouth to a close-up of Bell and several other soldiers. The landing craft hit the beach and hundreds of men dash out into the cover ofthe trees, expecting gunfire. All we hear, however, is the pounding of a non­ diegetic drumbeat. Staros, Bell, and the others make it to cover, and we are given several close-ups of wide-eyed men in apparent disbelief that, so far, nothing has happened.

One review of the film argues, "The narrative structure of the film divests the battle scenes of the excitement or grandeur typical of the genre" (Morrison 36).

Although the main battle sequence, sandwiched in the middle of the film, provides the most straight-forwardly conventional narrative James Morrison of Film Quarterly argues "It is flanked at both ends, beginning and end, by stretches of storytelling so fragmentary, so mercurial, they're nearly abstract" (35). If Spielberg is able to call upon his strengths as a conventional storyteller after the D-Day sequence, as one

109 critic remarked, Malick "'lacks Spielberg's sure sense of narrative drive, of luring an audience into the fabula, even of creating a convincing historical past or compelling genre film" (Doherty 84). Thomas Doherty questions Malick's lack of cause-and­ effect narrative, not using it to pull the viewer into the story, and for him this clearly seems to disconnect The Thin Red Line from the war genre or at least disables it from becoming a "compelling" war genre film. Another critic argues that Malick's ''forte was always for fabulous visuals and haunting moods rather than for coherent storytelling" (McCarthy 73). Yet it is possible that these critics assumed Malick intended to make a conventional war genre film and failed, but I have argued that the film does not belong strictly in the war film genre and such a traditional generic labeling is inadequate and incomplete.

By this point, the audience has been introduced to a variety of characters, some named, some not, some with voice-overs. The tension has been building for several minutes, but not a shot has been frred. The troops will have to advance further into the jungles for the battle they all know is coming.

THE MISSION UNDERWAY

After the invasion sequence in Saving Private Ryan the narrative moves to a

War Department office where rows of women type standard-form death notices of soldiers killed in action. Over the clang of typewriters there are voice-overs of officers explaining the value of individual soldiers, which again seems to clash with the image we are presented and the way the notices are being scripted. The film then

110 sets one secretary apart who notices that three of the telegrams have the same last name, which sets off a chain of events eventually leading to the office of George

Marshall, army chief of staff. Commentary calls Marshall's representation in the film

''every inch the Zeus you want a great general to be" (Alleva 29).

During this sequence, Spielberg cuts to a picturesque scene of an Iowa farmhouse, surrounded by wheat fields under a blue sky. It is the picture of everything traditionally thought of as American. The image cuts inside to the mother, who collapses on the front porch as she realizes the car pulling up is going to tell her at least one of her sons has been killed (the scene is also interesting because it is shot from inside the home through the shadows of the doorframe, referencing one of

Spielberg's favorite films, The Searchers). Jameson argues in Film Comment that

''Spielberg has never directed a more iconographically precise scene" (23). The scene certainly argues the justness of Miller's mission, to save Private Ryan, despite the protests from Private Reiben.

Spielberg's films often revolve around the intrusion on domesticity, from the shark in Jaws to the aliens in Close Encounters (Kolker 303). Here it is the war itself, intruding on a picture-perfect image of America in which a mother (the absence of the father is not explained) faces symbolic intrusion by Army officials who drive up to her home, come onto her front porch, and tell her three of her four sons have been killed. In many American war films, women drop out of the narrative after the opening scenes (Basinger 62). Saving Private Ryan follows this convention. Women exist as aides to the war effort, typing out death notices or mothers waiting on the home front.

111 Yvonne Tasker quotes Susan Jeffords as arguing that gender is the one aspect that cannot vary in war films.

The defining feature of American war narratives is that they are a man's story from which women are generally excluded. For such narratives, gender is the assumed category of interpretation, the only one that is not subject to interpretation and variation of point of view, experience, age, race and so on (96).

The race and ethnicity of the platoon may vary, but it will always, at least in the

World War Two genre, be male, although in other sub-genres of the war film, like the

Gulf War movies, women have played a more prominent role. Meg Ryan in Courage

Under Fire comes to mind. In The Thin Red Line, which does show a female character throughout the narrative, she is seen only in flashbacks and visions. When we fmally hear her voice, it is in the form of a letter telling her husband she wants a divorce so she can marry another man.

As I mentioned in Chapter Two, Kane argues that the major concern of the

World War Two film is to justify American involvement in the war and to validate its purpose, and more than anything the protection of the home is the most common reason presented for fighting the war (13, 17). In Saving Private Ryan, the purpose of the war is to end the threat of intrusion on domesticity. Miller tells his men, for example, that the reason he fights is to earn the right to return horne, to a domestic life free of intrusion.

Marshall's generals attempt to convince him that sending in a rescue squad to find the surviving brother is foolhardy fu."ld will only get the squad killed. At this point, with the sentimental score from composer John Williams turned up, Marshall reads a letter to his generals (and more importantly to the audience) about American

112 sacrifice in war. The letter turns out to have been written by Abraham Lincoln to a grieving mother during the Civil War, perhaps the only war considered by the

American public to have been more just than World War Two. There is no doubt now that the rescue, and the cause, is just.

The narrative moves back to Normandy and, of course, Miller is given the job of finding Ryan. He is ordered to pick his rescue squad, and he chooses the tough­ talking Horvath; the sniper Jackson; the Jewish Private Melish (Adam Goldberg); the

Brooklyn native Reiben; Carpazo (Vin Diesel), the big Italian; and the medic Wade

(Giovanni Ribisi), who was seen screaming at the Germans for shooting the wounded during the invasion sequence. It is a classic melting pot of ethnicities, religions, regional differences, and masculinities. The squad ""could have stepped out of any contemporaneous WWII picture" (Jameson 20). As I argued earlier, the melting-pot squad is perhaps the most common convention of this genre.

Miller, the leader, becomes the representation of the White Anglo-Saxon

Protestant. A character's name '"both particularises him/her and also suggests personality traits" (Dyer 109). His name, John Miller, certainly signifies part of what he symbolizes: White Protestant America.

Little in a World War Two combat film is stated outright (Kane 16). No one in

Miller's squad, for instance, comments how different they all are. Instead, "'the existence in one group of men of varying religious backgrounds and abilities in their concomitant traits is not commented on but simply posited as a cross section of

America" (Kane 16). It is simply taken for granted that a diverse group of Americans will band together to undertake a dangerous mission and that their diversity is the

113 hidden strength they will use to bring them to victory. This idea also runs counter to a major stylistic pattern set up in The Thin Red Line, in which the film intentionally blurs the distinctions among many of the men of Charlie Company.

The melting pot needs a translator, and Miller finds one in the form of

Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies). The film instantly sets Upham apart and shows us he does not belong anywhere near the front line. Upham's initial encounter with

Miller is played in medium-long shot~ and the differences between the battle­ hardened, self-contained Miller and the nervous Upham are readily apparent in their mannerisms, movements, and ways of speaking. After attempting to weasel his way out of the assignment Upham attempts to bring his typewriter and briefcase along.

Again, Saving Private Ryan is not against throwing in the occasional comic moment, even in the face of war. Kane argues that war films often depict an older, more experienced soldier leading a younger, greener one (79). The film touches on this convention during this scene as well as several later ones. The sequence also plays offUpham's complete lack of traditional masculinity. There is a hierarchy of masculinities in Miller's squad, and I would argue that Miller himself, with his shaking hand that the entire squad eventually sees, falls somewhere in the middle.

Horvath and Jackson would certainly sit at the top, and Upham, who seemingly would prefer good conversation to a good fight, is used to set the others' masculinities apart, to give the audience some comparison.

R.W. Connell argues that masculinity almost always proceeds from men's bodies (44). Ifthis assumption is true, then Upham clearly stands out as a non­ masculine character. He appears frail~ weak, and uncoordinated in comparison to the

114 soldiers around him, especially Sergeant Horvath, constantly sure ofhimselfand

barking commands, and Jackson, who thinks of himself as ''a fme instrument of warfare." Several of the characters, especially Reiben, often suffuse their

conversations with "mock homosexual banter" (Cohen 84). Upham seems totally out

of place in as the others banter back and forth.

The deliberate differentiation of men' bodies in Saving Private Ryan brings up

an interesting comparison to the way it is handled in The Thin Red Line, where

characters are intentionally made to resemble one another, and also hinders traditional

notions of identification. There is simply less opportunity to compare physical

appearance when many of the characters resemble one another. Through this, The

Thin Red Line removes much of the social construction and ideology surrounding

masculinity because it lacks the traditional gradations and hierarchy of masculinity

set up in other war films.

With Miller's men about to embark on their mission, the scene shifts to an

extreme long shot ofNormandy beach, and for just a few seconds we see the

magnitude of the invasion. Other than this brief glimpse, the film offers no larger

context of the scope of the invasion or its place in the war. A critique in Commentary

argues that, "It is certainly true that Saving Private Ryan offers its viewers no

perspective outside that of the day-to-day life of a GI grunt" (Caldwell 50). Then

again, the review also argues, "Spielberg's movie assumes that its audience knows the

reasons why World War II was fought" (50). Yet the film also de-historicizes the war,

turning it, through narrative and character, into another Spielbergian tale.

115 In the next scene, Spielberg cuts to a long shot of the squad, in silhouette, cresting a hill, a classic heroic pose. The shadows and distance of the characters make it difficult to discern who is who, and in a film in which the main characters are so thoroughly identifiable from one another, it stands out because it is so different from all of the other shots in the film. If we "'still hunger for heroes" (Meacham 49) as

Newsweek argues, the film has given us a diverse cross-section of Americans to root for.

The film becomes, in large part, a holy grail search, with Private Ryan the object to be found at all cost. In these types of narratives William Ferrell argues the heroes "survive a series of challenges before being able to attain the object" (12). The film, in fact, becomes a standard quest film, a mission in which a small group must find a representative object. Although it turns out that the object does not want to be rescued.

During their trek to the French town where they believe Ryan is, Upham attempts to ingratiate himself with the other men. The narrative follows Upham as he tries first with Mellish, then with Carpazo, and finally with Wade, to make himself one of them. Only Wade, the compassionate medic, shows any interest, and asks

Upham what the book he is writing is about. Upham replies it is about the bond of brotherhood men go through during combat. Upham, at this point, does not even know what F.U.B.A.R. stands for (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition). The others tell him it's German. Upham's response about brotherhood elicits snide laughter from

Mellish and Carpazo, who know all too well that Upham is not part of the "family."

116 He is not, in effect, a man. Not yet, at least. His redemption comes much later in the film.

After the battle-less beach landing in The Thin Red Line the men of Charlie

Company begin their journey inland. The sequence runs nearly ten minutes in time and builds tension even further. One critic argues that, while the bloodshed in the film is graphic, "the drama remains rooted in the petrified anticipation that surrounds it"

(Johnson 52). A line of soldiers, snaking through the grass, passes a native islander.

He pays them less attention than he might a real snake moving through the grass. The troops, in several close-ups, seem much more surprised to see him than he is to see them.

The sequence periodically cuts away from the men entirely, focusing instead on shots of birds, of trees, of the sun streaming through the jungle. We hear a voice, presumably Witt's, ask, ''Who are you to live in all these many forms?" Witt's voice­ over seems to ally itself with some of the other soldiers, who glance at the nature all around them. Witt seems to be questioning the origin of nature itself, evident in all the forms of life around him amid all the death and chaos of the war.

The troops move into a patch of long stalks of bamboo shoots, and the camera tracks through it as non-diegetic music continues to play in the background. Close­ ups of soldiers we are familiar with like Bell and Welsh are interspersed with others we do not know (one, Corporal Fife, is, like Doll, a major figure in Jones' novel but gets scant screen time here). As I argued in Chapters Two and Three, this is typical of

117 not only Malick~s previous work but of art cinema as welL Style becomes content, and more familiar characters are not always privileged over others or the mise-en­ scene as a whole. The camera continues to track through the bamboo, past the soldiers who have stopped in their tracks and settles in on a close-up of two dead

American soldiers, one with his legs blown off. It is the first display of any violence in the film. Again, close-ups seem arbitrary here. We see Welsh and Bell in close-up,

Bell's face a mix of horror and shock, Welsh's rather stoic. Yet we also get a close-up of a soldier we have not yet been introduced to. This seems to refer back to art cinema and the lack of motivation. At this point in the film any type of conventional narrative seems to be decentered or diffused as style becomes more visible. Again, there seems to be little motivation as to which characters are shown in close-up, and the camera moves to shots that do not even include human figures at alL

The trek continues even further, into the highlands, and here Malick selects what can only be described as a collective subjectivity. We begin to hear an interior monologue from Witt but the camera focuses on Bell and then the image shifts to a vision he has of holding his wife. The words that continue over the image, however, are Witt's, not Bell's: "Courage. The contented heart." Again, Malick attempts something of a transcendent subjectivity, reinforced through image, voice-over, physical similarity~ and treatment of characters in similar ways. This seems to run counter to the notion of traditional genre, at least of the war genre. Also, art film characters slide from one situation to another. Here, characters do so collectively.

Murray Smith argues in Engaging Characters that the body is used to individuate characters in a film (115). This film uses it to de-individuate them. With

118 their helmets on, covered in dirt, grime, and sweat, the men of Charlie Company look very much alike. Smith terms this "false recognition~ (125). At times we are not sure just who we are seeing or hearing. Critics spent a considerable amount of space delving into the similarity among many of the characters. ""Who are these guys?" asks

Time (Corliss and Schickel 173). ""Many young faces we must strain to identify.

Malick, a poker player or a mystic, does not yield information. His story is a meadow with a minefield" (Corliss and Schickel 173). Gavin Smith argues in Film Comment that Malick ""pointedly keeps all but a few of them sketchy and undefined" (8). This technique ""disarm[s] the processes of audience identification" (Smith 8). Unlike

Saving Private Ryan, where we begin to bond with Miller's squad during the invasion sequence, here we aren't even sure who is who.

The idea of the unified group is a long-held convention of war films. Basinger argues "'It is that unique group of mixed individuals, so carefully organized to represent typical Americans" that is a staple ofthese films (36-37). Again, in The

Thin Red Line many of the soldiers are not unique, they look and act similar, and

Malick crosses their thoughts and voices to the point where they may represent one collective mind, soul, and identity, not a group of individuals brought together for a common purpose.

Murray Smith argues films often transport particular traits of characters into general motifs (20). This can be seen in Saving Private Ryan's conventional melting­ pot platoon, where characters come to represent different regions, religions, and ethnicities in the United States. Malick complicates this by breaking down the distinctions between the soldiers and making them similar.

119 Charlie Company fmally reaches the fron4 and we see the wounded being ferried back. With these images on screen~ Witt's voice-over wonders, "'Maybe all men got one big souL.All the faces ofthe same man." The image then shifts to show

Witt helping a wounded man by the river, holding him up as he washes his face. The voice-over continues through this and Witt decries, '"Everyone looking for salvation by themselves."

Witt seems to be arguing for a collective consciousness, that all men are the same. Yet this is interesting because it seems, in some respects, similar to what Welsh told him earlier, that, "A man by himself is nothing." The argument is reinforced by two men who do not think they agree on anything, yet they agree on the most important thing of all.

Murray Smith argues, ""The representation of characters, then, depends on conventions, such as the convention that a character will be represented by a single performer" (27). I am not arguing that Malick has two performers play the same character, but he complicates this seemingly obvious convention by having similar­ looking characters and crossing thoughts and voice-overs of different characters, as if he is suggesting that the differing aspects of the characters represent different aspects of one character, that each is part of a whole. For example, Witt represents the dreams of a better world, Bell represents the longing for women, etc. Taken together, the thoughts of Charlie Company represent the entire consciousness of one soldier. The voiceover, a technique of Malick's in his previous films, is here used extensively to connect all the soldiers in the film.

120 By doing so, one critic argues Malick has ''solved the problem of how to represent battle as collective strife, against demands of individualist narrative points­ of-view. In battle, the men are de-individuated and sympathetically particularized in the same moment" (Morrison 37). Todd McCarthy ofVariety argues that the soldiers in the film "are viewed as aspects of a collective humanity, with each soldier's response to the extremity of war as plausible as any other" (73). Malick employs the genre conventions of individualism and collectivism, but does so in a way as yet unexplored in the American war film. He suggests that the collective is primary, at least in battle.

The camera focuses on Charlie Company's objective: a hill dotted with

Japanese machine gun bunkers and mortar positions that must be taken and secured.

The camera tracks up the hill, through the tall grass, and we know the Japanese are dug deep into it somewhere, although we cannot see them. From the point of view of a Japanese machine gun nest, the barrel points down the hill in a shot very similar to

Spielberg's shot of the German machine gun nest. However, Malick mixes traditional displays of the Japanese as enemy with very unconventional ones later in the film.

With the attack planned for the next morning, the scene shifts to the tent of

Captain Staros. Staros, alone, is overcome with emotion at the thought that many of his men will die the next day. In a close-up, Staros even checks to make sure no one is near before he breaks down. He cannot let anyone see his emotions. Staros comes off in the film as a tragic figure. His care and compassion for his soldiers leads to his dismissal as Charlie Company's commander. Yet, according to Ferrell, "to qualify as tragedy, the flaw must not be seen as a weakness" (143). In effect, the only one who

121 thinks Staros has a weakness as a commander is Tall; the other soldiers champion

Staros and support him after his dismissal.

His face illuminated only by a single candle and filled with self-doub~ Staros

says, "Let me not betray my men." The clash that occurs between his compassion for

his men and Colonel Tall's aggressive desire to make up for being passed over for

promotion constitutes the bulk of the next sequence in the film, which, narratively, is

the most conventional in the entire film.

A NEW BATTLE BEGINS

In a steady downpour Miller and his squad arrive at the French town, which is

occupied by both German and American troops. Miller, his men, and the other

Americans begin to make their way through the town in search of Ryan. The scene

intercuts Miller and the other American officer discussing the situation with Upham

attempting to figure out where Miller is from (the secret is an ongoing bet between

the men in the squad). Through all of this, Upham again attempts to bond with the

men in the squad.

The Americans run across a French family holed up in a shelled-out building.

The father attempts to hand his children to the Americans for safe keeping. Miller

steadfastly refuses to take them, but Carpazo takes the crying little girl from her

father, telling Miller, "She reminds me of my niece." During the argument that ensues, the camera pulls back and we see Carpazo, in long shot, hit by a sniper's bullet The men scatter and Carpazo slumps forward and then falls over.

122 We then get the point of view from the German sniper's scope as it moves across Carpazo' s dying body to the areas where the rest of the Americans are hidden.

Spielberg then changes angles and shows us the German, his look similar to Jackson's as the American sniper takes aim at him. Jackson, of course, begins quoting scripture and the sequence cuts back to the point of view of the German's scope as it trains itself on Jackson, and we literally get the German's point ofview ofhis own death as

Jackson fires at him. The shot puts the audience in the perceptual subjectivity of the

Other moments before he is cut down by one ofthe heroes of the film, but switches to a close-up as the bullet hits the German in the eye, and we see with devastating ferocity the damage it causes. The scene combines an unusual camera placement with a close-up of a bullet's violent impact.

Interspersed with this sniper duel are the last words of Carpazo. The others tell him to keep his head down, to lessen the chance the German will fire at him again.

Carpazo reaches into his shirt, pulls out a letter from his father, and asks Mellish to send it to him. After the German sniper's death the squad gathers around Carpazo's body. Miller responds angrily, "That's why we can't take children." Wade, not

Mellish, takes the now wet, bloody note from Carpazo's hand. The Americans return the girl to her father, and she promptly slaps him in the face. The camera cuts to a close-up of Rei ben, who had been questioning the necessity of risking eight lives for the sake of one man. "'Fuck Ryan," is his response to himself.

The sequence can be read as indicative of the film's stance on European civilians. If the German soldiers are, for the most part, the shadowy Other, the civilians caught in the crossfire are virtually nonexistent. I say virtually because, in

123 the one instance where they are depicted, they ''are represented as vile" (Conley 194).

They in fact help to cause the death of Carpazo. Moments before Carpazo' s death, the film crosscuts Miller barking orders at the private to give the girl back to Carpazo, attempting to appease the girl by letting her play with his dog-tags. The entire situation keeps the Americans dangerously out in the open and allows the sniper a chance to pick offCarpazo.

Basinger argues that the first death in a war film must be a significant one

(57). Of course Carpazo is not the first to die in Saving Private Ryan. Thousands have already died at this point in the narrative. Yet he is the first clearly identified and differentiated character to die, and he dies because his compassion for a civilian, and his sentimentality, causes him to lose his mental alertness in an unsafe and hostile environment

Again, with just that single depiction of civilians in the film, the film loses any real perspective on why the war is being fought in the first place, outside of the intrusion on domesticity that is presented early in the narrative. The entire issue of

Hitler and the Third Reich is elided. Moreover, Miller and his men journey through a

France that is filled with American and German soldiers, but no French civilians.

Moreover, little is made of the Allied contribution during the invasion itself.

That led one review to argue the film is a "gung-ho portrayal ofU.S. GI's winning the

Second World War on Normandy beaches" (Royle 31). The film hardly mentions the

British, and then only with a smirk of contempt about Montgomery. Other Allied forces receive no mention at alL Saving Private Ryan is a very American affair.

124 The Americans reach a safe part of town where they can sit and wait for a runner to fmd Ryan. An American leans back and knocks a board over which crumbles an adjoining wall, revealing a squad of Germans. Both groups reach for their guns, and the film cuts back and forth between the screaming Americans, telling the Germans to drop their weapons, to Upham, yelling at them in German, to the

Germans themselves, whose words are not translated. The tension of the moment is cut, however, by a rain of unseen gunfire that mows down the Germans. The image shifts to reveal another group of Americans on a ledge above.

The American commander in the town (Ted Danson, in an unbilled cameo) finds Private Ryan, and Miller must go through his speech to prepare the private for the news. Miller's squad looks on disapprovingly, now having lost one of their own.

"See, told you he was an asshole," Reiben replies. Nothing can be this easy, of course, and it turns out that the group has come upon the wrong Private Ryan, who now thinks his grade school brothers have been killed on the home front. The scene alternates close-ups of the wrong Private Ryan's shock and Miller's realization of what has happened with optimum comedic effect.

The squad, realizing they must continue the search, holds up in a deserted church for several hours. The scene seems to have all the conventions: we hear thunder and we see lightning flashing outside against the windows; inside the church is dimly lit by candles. The scene begins with another close-up of Miller's shaking hand and his conversation with his second-in-command, Horvath. The conversation revolves around a young recruit who used to make them laugh and presumably has been killed. The recruit comes to symbolize all those who have been killed under

125 Miller's command, and he attempts to explain how he lives with it. "You make a choice," Miller says, "the mission or the man." Horvath replies, "Except this time the mission is the man." Again the theme of the value of one person in an entire war is played out.

The scene then shifts attention to the other soldiers, and the sequence eventually turns to Wade, the medic. As he recopies Carpazo's letter, Wade recounts an event from childhood about his mother. It is the longest bit of dialogue the character has in the film, and comes, of course, a few minutes before his death. We are made to identify with him right before he is killed.

The scene concludes with a conversation between Upham and Miller. Upham, the intellectual typist, tells Miller, "War educates the senses." The expression on his face indicates he is somewhat surprised that Miller knows it is from Emerson (the quote comes off as somewhat ridiculous considering how Upham has been portrayed so far). Upham substitutes knowledge from books for knowledge of real-world experience, especially combat experience. His knowledge ofbooks and lack of real combat experience fits the generic requirements of the green recruit that is conventional is so many combat films. The film itself may be saying that book­ learning cannot hold up to experience under fire.

Upham again attempts to fmd out where Miller is from, perhaps because if he does it will win him favor with the others. Miller skirts the issue then order~ Upham to get some sleep. The camera follows Miller to an alcove, where lightning flashes briefly illuminate his stoic face. His rigid mask will be broken in the next sequence, however.

126 On their way to the rendezvous point where they think Ryan might be the

squad encounters a German machine gun bunker that has waylaid several

unsuspecting Americans. Miller, despite the protests from his men that it is not part of

their mission, orders them to attack the bunker ("'Our mission is to win the war,"

Miller tells them). As they plan the attack, Miller's hand begins shaking as he holds

his compass. The image cuts to the faces of the men. They have all noticed their

leader with this possible sign of weakness.

The men, all except Upham, charge in towards the bunker. Upham hides

behind a dead cow and uses Jackson's rifle scope to observe the battle. We are

afforded Upham's literal point-of-view as he watch the battle unfold through the lens.

His participation in his first battle is merely as an observer. He has not been tested

yet.

Finally the shooting stops and Miller yells for Upham to bring the gear. The

camera tracks Upham as he runs through the smoke towards the others, and we are

limited to his point of view as he moves through the field, and perhaps here the film is working to identify us with Upham as he reaches the men gathered around Wade, who has been shot in the chest. Wade, a medic, knows the wound is deathly serious, and the film goes into close-up as blood begins to seep out of his chest. The men try frantically to help, but eventually are resigned to giving him morphine as he cries out for the mother he had just been reminiscing about. As Wade dies the scene cuts to a shot on top of the bunker, where Reiben has captured a German prisoner and is beating him. Jackson and Mellish run to join in.

127 The German POW scene, which will be discussed in the next section, becomes extremely problematic when the events at the end of the film are taken into consideration.

In The Thin Red Line, Colonel Tall orders the artillery to bombard the

Japanese positions with 105mm guns, even though he is told they will only have a cosmetic effect. "'It bucks the men up," is his reply to Captain Staros when told the guns will not harm the Japanese. The conflict between Staros and Tall is a highlight of this segment of the film. This ties in to Mark Gallagher's argument that the 1990s provided a space for more interiorized and emotive male heroes (207). While

Gallagher speaks primarily about the action genre, it can be logically applied to this film as well. At first glance, Tall represents the traditional depiction of the gruff, tough-talking, win-at-all-costs commander, while Staros prays by candlelight to spare his men. Basinger argues that the arrival of the tough C.O. is a convention of the war genre (29), yet Thomas Doherty argues in Cineaste that the film's focus on Tall

'"evokes the Vietnam combat genre, where the worst enemy of the American soldier is his commanding officer" (Doherty 84).

This is an important statement because Doherty seems to ignore much of

Tall's voice-over in the film. Through his voice-over Tall seems as filled with self­ doubt and uncertainty as his counterpart, Captain Staros. Another critic argues that the film "refuses the salve of villainy" (Morrison 35). This applies even to Tall, who,

128 although he pushes men to the breaking point, ""is himself--in pensive voice-overs­

revealed as vulnerable" (Morrison 35).

Yet I argue that Tall's portrayal is really an updating of a convention of the

World War Two genre. Tall's depiction, unlike films made during or soon after the

war, comes across as more realistic. During the war, portrayals of commanding

officers who knowingly ordered dozens or even hundreds of their men to their deaths

was not a popular one, but more than half a century has now elapsed, and such sugar­

coated, patriotic depictions ofC.O's who hesitated before sacrificing men are no

longer necessary. The genre itself has evolved.

There are notions of art cinema here as well. Here we are offered a much more

psychologically complex officer than we might have gotten in other World War Two

films. We hear, through voice-overs and through close-ups, Tall's own fears and self­

doubts, and we realize the tough exterior is not all that is there.

Charlie Company breaks up into various squads to prepare for the assault.

Sergeant Keck finally gets his first bit of dialogue in the film, although he has been

seen in close-up several times. He and Welsh get into a minor argument about a

soldier who claims he cannot move forward because of an upset stomach. Keck warns

Welsh not challenge him and allows the man to fall back to the medics.

The sequence then shift to a tracking shot that snakes upward through the tall grass (one of several similar shots in the film), the only sound that ofthe grass rustling. The camera tracks past the advancing men to the top of the hilL The

Americans move as far as they can in relative safety, then must crouch down. Lt.

Whyte (Jared Leto) orders two of his men to scout ahead. The camera alternates

129 between their nervous, apprehensive glances toward one another and Whyte, who

silently and repeatedly orders them forward. In long shot, we see them crouch

forward several yards before the crack of two rifle shots breaks the eerie silence and

the soldiers are gunned down. The reaction of Whyte is a mixture of shock,

wonderment at exactly where the shots came from, and resignation that he has just

sent two men to their deaths. At this point, the Japanese are not even shadows in the

tall grass. They are the invisible enemy.

One critic argues, "It may be the Second World War, but it feels more like

Vietnam, with Americans fighting an invisible enemy that keeps melting into the

wind" (Johnson 52). Again, genres are not ahistorical, and the film is perhaps

updating the genre with influences from the Vietnam film. Another adds,

'Throughout The Thin Red Line Japanese soldiers appear ... as shadows in the grass"

(Doherty 83). As I mentioned earlier, this may be true for a time, but Malick counters

this depiction later in the film with very non-traditional displays of the enemy.

The film cuts back to the long shot he used when the soldiers were shot. A

stream of light breaks through the clouds, lighting the entire hill and the folds of grass around it. At this point Charlie Company attacks in mass, charging up the hilL Whyte

is first to be killed. The camera follows the soldiers as they run, fall, and scream through the rifle shots and explosions happening all around them. Again the film intersperses close-ups of characters like Bell and Welsh with more anonymous characters. There is rapid cutting as Americans drop one after another. Blood splatters onto the grass and onto the camera lens. Several soldiers, crouching on the ground in an attempt not to be hit, are in turn threatened by a passing snake. In the midst of all

130 the chaos and confusion one soldier reaches out for a leaf (similar to the ending of All

Quiet on the Western Front, in which the main character reaches out for a butterfly).

The scene shifts to a close-up of a dying chick, struggling to move, on the ground as

we hear the carnage of war in the background. The attack appears to be a complete

disaster.

Gavin Smith argues that the action sequences in the film amount to an

''abstracted or interiorized anti-spectacle, in which the viewer's attention is repeatedly

directed away from 'the action' and toward ostensibly irrelevant sights and sounds"

(8). It would seem, conventionally, that the last thing a pure war film would do would

be to cut away from the combat during the combat.

The film cut backs to Tall, who mistakenly believes the attack is going welL

Speaking to Staros by radio, he demands to know how many Japanese emplacements have been taken out, to which Staros replies he doesn't know. The answer sends Tall

into a rage. Malick alternates the anguished look on Staros' face with that of the furious Tall, who insists that Staros send his men en masse to wipe out the Japanese.

The scene shifts to Private Doll, who spots several Japanese moving across the top of the hilL He takes aim with his rifle and kills one. We hear his thought about killing an enemy soldier. "I killed a man and nobody can touch me for it." Again,

Doll is a very minor character in the film. Yet he too is granted a voice-over, and we hear his thought at having killed another human being, perhaps the thought all the men of Charlie company experience.

It is unusual that we are suddenly granted access to Doll's subjectivity.

Murray Smith agues that, "most films develop the inner lives of the major characters

131 more fully than those of incidental characters" (150). Yet it is Doll's thoughts we hear describing how it feels to kill another in battle. In The Thin Red Line there seemingly are no incidental characters, and this relates again to the collective identity presented in this film.

Sergeant Keck and several others have made it to the relative safety in one of the folds of the hilL Keck, attempting to throw a grenade, accidentally pulls it by the pin, in effect killing himself. As he lay dying, Witt arrives, telling him, "'You didn't let your brothers down." Harrelson, billed as one of the stars of the film. doesn't even make it halfway through the narrative, and has a relative handful of lines. Todd

McCarthy argues that Harrelson's death "fully justifies one character's remark about the utter randomness of who survives and who doesn't" (73). I would also argue it relates to the art cinema notion of chance encounter with a lack of clear-cut cause and effect. Things happen simply by chance.

Up until this point The Thin Red Line has heavily relied on the use of the voice-over, and we have heard the thoughts of several different characters, some of them minor ones. We also see the battle from a minor character's mental and perceptual subjectivity. We see a soldier down on his knees and apparently having a breakdown. The next shot is his point-of-view, which is in slow motion with the sound of the battle slowed down and distorted as well (much the same as Captain

Miller's point-of-view is depicted during the opening and closing battle sequences).

The soldier grabs a handful of grass. "That's all there is for us," he says.

The scene shifts to Captain Stares and some of his men, who watch helplessly as a man lay dying from his wounds. The medic Stares has sent out to help him has

132 been killed. "The fate of the company doesn't depend on one man," someone says, but Welsh takes it upon himself to run out, and dodging machine gun fire, attempts to move him to safety. When the man screams in pain, Welsh leaves him with enough morphine to dull his pain. After Welsh returns to safety, he remarks, "Property. The fucking thing's about property." This is a far cry from the traditional symbols

Americans fight for in World War Two films, but again is consistent with changes in genre history, and supports Altman's claims that genres are transhistoricaL ''Property" is not a sentiment that Americans would have made in a World War Two film fifty years ago, but the changing aspect of genres allows for this to happen.

The conflict between Tall and Staros intensifies, and the scene again alternates shots of the raging Tall and the apprehensive Captain. Tall demands a full frontal assault while Stares requests a flanking maneuver. Tall again repeats his demand and

Malick cuts into a close-up ofStaros as he refuses to obey Tall's order. Stares, the father to these sons, cannot order them to their deaths in what amounts to a suicide mission. The captain's refusal forces Tall to take the matter into his own hands and make his way to the front line. As he does so we hear Tall's voice-over: ''Trapped in a tomb. Can't lift the lid." It seems like a quote that could apply to any of the American soldiers in the film. Robert Coles argues in America that the film "tells of moral leadership that ultimately won't give ground" (7). In the most straightforward narrative segment of the film Staros, a father figure, stands up to the overbearing Tall and refuses his orders, knowing full well the consequences of disobedience.

Tall reaches the fold in the grass where Staros and his men are positioned. He is the only one who does not flinch when a mortar explodes nearby (reminiscent of

133 Robert Duvales air cavalry officer in Apocalypse Now). A character picks up a handful of earth. '"Di~" he says, "we're just dirt." It is important to note that during this battle sequence the film inserts comments like these from the soldiers, and in fact these comments become central to the style ofthe film here.

Tall orders a small group reconnaissance of the Japanese bunker, and the group, which includes Private Bell, makes its way through the grass. As it does, a soldier shoots his submachine gun at a bird. Again the film comments on the coexistence of war and nature. Bell has another vision ofbeing with his wife, of holding and touching her. She is standing in the ocean, and he wades out towards her.

In his voice-over he says, "Come out to where I am." The scene shifts back to Bell, and he is able to make out the number and placement of machine guns that must be taken out. Gavin Smith argues that the film "is as much about the psychic fortifications men bring in order to survive war as it is about its emotional and moral consequences" (8). Bell crawls into memories of his wife, Witt the idyllic paradise he thinks he has found.

The group reports its findings to Tall, who later asks Staros, ''It'll cost lives,

Staros. How many men's lives is it worth?" A caring and compassionate man, Staros seems out of place leading men into combat and has no real answer. Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps there is no answer to such a question. In any event, a situation such as this, with a commanding officer having no answer, takes us away from traditional conventions of the genre, whereas an officer like Captain Miller in Saving Private

Ryan has the answers.

134 Witt and Welsh continue their ongoing discussion. Welsh asks Witt, '"What difference can you make? One man in all this madness?" Again, the notion of a single individual is juxtaposed with the much larger themes of war and group consciousness.

"'If you die," Welsh tells him, "'it's going to be for nothing." This is certainly not the sentiment viewers are used to hearing in American World War Two films, and again shows how the film does either not adhere to conventions of the genre or adapts and changes them.

Welsh's comment is juxtaposed with yet another of Bell's flashbacks. Bell's wife is standing in their bedroom, and we hear Bell's voice: ..We together. .. one being." He could be speaking ofhis wife and himself, but perhaps also all of the soldiers attempting to take the hilL

Tall decides to wait until the next morning to send a small squad (which will include Bell and Witt) to covertly make their way up the hill and take out the bunker.

The sequence ends with an image ofthe moon and a voice-over from Stares: "You're my light. You're my guide." Again, the film connects the men of Charlie Company with the nature around them and, through the collective identity that has been going on, the nature that seems to be in the soldiers as welL

AGAINST THE ODDS

Enraged by Wade's death, Reiben, Jackson, and Mellish want to execute the

German POW. Miller orders the prisoner to dig Wade's grave, which he does rather enthusiastically. Miller goes off by himself and, making sure no one is watching,

135 •

crouches down behind the bunker and breaks down and begins crying, his stoicism

gone. Of course, he cannot do it in front of the others. This display of emotion must

be done alone, lest it be seen as a sign of weakness. Susan Jeffords writes of the shift

in the 1990s of the filmic representation of masculinity to the more '"sensitive man"

(205-206). This is represented here, where an army captain can break down and show

his emotions to the audience, but not to the other characters.

One review refers to Miller as a character ''constitutionally less able to bear

the horrors of combat than anybody else in his patrol" (Alleva 30). The exception, of

course, is Upham. Alleva does not elaborate why this is so. Is it because Miller is a

schoolteacher perhaps? He seems to have much of the book-knowledge that Upham

has. In any event, he argues that Miller, as commanding officer, must mask this

weakness with an '"unfissured facrade of stoicism" (30). It can only break down when

no one else is watching.

Upham, communicating with the prisoner in German, befriends him and even

offers him a cigarette as he digs Wade's grave. His action only serves to disgust most

of the others in the squad. Miller returns, and it appears that the squad will execute the prisoner. Upham begins to plead for the life of the sole survivor of the machine

gun bunker, telling the others it is murder to shoot someone who has surrendered.

Again, this in turn leads to snide remarks from the others. The prisoner, in a desperate attempt to stay alive, begins spewing out American pop-culture references: "Betty

Boop ... Betty Grable ... big garns ... Oh, Say Can You See ... Fuck Hitler!" According to Basinger, World War Two films often depict a faceless enemy with one exception

( 61 ). The German prisoner proves to be the exception in this film. Miller, of course, is

136 noble, even among the savagery around him, and decides to let the prisoner go. His decision causes a near mutiny among his squad.

Reiben, with "Brooklyn, NY, USA" written across the back of his jacket, threatens to desert. Horvath in tum threatens to shoot Reiben, and the entire squad erupts in shouting and confusion. This is the moment that Miller breaks down the wall of secrecy between him and his men, humanizing himself to them and to the audience as welL The camera focuses on Miller as he tells of his life on the home front: a high school English teacher and baseball coach in Pennsylvania, with a wife who trims the rose bushes in their front yard. Miller tells his men he cares nothing for

Ryan, but finding him it will perhaps earn him "'the right to get back to my wife." The objective of the war, for Miller, is to return to domesticity.

Again, the argument here, which fits the conventional pattern of the World

War Two genre, is that the soldiers were fighting to get back home. Yet, was this the case? Commentary quotes historian Neal Gabler, who argues,

Ifthe film falsifies the sentiments ofthe soldiers of that time by having them declare they are fighting only to get back home, when in reality the soldiers in the war were avowedly fighting to stop Adolph Hitler, then the sentiments are at least falsified in a good cause: to neutralize the nationalism that had divided us [over Vietnam] and to humanize our sense of duty (Caldwell 50).

The film follows the genre convention, but takes an extremely sentimentalized view of the war and why the soldiers were there and what they thought they were fighting for.

137 The speech is enough to quell the uprising, and Spielberg frames the squad

against the setting sun as they place Wade's body into the grave. Basinger argues this

type of evening or nighttime burial is a staple of the genre (29). The squad proceeds

to the airborne rendezvous point, and learns that Ryan is protecting a bridge with a

patched-together squad in a nearby village. They find Ryan soon after, and Miller

relays the news ofhis brother's death. His reaction is as expected (he shows shock

and disbelief that all three have died), although not nearly as emotional as the false

Ryan believing his grade-school brothers had died.

Ryan then refuses Miller's order to leave the bridge. This ignites an angry

response from Rei ben, who tells Ryan that two of his friends have been killed in an

attempt to find him. Ryan eventually tells Miller, "Tell my mother I was with the only

brothers that I have left." Again, the theme ofbrotherhood, of familial relations is

reinforced in the film.

After consulting Horvath Miller decides that his squad will help Ryan's defend the bridge against the Germans who are surely coming to take it. Horvath tells

Miller, "We do that, we all earn the right to go home." Saving Private Ryan sets up the last stand scenario: a noble cause against overwhelming odds and a key convention of this genre. Miller devises a plan to fight the approaching German battalion, which includes four tanks and fifty infantry. The Americans are vastly outnumbered and outguimed (they rely, in part, on Molotov cocktails and plastic explosives stuffed in socks for weapons). Miller even names the final fallback point on the opposite side of the bridge the Alamo, a reference most Americans are surely familiar with.

138 The last stand scenario often concludes with unequal odds. The Americans face overwhelming numbers. According to Kane~ this disparity "'help[s] present the basic conflict of good and evil~ further[s] the justification of American vict<>ries~ and minimize[s] the ambiguity ofthe issues raised" (128). The Americans must rely on

smarts~ toughness~ and the righteousness of the cause in order to prevaiL

Again~ his scenario is engrained into the conventions of the genre. One critic justifies the inclusion of the Alamo/bridge battle: ""Cinematic conventions h.ad to be obeyed, and so the combat action does not resume until the end is near" (Spiller 41).

What would Spiller make of The Thin Red Line, with nearly all of the "'combat action" placed squarely in the middle ofthe film~ disregarding the cinematic conventions he speaks of?

The last stand scenario, from the Alamo on, has played into American ideology when it comes to war and sacrifice. It is a theme picked up on by this film.

Greg Dening argues that the history this type of theme uses is "'meant to pull on the

'mythic cords of memory' employ[ing] the past with unequivocal portraits of Good and Evil in extravagant difference" (20). The showdown is set between the

Americans and Germans.

According to Christina Kennedy, extraordinary behavior in extraordinary environments can enhance the audience's involvement in the narrative (164). The film places its outnumbered~ heroic Americans against an armored battalion of

Germans in a desolate town. There can be no question that the audience, by this point, is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Germans.

139 There is usually a quiet before the storm, and the last stand in Saving Private

Ryan is no exception. Two distinct episodes occur before the battle. The first is a conversation between Miller and Ryan. Up until this point, the audience really only knows Ryan through his refusal to leave his squad behind. In this sequence he relates to Miller the last night he was with all three of his brothers, some three years previous. Again, it humanizes him and allows the audience to identify with him.

The second sequence involves Mellish, Reiben, Horvath, and Upham. The

Americans are listening to a love song in French, and Upham translates the words for the others. Upham. even right before the battle, still attempts to bond with the others, and actually seems to have some success. Kane argues that integration of all the members ofthe group is a key theme in war films (114). Upham tries repeatedly throughout the film to accomplish this task. For the upcoming battle Upham has been relegated to ammo boy, carrying 30 caliber bullets to Mellish and Jackson, who will be falling back to different positions. In a bit of foreshadowing, Mellish tells Upham that his life depends on getting those bullets. It is at this moment that Upham figures out the meaning ofF.U.B.A.R.

The Germans and their tanks roll into the bombed-out town and the

Americans take their positions. The film cuts to a shot/reverse shot ofReiben and

Ryan. The two nod to one another. Any ill feelings in the past have been forgotten.

They have bonded in the face of the enemy.

The battle sequence itself is as vicious as the opening D-Day sequence. The battle sequence constantly shifts location and perspectives as men are blown apart

(one by his own bomb which goes off in his hand), burst into flame, and are

140 decapitated. The most-talked about aspect of this battle, however, involves Upham and Mellish.

Upham succeeds once in getting Mellish the ammunition, yet after that, cowardice in the face of battle takes over. He is unable to will himselfback to the second-story building where Mellish and another soldier have resorted to throwing back potato-masher grenades the Germans lob at them. By the time Upham makes it halfway up the stairs, Mellish is in a mano-a-mano death match with a German soldier, which according to critic Karen Jaehne, is ''the core scene of every great war story since The Iliad" (39). The other American has died an excruciating death after being shot in the neck, and Mellish and the German, both out of ammunition, grapple on the floor, punching, biting, screaming, and cursing one another. Spielberg crosscuts their violent struggle with shots of Upham, rifle in hand, cringing on the stairwelL He is simply too terrified to go all the way up.

Mellish pulls out the Hitler Youth knife he picked up in the beginning of the film and attempts to stab the German with it, but the enemy soldier is able to wrestle it away and, as Mellish pleads for him to stop, slowly sinks it into Mellish's heart, murmuring to him in untranslated German. The Jewish Mellish has been killed with a

Hitler Youth knife. It is perhaps the most disturbing image in the entire film. The

German, his fight with Mellish over, moves down the stairs past a cringing, crying

Upham, who apparently is not even worth the German's effort to kilL Upham does not even look like a soldier to the enemy.

What the German says to Mellish during the fight is not translated, and this lack of translation has lead to some interesting interpretations of the last few seconds

141 of the encounter. Commonweal mistakenly describes it as "black comedy as the

German, trying to distract his opponent, starts babbling to him in German" (Alleva

30). American Heritage writes, "We see one soldier consummate his victory over the other slowly while he whispers soothingly to his enemy as if he were a lover" (Spiller

41 ). Spiller picks up on the eroticism of the fmal moments of the fight, even using the word '"consummate" to describe its climax.

Karen Jaehne's critique of the film in Film Quarterly provides the German's actual words to Mellish. "Most American viewers seem to think the German's words are another kind oftorture for Mellish ... This is merely a problem of perception,

because what the German is saying to Mellish is actually quite different: "Lass uns es

beenden ... ' ('Let's just end it alL')'' (39). The German, it seems, is trying to sooth

Mellish's last moments, yet Spielberg does not translate the words, leaving American audiences to guess at the meaning from a statement that to many of them sounds threatening or cursing '"because the harsh, guttural sounds of the language strike the ear as dreadful, even evil" (Jaehne 39). Even if the German's words were an attempt to pacify, it is lost in the translation.

The fight between Mellish and the German is extremely masculine. It rests at the top ofConnell's hierarchy of masculinities, especially in comparison to Upham's cowering on the stairs. Connell argues that masculinity becomes "vulnerable when the performance cannot be maintained" (54). Upham's performance carries little of the conventional notion of masculinity in this genre, and his cowardice is made excruciatingly obvious by the savage fight between the two men upstairs. He has lost,

142 in effec4 all traditional status as a man. In terms of masculinity he has been expelled from any circle of legitimacy (Connell 79).

According to Kolker~ Spielberg films often are about individuals helping other individuals (298). The men working together to defeat the shark in Jaws, the kids working to save the alien in £. T., and the scientists and children working together in

Jurassic Park are a few examples. Here Upham clearly violates that principle by cowering on the stairs, unable to help Mellish at alL His utter failure as a soldier is complete. If it is true that the family-like atmosphere of Miller's squad ""provides the protective and assuring encapsulation for Private Ryan" (Kolker 299)~ then Upham is the black sheep and betrayer of the family.

Murray Smith argues that our sympathies for any character are determined, in part, by the system of values in the text (194). Not only has Upham violated a major principle that runs through this and other Spielberg films, but he has also violated one of the main tenets of the war film: honor, courage, and self-sacrifice. At this moment, he could not be farther apart from the other Americans in the film.

Miller has ordered a full retreat across the bridge to the Alamo. The

Americans plan to blow the bridge when they get across. The remainder of Miller's squad makes it across (Jackson has been killed by a tank blast and Horvath is fatally wounded). The sequence shifts to Upham, now on the wrong side of the bridge, cowering behind a sand dune as German soldiers fire across the bridge. Upham realizes one of the Germans is the prisoner Miller let go. The image cuts to a close-up of the German firing his rifle, then to a long shot of Miller being hit by rifle fire.

Spielberg's noble captain is fatally wounded by the German soldier that, in an act of

143 compassion, he set free. In the conventions of the genre, Miller's decision can be read as fateful, tragic, and misguided.

Miller makes one last attempt to get to the control fuse to blow the bridge. A

German tank is only a few yards away and Miller futilely fires at it with his sidearm.

At that moment the sequence cuts back to the tank, which explodes in flames as an

Army Air-force tank buster buzzes overhead. Several others soar past and the

Germans are routed just in time.

This allows Upham to spring from his hiding place and take several Germans prisoner, one of whom is the POW. The German begins speaking to Upham and calls out his name. Upham, with an expressionless face, fires his rifle, killing the man he had once pleaded for. It is the only shot Upham fires in the entire film.

In war films, '"A climactic battle takes place, and a learning or growth process occurs" (Basinger 75). This is the learning process that occurs. Upham learns how to kill, and in effect it is his fmal bonding process with the other surviving members of his squad.

Is the violence Upham commits justified? He is, after all, killing someone who represents the Other. The Other is "Absolutely different from 'humanity' and responsible for sheer irrational savagery [and] both ignites and justifies the violence enacted upon it" (McLarty 346). The German prisoner, the only German in the film depicted as human, becomes the Other again by returning to his unit and firing on

Miller. His punishment is death at the hands of Upham. "It is through the psychological violence of banishment or the physical violence of annihilation of the

144 Other that the community constitutes itself by defming and defending its borders"

(McLarty 346). The Other, the German POW, must be destroyed.

Following generic requirement, soldiers must be initiated into combat, into the

loss of innocence, if they are to have a chance to succeed. They are reborn triumphant

through their initiation into violence, and Upham's comes at the very end of the last

stand battle at the Alamo.

Tania Modleski argues that the type ofviolence viewers approve of is morally

instructive and (B 15). Moreover, she believes that when the violence also has a basis

in historical fact it is even more edifying for the audience. In this context, the violence is set against a well-known historical context and is used, in this sequence, to trumpet the American myth of regeneration and rebirth through violence.

Richard Schickel argues in Time that Upham "'learns more about himself than

he will ever be able to confess in the book he wants to write" (57). One critic argues that the clerk-typist turned grunt is" a natural surrogate for the audience that has been metaphorically thrown into the thick ofbattle and forced somehow to get with the

program" (Jameson 23). What has Upham learned exactly? Does the audience

identify with him because he is a coward, because they think perhaps that is how they would act in battle? He certainly fits the genre convention of"the kid" (Kane 78-79), the untried, untested, green recruit who becomes a man. Yet Upham's response to his cowardice, his initiation into the dirtiness of the war, seems extremely problematic.

Critic Elliot Cohen argues his fmal act of the film is "cowardly murder, committed in a hopeless attempt to recover some self-respect following his failure to come to the aid of a comrade in combat" (84). It is Upham, not Ryan, who best

145 exemplifies the life lived at the expense of a comrade (Jaehne 40). fiis cowardice

seems to make Ryan's willingness to stay and fight seem all the moce noble. Upham

learns to become, in effect, much like Reiben and Jackson, who weree so willing to kill

the German when they first captured him. Upham seems to learn the: notion and

ideology of an eye-for-an-eye. All compassion seems lost, but the fillm presents him

as transformed, regenerated, and re-birthed.

Yet Spielberg does not have Upham shoot just any nameless_, faceless

surrendering German soldier, as some Grs do at the beginning ofth.e film. Rather he

has Upham shoot the one enemy soldier who has any kind of dimen~ion to him, the

character Upham befriended, but more importantly, the character that Miller let go,

who in turn killed Miller. Certainly this would make Upham's actio:m, in the eyes of

many in the audience, not ethical perhaps, but at least justifiable ancH understandable.

The film returns to a now dying Miller, surrounded by Ryan and Reiben, who

desperately calls for a medic. Miller, with his last once of strength, gmlls Ryan close

and tells him to "Earn this." It is the last thing he says. Earlier in the= film, Miller half­ jokingly tells his men that Ryan better go home and find a cure for cancer or invent

the longer-lasting light bulb. Of course, that is not what Miller means here. According

to Christoper Sharrett, Miller means "earn the right to survive by be=ing a straight­

laced American, an admonition fully answered in the military cemetlery finale" (416).

The aging Ryan shows up to Miller's grave with his entire clan of \Veil-dressed offspring in tow. He has indeed earned it.

Miller's death tempers any feelings ofjubilation at the defeaat of the enemy forces. Kolker argues that Miller's death is ••an old melodramatic cconvention that

146 permits the death of the beloved character to signify a larger sadness and sacrifice"

(300). Of all the characters it is Miller we want to make it back home, back to his wife and baseball team and rose bushes, and when he does not, it signifies all those who did not make it back. In the absence of a larger perspective, Miller truly becomes the everyman. Richard Schickel argues that the film's conclusion is referred to as a

'"final, heartbreaking passage at arms" (57). The film as a whole becomes a 'l:ale of tragic sacrifice" (Maclean's 47) and reproduces the generic conventions of honor, courage, and self-sacrifice.

The heroes' work, however, does not go unfilled (Kolker 300). Miller's sacrifice, again, allows Ryan to return home, to himself become a father in a film about paternal instinct. If General Marshall is the ultimate father figure in the film, ordering Ryan's return to his home, Miller is a fatherly guide to both his men in the squad and to Ryan himself, who again appears to have no real father in the narrative.

Complete victory in war films is rare. Kane argues that in World War Two films, "Victories are enormously qualified, both by the cost in lives and the suffering and by the prolonged amount of time during which Americans make no gain at all"

(1 03 ). The defeat of the Germans, which will enable Ryan to get home to his mother, comes at the cost of Miller's life.

Of the original eight men who set out to find Ryan, only Reiben and Upham survive. In the last shot before the epilogue, camera pulls back to reveal a long shot of

Miller, slumped over on the ground, Ryan, kneeling beside him, and the destruction that surrounds them everywhere.

147 Private Bell leads Witt and the others to an assault on the Japanese bunker.

During the battle only one American is wounded and the small squad is able to take out the machine gun nest and capture several Japanese soldiers. It is really at this point that the depiction of the enemy seems to vary from the traditional portrayal in many World War Two films. Malick pans the camera across the Japanese soldiers crouched in the bunker. Close-ups reveal them to be ragged, filthy, and starved. Some pray, others simply look off blankly into space. If anything, they appear to be much worse off than their American counterparts. The enemy no longer appears to be a shado·wy Other, but rather a collection of dirty, hungry, haunted men. Witt offers one prisoner a stick of gum, but the soldier stares back blankly.

Gavin Smith argues in Film Comment that the only defining moments in the film that truly matter to Malick are "those that convey a significant response to or perspective on war as an experiential event of the profoundest magnitude" (8). For example, Smith argues that the entire reason for showing us Gaff, Bell, and Witt's assault on the machine gun bunker is to show us the emotional aftermath of survivors on both sides (8). In contrast to Saving Private Ryan, in which a main function is to highlight the realism of combat, The Thin Red Line highlights combat's effect on soldiers. While Saving Private Ryan's realistic combat can be read as a revision ofthe genre (the changing, ever-more graphic nature of cinematic slaughter), The Thin Red

Line's depiction of the after effects of combat can also be read as a generic revision, in part influenced by a post-Vietnam perspective on post-traumatic stress disorder and also by art cinema's reliance on the psychological complexity of its characters.

148 Kane argues that in American World War Two films the enemy is often portrayed as oppressive, ruthless, fanatical, and treacherous (14). In the depiction of the Japanese during this sequence, and during the later raid on the Japanese compound described below, the enemy seems hardly to fit any of these categories.

They seem to come off as more pathetic than anything else, which seems surprising given their shadowy depiction earlier in the film. If the infantrymen were frightened about the hilltop assault, the Japanese seem just as scared.

One critic seems completely off base when he writes, '"Malick portrays the

Americans as the invaders ... while the Japanese, a conquering army not known for magnanimous behavior towards native populations, seem a natural part of the landscape, as indigenous as the Melanesians" (Doherty 84). Again, this seems an appropriate comment for the depiction of the Japanese earlier in the film, but certainly not in the second half, where they seem as out of place as the Americans. The only ones who truly seem at home (except for Witt) are the Melanesians themselves.

Richard Slatkin argues that many World War Two films dealing with the

Pacific conflict are often filled with racist images. "An element of racial symbolism became an essential part of the combat film's symbolic code" (318). This in tum was part of the racism that pervaded (and to some extent still pervades) American culture.

Yet the depiction of the Japanese in this film can hardly be described as racist in this sense. In the later scene depicting the American raid on the Japanese compound, it is the Americans who are depicted as less than noble.

149 Moreover, Slotkin argues that the Japanese are often depicted as never getting tired. "They never stop coming at you, never ask for a respite let alone for quarter"

(324). In The Thin Red Line that hardly seems the case at all.

Tall congratulates the officer who led the mission against the Japanese bunker,

Captain Gaff (John Cusack), fresh out of West Point. Tall tells him "You're like a son to me John." Tall offers to recommend him for the Medal of Honor, yet for the most part brushes off Gaffs repeated requests to have water delivered to the men. Tall explains he has waited decades for his chance at a real war, his chance to get back at those who have passed him over. In the shot/reverse shot between the two men Gaff can only look back with a mixture of dread and resignation on his face.

The image turns to a squatting, near-naked Japanese soldier among burned out trees, then we hear a voice ask, "You seen many dead bodies?" We never find out who uttered the line. It could be anyone in the company. The next voice-over is that ofStaros, who wonders "Are you righteous?" The image that accompanies the voice­ over is a close-up of a half-buried Japanese face in the dirt. Staros continues: "Are you kind? Are you loved by all? I was too." Staros' thoughts seems to speak directly to the dead Japanese soldier, telling him that to be loved, to be missed by those you love, has no meaning in the death and destruction that has taken place.

Tall decides Charlie Company is ready to overrun the Japanese compound, and the film sets up the confrontation by crosscutting the Americans, walking through a thick patch of fog, with the Japanese, standing in a line and waiting for the

American attack. The cutting between the two continuously gets faster, the non-

150 diegetic score builds to a crescendo, and the two sides meet in brutal hand-to-hand combat in the Japanese compound.

As in the earlier battle sequence the film shifts among a variety of characters here: Welsh, Bell, Witt, and others. It is apparent after just a few moments that the

Americans are going to rout the Japanese, and the depiction of the defeated enemy is similar to that of the prisoners taken at the machine gun bunker. Some are barely clothed, others naked. Some appear half crazed while others sit cross-legged, praying and ignoring the battle altogether. The Americans begin taking prisoners, some shooting at still-armed or even unarmed Japanese. Through the noise of the battle, through the musical score, we hear a voice ask, '"This great evil, where's it come from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us oflight and life?" It is Witt's voice, and it carries across the death and destruction we are witnessing.

Some of the Americans are not depicted in a flattering light. Some push down or shoot at the half-crazed Japanese. One soldier lays down beside a dying Japanese soldier, a pair of pliers in his hand and a bag of gold teeth in the other. He tells the dying man, "See them birds up there? They're going to eat you raw." The man spits something back to him in Japanese, whether a plea or a curse or something else we do not know because his words are not translated. The Japanese are given a voice, but it is minimaL The American continues talking. "What are you to me? Nothing." Shots of dying, screaming, crying Japanese are crosscut with reaction shots of Bell and

Witt. The battle seems anything but glorious.

Leo Cawley asks, "Is there any Hollywood film scene where enemy troops are shown assisting their own wounded?" (70). The answer might be The Thin Red Line.

151 In the aftermath of the battle, as the Americans survey the scene and take prisoners, the scene shifts to a Japanese soldier holding the head of another solider in his lap.

The second soldier is dead or dying, and the fust cries and looks upward, as if for an answer. It is truly a shot seen in few, if any, American World War Two films.

The camera cuts to Tall and Staros, and Tall tells the captain he is relieving him of his command, that he is not tough enough. Tall does not believe Staros can stomach seeing any of his men killed in combat, to which Staros replies, "'Have you ever had a man die in your arms, sir?" Tall's response is a disgruntled look. He tells the captain, ""Nature's cruel, Staros."

Staros tells his junior officers, ""You've been like my sons. You are my sons.

My dear sons. You live inside me now." The scene is handled in an interesting way. It begins with Staros talking to his men, then cuts to a plane, the one presumably taking

Staros offGuadalcanal. The dialogue continues, but the last sentence seems more like a voice-over, like a piece of the captain's inner thoughts, than anything he might say to his men. Here the film blurs the line between talking and thinking. We are not sure which is which.

According to Yvonne Tasker this sequence seems to reinforce the need to

''emphasise the need to situate an analysis within the diversity of images of masculine identity" (Tasker 121). Staros acts as a fatherto his sons in Charlie Company, yet to

Tall he is simply not masculine enough to lead men into combat. For Tall this masculine seems to mean the ability to order men to their deaths, to sacrifice for the greater good, although for Tall this also seems correlated to his own personal ambition of being promoted. Tall, however, through his voice-over, seems to question

152 his own masculinity, specifically because of the fact he has been passed over for promotion. As in Saving Private Ryan, there are gradations of masculinity at work here, but here they seem somewhat different. In The Thin Red Line, Tall, outwardly masculine, is shown through voice-over to question this, and Staros certainly seems to come off as the more sympathetic of the two characters, although the captain is shipped out of Guadalcanal and relieved of his command. In this respect, the film does seem to support Tall's beliefs about masculinity being correlated to the ability to send men to their deaths. Tall, after all, stays on Guadalcanal to command while

Staros does not.

The men are given a week's Rand R, and the film covers many different characters during this sequence. The image shifts to the soldier who held the pliers in the earlier scene. Sitting in the rain alone, he begins crying and throws his bag of teeth away. An unidentified soldier tells Welsh, ""It's a matter ofluck if you get killed.

Doesn't matter who you are." Perhaps this would explain the hasty death of Sergeant

Keck (Woody Harrelson). Even big-named stars can die easily. As I mentioned it also ties into the art cinema notion of chance events and randomness. Anything can happen to any of the characters at any given moment. Moreover, this defies not only basic generic conventions of war films but also basic business practice when dealing with big stars by putting the more well-known actors in small roles to be killed off or in cameos.

Bell receives a letter from his wife, and in it she asks him for a divorce, telling him she grew lonely and met someone else. The scene cuts to a shot of an empty bed.

Is it Bell's vision or simply a glimpse of how his bedroom looks at the present

153 moment? Perhaps it is another attempt by the film to de-individuate the characters. It could be the bedroom of any of the men in the company. There is no real answer, yet the vision Bell lived inside during the war, the vision he was fighting to get home to,

is shattered. Bell's wife, perhaps, comes off negatively in this sequence, abandoning the man who fights to get home to her. What is Bell to fight for now?

According to Kane, omens have a limited role in war films. Their options are to stay and tend the home (Private Ryan's mother) or take war work (the women

filling out the death notifications in Saving Private Ryan), and those who do stay home are certainly capable of finding romance with another man (18). This is the role

Bell's wife has taken. Witt attempts to make friends with some of the natives on the

island, but unlike the Pacific Islanders from the beginning of the film, they want

nothing to do with him. They ignore him or move away from him as one would move

away from a snake. He is clearly the outsider and not welcomed. We hear yet another

voice-over from Witt: "'We were a family ... had to break up and come apart." Who is

Witt speaking of? His relationship to the other soldiers? To the natives? Or to

everyone?

The sequence then shows a group of Americans frolicking in the ocean waters

during their week ofR and R, but then jarringly and directly cuts to Charlie Company

scouting a river in the jungle. The men are literally on rest detail one minute and in

action the next. There is no real narrative connection between the two sequences, and

Malick cuts out the long periods of waiting before a battle that characterized the

earlier parts of the film.

154 Witt volunteers to lead two other soldiers on a scouting mission down the river. They find a battalion of Japanese troops but are spotted as they make their way back to the others. One of the soldiers is wounded. Witt tells the other to go on ahead, that he will stay behind and hold off the Japanese. The scene cuts back and forth between Witt's certainty and the other soldier's apprehension, but the other American does as Witt asks. Witt tells his wounded comrade to float down the river. He glances up at a group of bats hanging upside-down, eyeing him from above. He then intentionally leads the Japanese away from the others. They catch and surround him in a clearing and one of the Japanese soldiers begins talking. Witt (and most of the audience) does not understand, but the image cuts to a close-up of the American, who glances up at the now visible sky, takes a deep breath, and attempts to bring up his rifle. He is immediately shot dead. Witt gets his wish: to meet death with the same calm he believed his mother was able to muster.

Witt's sacrifice for his comrades fits in to the theme of self-sacrifice in war films, so thoroughly and clearly depicted in Saving Private Ryan. Kane argues that

"'Men are expected to act honorably in this tradition and they always do so, voluntarily" (122). Witt does lead the Japanese off knowing he has a good chance of being killed. He is very much a malcontent through early portions of the film, but his sacrifice comes across as nobly as Miller's in Saving Private Ryan.

The sequence cuts from a falling Witt to an image of sunshine streaming through trees to one of Witt swimming in pristine waters with children, smiling as if he did not have a care in the world. The next image is that of the Americans burying

Witt, although it is not explained exactly how they retrieved his body, and the

155 expected firefight with the Japanese battalion, if there was one, is completely elided.

It is, if anything, an anti-climax and certainly extremely unconventional for the genre.

The ending does not take the shape or form we would expect from a war film.

The soldiers file away from Witt's grave, all except Welsh. Welsh, now standing over the grave, asks, '"Where's your spark now?" He too starts to cry, but again, like Miller, must do it out of sight of the others, alone.

AFTERMATH

For the epilogue, Saving Private Ryan returns to the cemetery in present-day

Normandy. The older man has found the grave he has been looking for: Captain

Miller. We perhaps expected, because ofthe pre-release hype and publicity, that the older man was Captain Miller, but the film waits until the very end, keeping secret who will live and who will sacrifice their life for the others. The older man is, of course, Private Ryan, there to pay his respects and gratitude to Miller and the others for sacrificing their lives for him. In the final moments of the film, Spielberg hammers horne the themes of courage, self-sacrifice, and honor. The older Ryan, standing before the grave of Miller, questions that he has lived a noble enough life and is worthy of Miller's sacrifice. He asks his wife to reassure him that he is a good man. "You are," she replies. Kolker argues that "In a film without women, this sudden need for a woman's validation expresses a basic male insecurity that runs through much of nineties cinema while at the same time it calls for the reconstitution of the domestic scene over everything else" (306). The heroic Ryan, who stood by his

156 "brothers" on the bridge. still needs a woman's reassurance to convince himself.

Here the domestic woman. for whom the war was fought. affirms the rightness of the war and the life lived after it. Satisfied that he has lived a worthy life (he has come home. married. had children. and apparently has enough money to travel to Europe with his family), he salutes Miller's grave.

Spielberg then returns to the opening image of the film: the close-up of the

American flag snapping in the breeze. the sun shining through the stars and stripes.

According to Phil Melling in War and Memory in the Twentieth Centurv, films imbued with ""martial mythology always [justify] their maker and [denigrate] their opponent, promoting the idea of the "right cause"' (255). Again, for Spielberg. this is truly a film about the sacrifice, honor. and courage of a generation, fighting a good and just war under the banner of freedom. The film then fades to black and the credits.

The Thin Red Line does not seek the closure of Saving Private Ryan. Thomas

Doherty argues that, ""The Thin Red Line offers few of the dramatic or cultural satisfactions of Saving Private Ryan" (84). This violates not only the conventions of the war genre, but those of classical Hollywood cinema as well, which demands closure. Instead it seems to follow the precepts of art cinema. in which the narrative threads are not completely tied together by the film's conclusion. In The Thin Red

Line the narrative is not wrapped up. and it is possible that at the end of the film many in the audience might have been expecting the narrative to continue, if for no other

157 reason than the arrival of George Clooney's character, who is apparently the new commander of Charlie Company.

In the fmal few minutes of the film Charlie Company, relieved of front line duty, heads to a transport ship waiting to take them offGuadalcanaL The men silently march through a graveyard, and the camera tracks past the long row of crosses. We begin to hear a voice-over from a character that as of yet has had no internal monologue: Sergeant Welsh. "Everything a lie." Again, there seems to be no justness in any of this madness, and this could certainly be a sentiment from any of the men we have seen in the film.

The scene shifts to the men, on the beach, listening to their new captain

(Clooney). He tells them how he plans to run the company, and repeats the often­ heard family comparison: that he is the father and Welsh is the mother. He is the head and Welsh runs the company. Welsh's voice-over, however, runs along with the

Captain's dialogue and even begins to drown it out, almost as if it is no longer important. Welsh continues: "They just keep coming. Only one thing a man can do.

Find something that's his; make an island for himself." This is an interesting, ambiguous comment by the sergeant because it seems, perhaps, to contradict statements he made earlier about a man himself being nothing. Has something changed his mind? Witt's death, or perhaps the experience ofGuadalcanal? Welsh's voice-over concludes, "If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack." Again, we are unsure about whom he is speaking, although the statement, if Welsh is referring to everyone (or anyone), reinforces a general theme of the film. That everyone is somehow connected. That the war is simply madness.

158 The camera moves across the t'aces of the men as they board the transport ship and prepare to disembark. We see the faces of men who popped up early in the narrative and then simply disappearecl for the length of the film. One soldier (Private

Train) who was nervously talking to Welsh before they landed on Guadalcanal is seen again, telling someone in the same he::sitant voice, "I'm ready to start living it good."

The camera continues to pan across the men's faces, going from Bell to Welsh to several others, some of them minor cbaracters, some we haven't seen before, others only glimpsed for a few moments. The expressions on their faces as the ship moves out onto the water run from resignation to uncertainty to confusion to anger. As the camera pans across their faces a voice-over from the now-dead Private Witt asks,

'"What is that we had together ... the bi"other ... the friend? Darkness and light, strife and love, are they the workings of on~ mind, the features of the same face?'' They are questions left unanswered, but the interpretation, reinforced throughout the film, seems clear.

James Morrison argues in Film Quarterly that, "'Malick may be adapting a straightforward war story [something; I personally disagree with; the Jones novel is not a straightforward story but shifts ~ong a variety of perspectives, much like the film], but he returns to a distinctively- modernist heritage to negotiate the relation between aesthetic distance and emoti~nal engagement" (38). Malick intentionally confounds identification, drops characters in and out of the narrative, and shows us the horror of war through the eyes or many characters, although it is questionable whether, in the conventional sense of identification, we really connect with any of them. This modernist heritage works as the basis of Malick's subversion of the genre

159 and his inclusion of art cinema conventions into his films by distancing us when we

expect involvement and identification.

The epilogue also violates convention and classical Hollywood cinema.

According to Kane, the epilogue of a war film generally summarizes the events of the

film and projects future developments (119). Again, this hardly seems to be the case

here. We have no idea what will happen to the men of Charlie Company, or even

what happened to many of them during the course of the narrative. Some simply

dropped out of it altogether.

William Ferrell argues that many World War Two films share a common

belief in rebirth and restoration after exile and death; good will eventually prevail

(30). This also follows Richard Slatkin's argument in Gunfighter Nation about the

American belief in regeneration through violence. In Saving Private Ryan, this can be

seen in the epilogue, when the older Ryan convinces himself he is indeed worthy of

Miller's sacrifice. There seems to be no such redemption in The Thin Red Line. Ifwe

did not know our history would we even know by watching this film that the

Americans eventually won the war?

Frank Tomasulo argues that World War Two films usually end with powerful

and cathartic conclusions (1999, 154). There is nothing powerful or cathartic about the ending of The Thin Red Line. Here, the war seems far from over. The scene cuts to a long shot of the island, growing smaller in the distance as the ship moves away from it. The film then fades to black.

160 ChapterV Conclusion

Media representations of the past provide a significant source of historical

information (Walkowitz 46). It is through this type of representation that many

audience members garner most of their ideas about the Second World War. This

amalgamation of media-cultural memory is used in turn to connect individuals and

institutions (Evans and Lunn xvii). The ideas of individualism and populism, of

nationhood and patriotism, ofhonor, bravery, and self-sacrifice, ofbrotherhood and

masculinity are all reinforced. War films organize and give meaning to what

otherwise might seem random, chaotic violence and murder (Chambers and Culbert

148). In American mythology, no war is seen as more just and right than the Second

World War. It is often referred to as the Good War. It is often seen with no shades of

gray; everything is in black and white. Spielberg, through storytelling, through the

shocking opening, followed and updated conventions of the large-scale war film.

Moreover, he relied on and tapped into, as he has in earlier films, cultural concerns of

the moment, in this case the desire for a skeptical-free look at heroism and bravery,

unfettered by notions of Vietnam. Malick's film, using and revising some

conventions of the war film but eschewing so many others, left reviewers and many

members ofthe audience wondering what they had just seen and, unable to find a truly appropriate category and, in the case of popular critics, often classified it

alongside Saving Private Ryan, distorting expectations about what viewers would see, both narratively and stylistically. Altman's claim that critics lie at the heart of generic categorization seems validated, that their function is in large part to place films into 161 categories that are easily identifiable to consumers·. As I have contended, Saving

Private Ryan updated the convention of combat violence in the war film, which was

heavily addressed in the media, but for the most part relied heavily on the

conventions of earlier war films. The generic categories that were available to critics

for Malick's film, however, seemed inadequate to properly handle the film. The film

combined aspects of the war genre with notions of art cinema, yet The Thin Red Line

was labeled, for the most part, as a war film, and much less often as an art film.

Again, it was never looked at as both, but simply as one or the other.

It seems that critics often labeled The Thin Red Line in an insufficient or

inadequate way, unsure how to handle the amalgamation of war film and art cinema

conventions. Because of its debut in theatres just several months after Saving Private

Ryan, with a wave of World War Two nostalgia in the popular media, many critics

stacked the merits of one film against the other. While some pointed out the

differences between the two films, most labeled both films squarely in the war genre

category, with some demonizing the film because it failed to produce the generic

expectations that had been set up through the viewing of Saving Private Ryan, as well

as through pre-publicity hype. Saving Private Ryan went on to earn five times what

The Thin Red Line earned in domestic box office receipts. A few critics did argue that

The Thin Red Line was an art film, or at least had conventions of the art film. Yet few

of the popular critics I studied made any attempt to discuss the fact that Terrence

Malick's film was difficult to classify or place in a genre. Most simply attempted to

group it with other war films, which, along with studio publicity, almost certainly led to misguided expectations on the part of spectators, producing disappointed viewers

162 when those expectations were not met. In the opening chapter I asked whether The

Thin Red Line could be considered both a war film and an art film. It seems that for many popular critics it could not.

One of my main questions in this project was how well each film played into what audiences knew and expected from previous generic experience, and if one more neatly fit into the war film category. It seems apparent at this point that Saving

Private Ryan incorporates more traditional aspects of the genre into its narrative, while The Thin Red Line often breaks away from convention.

Both of these films do update or revise the war genre. Saving Private Ryan pushes the boundary of realism in its battle sequences, especially the opening twenty­ minute D-Day invasion sequence,. that heightens not only the gore of mechanized warfare to levels previously unseen in Hollywood films, but also the confusion, chaos, and sounds ofbattle. This sequence received massive amounts of media coverage, and, as I mentioned in Chapter Three, coincides with a technique used in many other Spielberg films: the use of technology or a stunning opening to overwhelm, and in this case shock, the viewer. It is this opening that helps to mask the traditional genre conventions that come one after the other for the next two-and-a­ half hours. In Chapter One I asked what were the conventions of the war genre, which

I answered in Chapter Two: the ethnically-diverse platoon,. the green recruit, the soldiers fighting to get home, and the last stand. These are all elements of Saving

Private Ryan.

One of my main questions was how the genre handled violence, masculinity, and nation. Violence and masculinity are a main focus in Spielberg's film, and it is

163 used as moral tool in the case of Corporal Upham. I mentioned in Chapter Four that

Tania Modleski argues that violence is considered justified by the audience when it is

used as a moral instrument and in the context of a historical backdrop. In Saving

Private Ryan it is used as both, and Upham's final act supports Richard Slotkin's

argument about rebirth and regeneration through violence, that violence is such a key

part of American mythology that it has become a means to achieve adulthood in

America. IfUpham's inability to aid Mellish is his death as both a soldier and a man,

his killing of the German POW is his rebirth as both. The film, with close-ups of

shimmering American flags as bookends, is also suffused with patriotism, that the

Second World War was the Good War.

In another vein the film de-historicizes the war, turning it into a fable about the rescue of one man against the backdrop of a much larger conflict. As I argued in

Chapter Three, Spielberg often over-simplifies complex historical, political, and moral events, something I showed by analyzing both Schindler's List and Amistad as well as Saving Private Ryan. The film almost never puts the war into any larger perspective, focusing instead on a group of very identifiable characters, led by

Captain John Miller, played by one of the most famous actors in the world.

Saving Private Ryan's commercial and critical success helped to revive the

World War Two genre, as well as nostalgia for the war in general. Yet the film also hit on the right moment culturally. With the twentieth century drawing to a close, with the Greatest Generation dying off, with aging Baby Boomers beginning to take notice and pay respect to their parents' generation, Spielberg, once again, tapped into the dominant cultural beliefs of the moment. Spielberg updated the World War Two

164 genre through an updated notion of realism, yet also relied on his ability as a conventional storyteller, and by using these conventions helped revive a genre not just for films but for other media as welL

Rick Altman argues that critics and spectators will often take one version of a genre as representative of the whole (79). Any World War Two film made in the next decade will inevitably be compared to Saving Private Ryan, which, through its form, structure, style, a.'ld content changed audience expectations for this genre. It is

possible that Michael Bay's mega-budget Pearl Harbor, due out later this year, might not have gotten the green light had Saving Private Ryan not enjoyed the massive commercial success it did. Altman believes that genre films share certain characteristics, and in the war genre these will assuredly include realism and violence, which Saving Private Ryan pushed to a new level for the genre. Modleski states that

Spielberg's film is as relevant now as it was when it debuted in theatres ""given the megaprojects dealing with World War II it has spawned (including the soon-to-be­ released film Pearl Harbor) (Bl6)." Future research could examine whether Bay's film continues this level of realism and violence, especially during the film's inevitable climax.

Yet another interesting World War Two project concerns director Quentin

Tarantino, known for his crime films. Tarantino plans on penning and directing a

World War Two film reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen, itself a sort of sub-genre of the

World War Two film. One has to wonder how Tarantino, famous for his blend of hyper-violence and dark comedy, will tackle the conventions ofthe genre. Future research might focus on how these and other films handle the issues of violence,

165 masculinity, nation, and patriotism, reinforcing the belief as the Good War. Future research might also examine how much Saving Private Ryan' s success continues to revive the genre, not just in film but in other media as welL

As for Malick's film, I have argued throughout this paper that The Thin Red

Line was in part a World War Two film that relied on some conventions of the genre.

Yet the ftlm also incorporated aspects of art cinema, producing something difficult for critics to classify not only because of their tendency to oversimplify, but also because the Hollywood apparatus seems so ill-equipped to deal with a film like The

Thin Red Line. For example, I argued that the film completely cuts against expectations in regard to its stars, who received a large porti<>n of the pre-publicity hype but a scant amount of screen time. This problem seems 1o rest squarely with the studio, which, operating within the Hollywood system, did not know how to adequately deal with big-name actors who simply dropped out of the narrative or only appeared in the last few minutes of the film. This studio publicity helped to generate more misdirected expectations among viewers, who in turn did not know what to make ofthe way stars were handled in the film.

The Thin Red Line reworked conventions of the Wofl.d War Two picture, though it had much less effect than Saving Private Ryan because fewer people saw it or, if they did, misclassified it. Its depiction of combat violence as well as its focus on the effects of battle on soldiers revised these conventions. In particular, its depiction of the aftereffects ofbattle, one of the main aspects of the narrative, seems to run counter to Saving Private Ryan, which seemed more concerned with depicting, with as much conventional realism as possible, actual combat situations. Again, I

166 asked in Chapter One how the film handled violence and nationhood. It seems that it

is through its depiction of violence that the issue of nationhood is addressed. Because the film focuses so heavily on the aftereffects ofbattle, and because it breaks convention by not always depicting the Japanese as the shadowy Other, the film

seems much less concerned with the traditional notions of patriotism associated with the genre.

Again, though, its inclusion of art cinema conventions, something I stated in

Chapter Three that Malick did as well in Badlands and Days ofHeaven, made it much more than a war film. A question I posed in the opening chapter was whether an examination of the characters in Badlands and Days ofHeaven would allow for a

more discemable understanding of how the characters were employed in The Thin

Red Line. By examining all three films I believe I have shown that Malick's characters are archetypes, often representing more than themselves. As I argued in

Chapter Four, the soldiers of Charlie Company come to represent the collective consciousness of a single soldier.

Malick also relies on conventions of art cinema I mentioned in Chapter Two: the use of chance in the narrative, the lack of closure, the episodic nature of the narrative, characters who drop in and out of the story, and the melding of characters'

personalities. This would make any generic categorization insufficient. I asked in

Chapter One whether art cinema should be considered an anti-genre or simply another set of conventions. It seems that the use of these conventions can cover a wide variety of films, and seems in effect to transcend genre, rendering the film difficult or

167 impossible to classify in any traditional generic sense. In this case perhaps the art cinema should be considered an anti-genre.

Altman writes that the practice of genre mixing is necessary to the very process whereby genres are created (136). For example, the blending of the musical genre with the comedy genre created the cycle of musical comedies. I am not suggesting that more films like The Thin Red Line would create some new art cinema­ war film hybrid in this country, but instead it should call into question the limiting nature of generic categories and their use by popular critics. For further research, I would suggest a reconsideration of how art cinema affects genres here in this country and vice versa. For example, an interesting project would be to examine the recent success of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is now the most commercially successful foreign film released in this country. The film was often referred to by critics, in part, as art cinema, specifically because it was produced and filmed in a non-English speaking country. A question to ask would be how the label of art cinema affected viewers' willingness to see the film. Critics also labeled it as a martial arts film, a love story, and a fantasy. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was labeled as all ofthese by the popular press, drawing in a wide variety of viewers who accounted for its commercial success. Further research dealing with genre, art cinema, and reception could examine how the press and audiences were seemingly able to handle a film with such diverse film conventions and traditions, and how this ability by the press to deal with the film led to its commercial success.

The Thin Red Line, mostly categorized as a war film and to a lesser extent as an art film, reworked conventions of the war genre, but was mostly ignored by the

168 movie-going public after the commercial success of the much more conventional

Saving Private Ryan. Despite frequent articles in the media that Spielberg's film had revived the genre, it seems that Malick's film deviated too far from generic expectation and convention for many film-goers after Saving Private Ryan's more traditional updating of the genre.

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