The Thin Red Line

Terrence Malick, 1998
Firstly, this is the most satisfying Terrence Malick movie in my experience, the one directed with the most assurance. The camera never is flustered; it never gets too close. 'Elegant' isn't really the word, but smooth and calm certainly are. The preffered framing is portraiture, but can be longer than that. Even the war scenes, though much faster cut and indeed going in close, have a certain calmness to them, in the edit as much as the image, that is rare. The moving camera does have this smoothness, the generally tracks. The 2.35:1 format is really terrically used, and entirely necessary. It allows these framings, which are relatively close, to still allow a wider picture, not to throw us too deeply in, to strike us.
They also crucially allow a stylistic feature of this film, the faces without speaking. Often edited from one to one, with a few off-screen voices, and available when two are in the frame, they add to this film's element of quiet, of stillness, along with the obvious psychology and acting ability (not overdone) allowed to be employed.
This film is entirely, seemingly, shot in the golden hour. Along with the magnificent 'scapes and the lush colour contrast (whatever film used), we have a soft feel, a rich and deeply beautiful feel. Malick does not mind allowing this landscape to intrude to the front, or often make up the content of, the frame.
For all the dialogue, which is poetic rather than naturalistic, silence is important here. Silent faces, even when their is a voiceover.
This is a good example of how much well-shot images can make up for the lack of traditional narrative, tension or surprise, in retainging interest. It is a case of an ensemble (not subjectless) cast, a sweeping undertow rathe than an explicit narrative.
As for the content; can one really make a war film? Does this film suffer from a lack of analysis? I'm not too sure this film has a lot to do with war; it nearly seems to have more to do with perception, the peacefulness of it, and the shocks that come to it. This combines with the film's equal nature-worship, and disgust at nature's brutality. This is an example of the film wishing to turn the tables on itself; nature is evil, the Japanese are real people (at times), the wife isn't perfect. I'm not sure this quite overcomes the sentimentality and wide-eyedness of the original set-ups; the 'home-front' parts are frankly ridiculous, even if justified as in the mind of the character. There is not so much an engagement with nature or companionship as a kind of yearning for 'oneness' that is at least self-reflexive, if not moving to much of a reasoned position beyond that.
Malick has well, and as I said assuredly, directed a fine picture. The images are rich, in colour and content (silence, width), the editing smartly and simply running us across the large cast, not snatching at people, letting them be in the background for a while.
Though I am far too underinformed to really comment, one almost wants to draw comparisons with Mizoguchi, even if Malick is obviously more commercial in his tighter framings and so on, and even with Kurosawa (whose 'shock' tendencies always seem to me secondary to the complex, always thoughtful shape of his images). These thoughts will only really be returnable too when I have seen a decent amount of Mizoguchi.
So, Malick is guilty, to a small degree, and with counterexamples and qualifications, to a slight wide-eyedness. This isn't so much a weakness as part of what makes him able to create such fine images, and develop them if never really progress them, otherwise. It would be unfair to say that this is anything less than an excellent work.