BEFORE: My war education continues, tonight it's a chance to research the Battle of Guadalcanal, which I'll do via Wikipedia after the film. Linking from "U-571", the easiest way to go is via Harvey Keitel, through "Pulp Fiction" to John Travolta (last heard in "Bolt")
THE PLOT: Terrence Malick's adaptation of James Jones' autobiographical 1962 novel, focusing on the conflict at Guadalcanal during the second World War.
AFTER: Once again, something similar has unintentionally popped up, three films in a row. In "Red Tails", "U-571" and this film, someone violates the chain of command - in some way, they question the orders of their superior officers. The circumstances were different each time, but it seems to be a common enough movie plot point.
In this film, a Captain is ordered to send his men charging up a hill, where they're expected to take heavy fire from the enemy. The Captain refuses, because he believes that a small patrol can flank the hill and learn valuable information, but the Lt. Col. demands that he follow orders, no doubt sacrificing many of his men. This seems rather heartless, but essentially it's the situation one might encounter in a factory, or movie studio, or any workplace - if someone doesn't do things the way the boss wants, then their days are numbered, one way or the other. The boss will find a way to replace them with someone who will do things his way.
The Captain turns out to be correct in the short term (I think), about the best way to take the hill, but the Lt. Col. is correct in the long term - that taking the hill quickly is important to taking the island, and that taking Guadalcanal back from the Japanese could turn out to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific. The real campaign constituted the first U.S. amphibious landing of the war, and took 6 months in late 1942 before Japan evacuated the island in early 1943.
But some odd choices were made here - the camera, and by extension the director, chooses to linger on images of the local wildlife, like birds or a lizard - they remind me of the cutaway shots on the TV show "Survivor", where they'll show a snake just after a shot of people plotting to vote someone out. Most memorable is a shot of a baby bird on the ground, struggling just to move, while all around it are U.S. soldiers being blown to bits. Are we supposed to draw an analogy between the fragile bird and the wounded soldiers?
But sometimes this also lends itself to strange character actions, like a soldier being fascinated with the way that water drips down a leaf, or the majesty of a handful of soil, which seems like an odd thing to be obsessed with in the middle of a battle. Again, I have no practical experience, but I would imagine that in the heat of battle, more soldiers would be focused on staying alive.
In fact a lot of the battle scenes are chaotic, but that sort of rings true - wouldn't you imagine a battlefield to be a chaotic place? But they could be hard for the audience to follow. Perhaps there's a larger point being made, about how THIS guy gets blown up and THAT guy doesn't, purely based on where they're standing at a particular point in time.
Then, we've got the interior monologues, which clearly demonstrate an attempt to get inside the headspace of WWII soldiers. Flashbacks of home life are shown, at least for one soldier, and others contemplate the meaning of it all, to the degree that one can assign meaning to the devastation of battle. Where does evil come from? Who is killing us? What is the nature of love? Some of it is pretty heady stuff, but again, I wonder if the concerns of the moment just didn't allow for such introspection.
One soldier in particular develops sort of a zen way of looking at death, and he appears to be fascinated by and learning from each death that he sees. He starts to draw conclusions about how everyone is connected, how all men are part of the same being, just wearing different faces, and he seems to find some form of peace in the middle of a war. Is this true insight to the human condition, or just a coping mechanism? And how does it affect his actions later in the film, when he's in a position to possibly sacrifice himself?
Ultimately that's what this film is about, sacrifice, and though it's hardly a perfect film, it's a perfect message for Veteran's Day. It's made me more keenly aware that I get to live the life that I do, get up each day and be frustrated by my own job, because some men went charging up a hill somewhere and gave their lives.
Also starring Jim Caviezel (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Sean Penn (last seen in "U-Turn"), Nick Nolte (ditto), Elias Koteas (last seen in "Zodiac"), Ben Chaplin (last seen in "Stage Beauty"), John Cusack (last seen in "The Raven"), Adrien Brody (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Never Been Kissed"), Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Natural Born Killers"), Jared Leto (last seen in "American Psycho"), Nick Stahl (last seen in "Terminator 3"), Dash Mihok, Mirando Otto, Thomas Jane, Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Lincoln"), with a cameo from George Clooney (last seen in "The Descendants").
RATING: 4 out of 10 hand grenades
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