2009-03-03 - 11:11 p.m.
[I wasn't kidding about using this space as a film blog, I just haven't had much time to write anything for myself in awhile. If anyone still reads this, since I write in a word processing program and italicize properly and also for emphasis a lot, how can I do it here? It never keeps up with that stuff.]
The Brutality of Combat and the Poetry of War.
The aesthetic elements that make up the war film genre have almost been set in stone for a long time. In 1998 two films were released that added a whole new level of film language to the wartime film. Historically speaking in terms of film, there have been many movies that have done their part of redefining the genre, Apocalypse Now and Casualties of War spring immediately to mind, but in both films the photography of the action is still set in pretty basic and concrete ways. Steven Spielberg with Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malick with The Thin Red Line each went into principal photography of their respective films with very idealistic goals and ambitions and the results lead to two films completely different from one another aesthetically, but both films achieve the same ends.
The Brutality of Combat
With seven-hundred and fifty extras and three cameras, all filming at the same time, Steven Spielberg managed to capture the most visceral and bloody battle sequence ever committed to celluloid. Spielberg may be the most popular filmmaker in America: he practically invented the summer blockbuster season with his film Jaws, revolutionized the use of computer generated special effects in Jurassic Park and managed to create his own conglomerate movie studio in Dreamworks. With Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg set his sights on one of his favorite subjects, World War II, a subject he already tackled in many ways in his Oscar winning film Schindler’s List.
Watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time is an unforgettable experience. Despite being built around an ill-fitting flashback plot device and a third act that is a little too easy in it’s manipulation of audience’s emotions, Spielberg shows that he is a master in the craft of filmmaking. The film utilizes distinct camera movements and frame composition techniques that tap into the subconscious of the audience.
Filmmakers have tackled war as a theme since the beginning of the medium. The issue of how to present a battle in a realistic manner, just as a soldier would experience it, has always been a tricky subject. Spielberg decided to go with a handheld camera, almost a point-of-view shot of a soldier on the battlefield. Forgetting the initial scene that sets up of the flashback, the opening shot of the movie where the soldiers are on the boat sets up the visual themes immediately. Spielberg utilizes a bunch of longer takes to put the viewer amidst the soldiers. When the boat’s gate is opened and the German machineguns begin to fire in on the soldiers, the pace immediately begins to quicken. The camera is still handheld, cutting between close up shots of people being shot and mid-range shots of soldiers being hit by mortars, just like one would see if they were on the beach themselves.
On trying to create what Francois Truffaut calls the “holy moment” in film, Spielberg says:
“Well, I wasn't trying to create a prime for that kind of violent honesty. I was simply trying to show the audience a little bit of what those actual young kids experienced when they hit those beaches 54 years ago, and at the same rime, those kids, aside from basic training, had never before seen combat. Figuring that most of the members of our audience had never seen combat, I thought it was a good way to put the audience in the shoes of every member of that squad, because that sequence would inform every square inch of terrain that they had to navigate to somehow get to Private Ryan.”
It is because of the immediacy handheld shots can create Spielberg was able to accomplish this. When a mortar hits on the beach, the camera shakes in response. Because of the quick cutting between scenes, followed by a longer take as soldiers start up the beach, the audience is able to put together the flow of a single soldier in the middle of a hellish battle. Many times the camera quickly pans to the left or the right, only to show a soldier taking a bullet; then there’s a smash cut to another soldier getting hit. The camera rolls out of a boat and into the water where it bobs up and down just like a man floating would. When it goes underwater, the soundtrack is sufficiently muted, only to rise back up to the sound of tracers and explosions then again underwater.
The actors in this sequence are secondary. With the exception of some close-ups of Tom Hanks’ face, merely used to add more weight to his character later in the movie, all the characters in this sequence are used as body count. There’s the guy searching and then finding his missing arm. A bullet ricochets off a soldier’s helmet and he takes it off to inspect it only to take a bullet in the head. The real star of this sequence is Spielberg’s direction.
The film’s only downside is also its Achilles Heel. The disjointed flashback plot device the film employs exists merely to pull on the heartstrings of the audience in a very easy way. With the grittiness employed in the battle sequences and the aesthetic to match, the cold color palette and Super 16mm like film grain set an uneasy mood. In contrast the present day scenes of the old man at the Omaha cemetery are shot with warm colors, the sunlight beaming down from a clear blue sky onto bright green grass. The dominating feelings at work here are sentimentality and nostalgia. The same goes for the scenes of Private Ryan’s mother, where the mid-west farmland is bathed in gold with a soft filtering effect applied. These moments do more than merely lessen the impact of the masterful battle sequences; they trap the film in the now dated era of the old sentimental wartime movies, like The Longest Day and Sergeant York.
The late Pauline Kael, former film critic of The New Yorker, summed up Saving Private Ryan best in the book Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael. When asked if she had seen the film she answered, “I did. And I was disturbed by the later part, which was so much like the old wartime movies – the sentimental variety. The first part was quite brilliantly effective, but I didn’t think it was a good picture.”
The Poetry of War
Despite making only four feature films in the past thirty years, Terrence Malick has gained the reputation of being a cinema poet. Where most directors would prefer precise pacing and quick cutting to imply violence on the battlefield, Malick uses a steadicam to keep the shots long and flowing, utilizing the quick cuts more as basic film language like the cutting on action rule, best exemplified when Woody Harrelson’s character ends up sitting on a live grenade, than as an aesthetic choice like Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan.
The Thin Red Line stands out from all other wartime movies in many different ways. The narrative is disjointed and no logical timeline is followed. Characters pop up and disappear. Malick employs a voice over narration technique to shift the focus away from the battle sequences and put the audience into the minds of the characters. When one marine manages to shoot a Japanese soldier retreating up a hill, he begins to celebrate, exclaiming, “I got him! I got him! Did anyone see that?” Later on in the movie, when his regiment is moved to the back of the lines for some rest, this same marine is swimming in the ocean, shot mid-range to give him distance. He looks back ashore in a forlorn manner. His voice over picks up here, juxtaposed against a slight melodic soundtrack. Malick cuts to a long tracking shot of the marine getting drunk and celebrating his still being alive while the voice over implies, “War don’t ennoble men. It poisons the soul.”
The film carries a certain amount of ambiguity in both its visual aesthetic and narrative. While Saving Private Ryan is visceral and immediate, The Thin Red Line uses distance to great effect. When the narration picks up, very rarely are the characters saying anything relevant to the battle or war itself. In the middle of an intense sequence Malick will cut to a bird struggling to survive at the base of a tree. He isn’t interested in presenting the viewer with a historically accurate depiction of war, but rather trying to figure out where the notion of war comes from, and how this manmade creation subsists in the moral ambiguity of nature. Maybe both derive from the same idea.
Malick’s camera in the battle sequences is free flowing. Where Spielberg tries to represent the feeling of actually landing on Omaha Beach, shaking the camera when applicable and utilizing quick pans and quick cuts with jarring camera movements, Malick utilizes a steadicam, keeping the longer shots more fluid and allowing the flowing grass and golden hues to take precedence in the frame as opposed to the actors. After the soldiers have made it up the beach in Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg continues to employ the handheld camera, quickly panning to each actor as they speak their dialogue. This is fine because all the characters are based on familiar archetypes. There’s the tough guy from the Bronx, the small nerd who is green in battle, the God-fearing killing machine. The only character with any complexity at all is Tom Hanks. The Thin Red Line is full of characters that seem complex because there’s no real growth to speak of. Things happen to the characters: a man’s wife whom he adores sends him a letter asking for a divorce, a captain refuses to send his men up a hill to their certain death and all the audience gets are fragments of narration that asks more questions than gives definite answers.
Hwanhee Lee illustrates this when he writes:
“In fact, limiting the film's identity to a war picture or an anti-war picture, or understanding the film's point as various declarations (or arguments) about what “war” and “nature” are (and they would translate into utter banalities, or even redundant sentences, in any case, such as “war comes from violent human nature” and “war is a crime against Mother Nature”, and so on) would be confusing the film's aims and the nature of the questions that are asked by the film's characters. Like Wittgenstein, the soldiers in the film ask “where does (something) come from?” not as a demand for a causal explanation (and besides, as the philosopher puts it, explanations come to an end somewhere) but as the expression of a certain craving that the explanation cannot satisfy.”
Again the key word ambiguity comes up. Ambiguity is born out of the distance between the camera and the characters. Malick is more interested in delving into the spatial distance between the characters and their surroundings. The hill they are trying to take becomes the main character in a film filled to the brim with characters who wander in and out of the frame as Malick sees fit. This continues in each films’ pacing in regards to the editing: where Spielberg quick cuts to the soldier picking up his missing arm, towards the end of The Thin Red Line a Japanese soldier is buried under the ground with only half of his face protruding from the earth. Malick holds on this penultimate image long after the realization has dawned on the audience, allowing the metaphor to sink in; the ambiguity of the poetic image haunting an audience wanting a definite answer to a question that can only be answered indirectly.
“War don’t ennoble men. It poisons the soul.”
How exactly does one go about trying to recreate such a scenario as war? Both filmmakers went completely different directions with their films. One is a case study in the brutality of combat, the other an exercise in the poetry of war. In the end, both films are able to capture the same essence of the “why,” the comradeship between soldiers and the essence of what constitutes warfare despite their different aesthetics.
