Malick’s Back

Terrence Malick, one of Hollywood's tightest-lipped directors, is back after a twenty year absence with a flick that's polarised critical opinion.Like Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan Malick's The Thin Red Line takes place during the second world war. The similarity seems to stop there. Whereas Ryan has proved to be a major critical and box office success, and is a sure fire Oscar winner, The Thin Red Line had American critics wandering out of a recent screening with baffled looks on their faces. The decidedly unconventional film has had a remarkable effect as hacks grouped themselves into two rival camps, one gushing praise for a masterpiece and the other screaming 'What a load of pretentious nonsense!" On the enthusiastic side of the road residents are hailing it as a visual masterpiece with stunning cinematography and plot lines so dense only a second viewing will reveal its glory and true meaning. Screaming dissenters are claiming a plot line so disjointed and characterisation so vague that Malick's musings on man's unending capacity for self-destruction will orbit way over most movie goers' heads. The Thin Red Line is the flimsy border between sanity and the other place as suggested by the James Jones novel on which the film is based. Set in the South Pacific the film starts in jungle paradise and moves into hell on earth depicting the capture of a Japanese held hill at Guadalcanal.No stranger to controversy, Malick directed two of the seventies' most influential films Days Of Heaven (1978) and what is hailed as the ultimate road movie Badlands (1973) and then just disappeared from the public spotlight. Now he's resurfaced and sparked a hail of controversy which probably isn't going to do the film's chances of success the slightest harm when it opens Stateside in a month's time.PS Thin Red Line is next month's Empire screening. It's UK release date is March 15. To see it before anyone else, on Sunday February 21st (doors 10am), simply take your February 1999 copy of Empire to one of the Odeon cinemas listed on page 56. The film has yet to be certified so screenings are only open to over 18s.