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It was one of the very first books I read. One of those short books, in large print, written for nine-to-twelve-year-olds. My main memory is wondering where the canal was. My other memory is wondering exactly where this island is. I still have problems with the latter and changing the names of the island groups hasn’t helped. Attempting to provide an idea of the gut-wrenching experience of infantry combat to a nine-year-old is well nigh impossible. It is also virtually impossible to convey that experience to an adult civilian. But this movie provides an excellent first approximation, without actually being THERE.
James Jones fought on Guadalcanal. “The Thin Red Line” is the middle book in his trilogy on the Second World War. Regrettably, I have read none of his works. In terms of infantry combat in the Pacific theater of the Second World War from the American perspective, I’ve only read Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead.” I’ve been told by a thoughtful reviewer that James Jones is much better. More often than not, I’ve read the book first, then seen the movie. This movie, directed by Terrence Malick, with a true all-star cast, was released in 1998. The movie will lead me to read the book.
The Battle for Guadalcanal took place between August 07, 1942, and February 09, 1943. The island is the principal one in the Solomon Island chain, which is east of and roughly parallel to Papua New Guinea. Thus, it is in the Southern Hemisphere, a long way from Japan. The Japanese had placed an airfield there so that they could bomb Brisbane, Australia. That was the impetus for the battle, to seize the airfield for the Allied Forces.
None of the above, save for the importance of the airfield, is in the movie. Which adds to its authenticity. There is no grand overview, definitely no end date. Mainly there is what we once called jungle before it got upgraded to a rain forest. There is the long voyage on a crowded ship, finally with relief mixed with terrible dread, the climb down the rope ladders into the landing craft. The landing is unopposed! Where are the Japanese? The soldier’s entire world is, at most, a platoon, within a company. Still not a shot fired when two tortured and very dead G.I.s are found. The order is to take some no-name hill. The Japanese announce themselves with pinpoints of light coming from the distant hill, and suddenly a dead buddy. The rush through the vegetation, when one can only see the person in front of you. Death by accident. A grenade pin prematurely pulled, and your vitals are gone. The shame of it all, as one is dying. Another death that will be dressed up as “heroic,” in official reports and letters home to family. No one dies from a stupid accident, though about 20% do.
Another very authentic touch is when Private Bell receives the “Dear Jack” letter from his wife: “I’ve met an Air Force captain, am in love and would like a divorce.”
Eventually the Americans take the hill, sustaining serious casualties, long before medical evacuation by helicopter was possible. It is indeed even grimmer to be wounded back then. When those pinpoints of light become captured Japanese soldiers, the savagery of reprisals for lost buddies cuts loose. What Geneva Convention? My thoughtful reviewer says that it is even more graphic in the book and must have been even more so in actual life. The haunting question resonated: “How did we lose the good that was given to us?”
The fighting on Guadalcanal exceeded, in intensity and savagery, virtually anything American soldiers have experienced in wars after WW II. Nonetheless, there are some common threads. One reviewer scoffed that it really happened: when a Captain disobeys the direct order from a Lt. Colonel and tells him he is disobeying. Nick Nolte played an excellent “mad dog” Lt. Col. screaming over the radio to take the hill by frontal assault (and damn the casualties is under the breath). The captain said NO… I’ll do a flanking maneuver. The captain of our company did EXACTLY the same thing in Vietnam, when ordered to deploy tanks at night, individually, to strongpoints along the road. It truly would have been suicide IF the PAVN had been waiting. And the Captain prevailed… to the lasting gratitude of “the men.”
In the midst of this carnage, Malick again and again shows the incredible beauty of the natural world, another strong point of resonance with me. The cinematography is, literally, breathtaking, even though the word is a cliché. Also, Malick commences with two G.I.s wandering in a native village whose inhabitants maintain life in the midst of the madness of war. The natives are from the same ethnic stock as those who inhabited the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and who did much the same thing, and were a “favorite” of the G.I.s there, the beloved Montagnard.
I’ll close with a true war story whose ultimate truth I will never know. When I returned from Vietnam, I was stationed at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. There were 20-30 of us in similar circumstances: we had all been combat medics, had a short time left in the Army, and did not have a good attitude. The Brass “cut us a deal,” that both sides kept: “Don’t cause trouble and your duties will not be onerous.” But there was one E-7 sergeant who had been in the Army 25-30 years, a serious alcoholic, who liked to give us a hard-time. The E-7 rank was more than a hint of disciplinary problems after that length of service. He called us the array of pejorative terms that implied we were effeminate. Real men like him, he assured us, had fought in the real war. On one island they captured a Japanese hospital and he helped kill every patient. Yeah, probably so much barstool bluster, but it nags that he very will might have, reinforced by “The Thin Red Line.” 5-stars, plus.
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Reviews with images
Thin Red Line
Surprised it was so good. Great cast. Good war movie set in The Pacific.
Top reviews from other countries
jasmin
Eindringlicher und sehr unsentimentaler Anti-Kriegsfilm, der von Gegensätzen lebt...
Reviewed in Germany on December 1, 2020
Beekeeper
Excellent depiction of a classic war novel
Reviewed in Australia on September 12, 2020