Released in 1999, eclipsed by the success of Spielberg’s Private Ryan, not only at the Oscars but also at the Box Office, “The Red Line” is nevertheless an immense war film signed by a filmmaker returning to the cinema after 20 years of absence .
In 1999, Saving Private Ryan raided the Oscars by winning 5 statuettes, including Best Director for Spielberg. La Ligne rouge, which marks Terrence Malick’s big return to the cinema after 20 years of absence, remains condemned to obscurity, with 7 Oscar nominations, and not a single award that evening.
Not even that of the best photography, to underline the exceptional work of the cinematographer John Toll, who sometimes spent whole hours waiting for the right light. Even its extraordinary casting was missing from the awards, beyond the fact that some of the headliners of Malick’s film, who had nevertheless shot their scenes, were completely overlooked.
A lack of reward that evening, all the more damaging as The Red line is, so to speak, a rather rare example of a war film with a certain philosophical depth, produced in large part by a Major. A real risk, which unfortunately didn’t pay off since the film didn’t even bring in $100 million worldwide, where Spielberg’s film brought in over $480 million. Even its extraordinary cast,
In this sublime poem and reflection on culture and nature which gives and which takes away, on (sur)life and death in the midst of a hostile nature, on thought and language, on humanity and inhumanity , Malick the pantheist plants a fabulous gallery of characters, all of whom end up, in the end, being engulfed by the vengeful forces of Mother Nature.
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“The world and life are one” said the great philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein. An author of whom Malick is a deep admirer, and a thought that the filmmaker marvelously endorses with this film, sublimated by the hypnotic music of Hans Zimmer who signs here perhaps his most beautiful soundtrack.
In the end, we are not too surprised to find that The Red line is also in the personal pantheon of Christopher Nolan, who had mentioned this film at the time of the release of his film Dunkirk. “It’s one of my favorite films, one of the films I admire the most. It hardly influenced Dunkirk, but many of my other films were inspired by it. I think Memento owes him a lot he commented.
“We projected it to ourselves before we did Dunkirk, but the parallel is irrelevant, except in the timelessness of the style, of its very texture. It seems very accessible and contemporary, even as it talks about the Second World War World; we were very keen for this dimension to appear in the texture of the film. But if the two artistic approaches and what they say about the story are close, the parallel ends there”.
The Red line is available on Disney+. If you haven’t seen this extraordinary film before, you know what you have to do!