La Ligne Rouge (Terrence Malick - 1998)

[Blue]

Autrement dit, Malick n'est ni un cartésien ni un Freudien.

Mais il aime bien filmer les animaux...

C'est donc un zoophilien.

[Brody]

Mais il aime bien filmer les animaux...

C'est donc un zoophilien.

[G.T.O]

Autrement dit, Malick n'est ni un cartésien ni un Freudien.

Mais il aime bien filmer les animaux...

Il aime filmer les animaux comme tu dis car il considère qu'il n y a pas de primauté de l'homme sur les autres êtres !

[tijay]

La ligne rouge est une somptueuse hymne à la beauté naturelle et une dénonciation des horreurs de la guerre, dans un film somptueux de beauté plastique et s'appuyant sur une interprétation sans faille ...
Un des meilleurs films des années 90 ...

[Nestor Almendros]

posté par Memento le 9 février 2004

La ligne rouge : Ce n'est pas un film de guerre, mais un film sur "les hommes en guerre" et surtout un hymne à la vie. La mise en image de Terrence Malick est magistrale et c'est pour moi le gros point fort du film.
Reste quelques points qui m'ont déplu : la voix-off est un peu trop appuyée à mon goût, les réflexions "philosophiques" Rousseauistes un peu mièvres et les flash-back "hollywoodiens"sur le-couple-qui-s'aime-avant-la-guerre un peu conventionnelles et surtout superflues.
De Palma dit de Malick qu'il devrait tourner plus souvent (il fait un film tous les 10 ou 20 ans...) et que ses prérogatives spéciales (il dispose quasiment d'un an du clap de début au clap de fin) ne lui rendent pas service. Je ne suis pas loin de partager son avis. En expurgeant son oeuvre de tout ce côté superfétatoire et introspectif, je pense qu'il aurait facilement gagné une demi-heure (le film dure tout de même 2h45) et que cette condensation aurait bénéficié à la dynamique du film.
Bref, j'ai globalement aimé, mais je reste tout de même sur un sentiment de frustration.
7,5/10

[Beref]

La Ligne Rouge

Faisons simple : La Ligne Rouge est le film le plus impressionnant que j’ai vu depuis Apocalypse Now.

À l’image du chef-d’œuvre de Coppola, le film de Malick transcende le film de genre ; il dépasse les simples caractéristiques du film « de guerre » pour nous livrer une véritable réflexion philosophique sur la Vie, le Bien, le Mal, la Nature, thèmes récurrents qui parsèment l’œuvre du cinéaste. S'il propose bien entendu la représentation de quelques passages typiques du genre (amitié, solidarité, violence, etc.) Malick prend de la hauteur dans son approche (il en cela l’antithèse de Spielberg avec Il faut sauver le Soldat Ryan…), il ne prend pas parti pour l’un ou l’autre camps — ou plutôt il prend le seul parti de cette Nature, de cette colline, lieu quasi-unique de l’action, en se demandant pourquoi elle « rivalise avec elle-même » ?

C’est pourquoi il prend le temps, en en près de trois heures il peut se le permettre, de s’attarder sur les décors paradisiaques du Pacifique, sur les paysages, il accorde de longs plans fixes à la luxuriance de la végétation ou encore à la faune toujours plus foisonnante et exotique. Cette approche entraîne irrémédiablement l’ensevelissement et l’assimilation de l’Homme par cette Nature et permet de rendre compte des conséquences de la barbarie guerrière sur cette dernière ; l’individu disparaît au profit d’une entité plus élevée (nous faisons tous partie d’une même âme, d’un « grand tout ») : de fait, le combat mené n’est plus celui d’une nation contre une autre, mais bien celui que chaque homme vit à l’intérieur de lui : entre volonté de transcendance — symbolisée par Will — et immanence — symbolisé par le Sgt. Welsh — ; le combat devient celui que la Nature se livre à elle-même. Mais surtout, le combat devient celui d'une Nature qui tend à se réconcilier avec elle-même, à se transcender elle-même.

D’un point de vue strictement cinématographique, Terrence Malick fait preuve d’un sens de la mise en scène exceptionnel, entre foisonnement et épuration, ce que l’on pourrait appeler le « paradoxe de la guerre » donne lieu à de véritables splendeurs visuelles, où la pire des boucheries guerrières côtoie les merveilles de la nature, toujours sublimées par une direction photographique étourdissante, l’image est une des plus belles de ces dernières décennies. Dans un même élan de cinéma, c’est tout simplement la Vie, qui ne cesse de s’éteindre et de renaître, qui transparaît à travers l’écran et déborde la pellicule.

On pourrait également parler de l'interprétation, excellente, de chacun des comédiens, ou encore de la musique signée Hans Zimmer qui vient corroborer toute la puissance des images et fait exploser l'âme du spectateur (m'est avis qu'il réalise ici son meilleur travail depuis bien longtemps).

La Ligne Rouge est donc de ces films qui marquent votre vie de cinéphile, durablement, à l’encre indélébile, de ceux qui peuvent potentiellement redéfinir votre rapport au 7ème Art.

Absolument magistral.

Après avoir vu ce film, une conclusion s’impose, à mes yeux, d’elle-même : celle que Terrence Malick est un des cinéastes les plus essentiels à l’heure actuelle — si ce n’est le plus essentiel.

[Carcharias]

Salut !

Je viens de revoir La ligne rouge et deux questions me taraudent, encore, le ciboulot !

- Que signifie : "They got fish that live in trees..." [0:27:58]
- Que dit Staros lorsqu'il raccroche de la communication avec Tall concernant l'ordre refusé [1:06:27]

Merci !

[Bugsy Siegel]

Salut !

Je viens de revoir La ligne rouge et deux questions me taraude, encore, le ciboulot !

- Que signifie : "They got fish that live in trees..." [0:27:58]

Sans avoir vu le film, je suppose que cette réplique fait référence à des poissons tropicaux qui ont effectivement l'habilité de grimper aux arbres.

[Carcharias]

Salut Bugsy,
D'accord, j'ignorais l'existence d'un tel poisson. Quelqu'un connait-il le nom de cet espèce ?

[Carcharias]

Personne n'a d'idée pour ça :

- Que dit Staros lorsqu'il raccroche de la communication avec Tall concernant l'ordre refusé ? [1:06:27]

[7swans]

Quelqu'un a pu voir les scènes coupées du DVD Criterion?
ça donne quoi?

Je viens de tomber la dessus :

Criterion also included fourteen minutes of outtakes, all of which were chosen by Malick. The general tenor of the clips are one with Rourke and Caviezel, one with Matt Doran in a violent encounter with a Japanese soldier, a drunken Mazzi ranting about Lt. Band, another where he and some company members go to confront a drunken Band. There is an outtake between Clooney and Ben Chaplin discussing Bell’s divorce options after he receives his “Dear John” letter. John C. Reilly gets to rant a bit to Caviezel. I think the two best are Coombs and Rourke’s sympathetic sniper being led through the brush by a Melanesian scout. I really wish that one made the final cut, Rourke brings to his performance what he similarly did with Sean Penn’s The Pledge.

En passant, sur le forum MUBI (anciennement The Auteurs), un forumeur (qui écrit un livre sur le film) balance quelques infos intéressantes sur The Thin Red Line (et sa fabrication) :

Spoiler (cliquez pour afficher)

Hi, I am working on a book about TTRL. I have conducted several dozen interviews with actors, associates etc. who worked on or were affiliated with the film. I can give a basic recap based on my research of how this film evolved from 6 hrs to its present and definitive cut.

Malick was contracted to cut a 3 hour film in compliance with the wishes of theaters that needed to make a profit. If he went over a minute, fine, but fifteen minutes, no. The initial assemblage of six hours was back to back footage corresponding with the screenplay, which was considerably long, longer than what it seemed because cleverly Malick adjusted the margins to reduce the page count.

All the scenes in the script were shot, only to have many cut because of Mike Medavoy’s concerns of too many characters weaving in and out of the narrative. There were even more scenes than what the script ascertained as necessary to the story, these were those written my Malick to accommodate actors he knew he wanted in the film for personal reasons. This would be Mickey Rourke, for example, who actually flew to Australia, filmed his scenes and left.

Other actors that Malick wrote scenes for included Gary Oldman, whom was told not to show up after the concern for “too many characters” in the film became the going concern. In the case of Rourke, his crazed sniper character, editors felt, were too similar to the crazed platoon leader played by John Savage. Rourke snapped in the bush, Savage snapped when he lost all his men in one fell swoop. Savage decided to hang out in the bull pen after his scenes were completed to watch Malick direct. He then became part of the notorious “bullpen.” Actors, whether they were on call for that day or not, were told to hang out in full army regalia. Sometimes they worked, other times, no. When Malick felt he needed an actor, he would pull them from the bullpen like paint. Savage’s willingness to be part of that won Malick’s confidence and he made the final cut. Rourke, however, was on Medavoy’s blacklist, so to speak, and he was cut out of deference to Medavoy’s wishes.

Also outside of the script, as an add-on, was the village AWOL segment of the film. Originally, Witt and Hoke were to go AWOL after Witt’s scene with Sean Penn in the brig after Witt had created a stir (shades of John Smith’s mutinous remarks). What is interesting is that in the final cut, neither Witt nor Smith come off as troublemakers, they are more selfless and committed to the cause-type characters. The scenes that were to portray their rebellion were all cut out.

The village scenes were very long and extended, and it was Malick’s wish to keep it in the film as sort of a half and half contrast between this primitive lifestyle and the violence of technology with weapons etc. However, the studio balked, and wanted longer battle scenes instead, and the Melanesian scenes were cut to less than half, moved to the beginning of the film with the brig to follow. If you think about it logically, being AWOL on Japanese occupied islands doesnt make a bit of sense, they would have had to jump overboard and swim there. When the American troops arrive, there has already been some blood shed. The bucolic peaceful interlude would have been impossible, as well as draining all of the tension out of the beach landing. That’s besides the point. Malick doesn’t believe in continuity.

It was after the beach launch, that the two go AWOL are caught thereafter and made stretcher bearers. When Witt wants his rifle back, it is because he left it behind going AWOL.

There was/is also a mother lode of second unit footage Malick had sent cameramen to be filmed in the rain forest of Guadalcanal, where he employed an ethnologist with a cameraman to find and film authentic native footage, as well as the desire of the former to record Melanesian chants. The favorable outcome of all that changed the scope and sequence of the film, Malick began developing his spiritual bent of the film based around the character of Witt and the theme of the “Universal Eye” and the difference one single man can make etc. Circumstantially, the scenes with Adrien Brody were reduced to nil, cameos with Bill Pullman and Lucas Haas were completely eliminated shortly before the final print was cut (they make the CD booklet, that’s how close they were to being in the film). Other stars were kept int he film for contractual purposes, like Clooney whom Malick felt was a mistake because his burgeoning star power distracted from the final thrust of the end of the film (having to use Clooney, Malick felt, was a “Faustian bargain”).

Though Malick will always want more time, the final version is edited to Malick’s specifications. In the midst of going through the footage on the Avid suite, Malick was faced with even more indecision than Days of Heaven, because he could endlessly move footage around, cut here, add there and play around with the score, He also had a bank of freshly-0recorded voiceovers and sound effects. The VOs had nothign to do with the script, they were snatches of poetry, Malick’s original writings as well as ad-libbed material from the actors. Billy Bob Thornton’s work was to narrate huge chunks of the script. However, Malick felt his voice was to closely recognized to his Swingblade character and he didn’t want the distraction to effect his film, so all of it was scrapped. When they say it was 6 hours worth, it was six hours of redoing dialogue, changing the emphasis on certain words, etc. Not 6 hrs start to finish all one take. Instead, Malick had either had actors record material in post, or he used dialogue that was filmed but cut out and instead used the audio from the scrapped footage to paste over a scene (such as one of Fife’s cut scenes: "You seen many dead people? " There no different than dead dogs once you get use to the idear." It was cut from the film, btu the audio was pasted over a completely different scene for effect) Malick, above all, is economical.

Malick’s willingness to experiment on a whim was a HUGE problem for editors during The New World and, I imagine, is now also the reason why Tree had been in post for so long. Malick is leaving no stone unturned in terms of shaping his film.

The Thin Red Line was a giant project, and there was so much footage, that Leslie Woodhead (a hired documentarian whom Malick produced Endurance for in 1999) remembers Malick going through “torrents” of film while he was editing in Hollywood. Malick he complained that he didn’t even get to view all of it (which means there is literally footage in canisters that haven’t been watched yet by anybody accept maybe when they first screened the dailies). Malick never watched dailies with the rest of the production crew with the exception of Sundays when he would do it alone.

To wrap this up, is there a 6 hr/5 hr or even 4 hr film? No. Like Apocalype Now’s famously booted 5 hr workprint, it was assembled rough footage to see what they had, then the hired editors cut it to about 4.5 hrs. before handing it off to Malick who then had to cut out of that his contracted 180 minute cut. The word of the day was "cut characters out and try to stick with plot/sub-plot. Footage shot, for example, in San Pedro between Ben Chaplin and Miranda Otto was probably over an hour’s worth of shots. Tacking even half of that into the film made it unqieldy, so Malick cleverly used snippets of it for flashback sequences which were edited to specific cues composed by Hans Zimmer and his teem at Media Ventures.

When people like Martin Sheen, Viggo Mortensen are thanked, it is because they helped Malick out by acting the script out at Medavoy’s house as Malick recorded it, so he could hear how his script “sounded.” From those early pre-production sessions, Malick shaped his script from immense to less-immense.

When you go to Library of Congress’s copyright center and type in Terrence Malick, you will see some of his screenplays on deposit as “recordings.” These are his scripts read out loud by professional actors. Even Tree of Life is there stored in that capacity.

I have more, a lot more, but I want to save some for the book. I’d be happy to answer what I can though . .

[Pete Dayton]

Quelqu'un a pu voir les scènes coupées du DVD Criterion?
ça donne quoi?

Je ne les ai pas vues, mais elles sont décrites en détail chez The Playlist.

[Flol]

On dirait un mix entre Roy Scheider et Mickey Rourke.

[Grimmy]

Ben en fait c'est juste Mickey Rourke tout seul.

[Flol]

Il était (déjà) méconnaissable.