FFWD Weekly
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| Film by Cynthia Amsden The Thin Red Line It was the Bethlehem of a new evil – Guadalcanal: the thin red line which separated man from animal, the sane from the insane. The novel The Thin Red Line by James Jones (The Longest Day, From Here to Eternity) was first made into a film in 1964, then moved into the hands of legendary but elusive director Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, Badlands) for a late ‘90s update. The intensities of the story have blended with the eccentricities of the director to produce what is, on sight, a modern classic. The story follows the men in rifle company C during the American campaign on Guadalcanal Island in the Pacific Ocean during World War II: Witt (Jim Caviezel), the pacifist whose ideals are overwhelmed by the deeper need of his fellow soldiers; First Sergeant Walsh (Sean Penn), the efficient soldier who is motivated by cynicism; Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), the moral conscience of the company; Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), the aging career soldier who believes this battle will be his breakthrough event, even if the price tag is a high body count. There are more characters, of course, because the nature of war is many men doing terrible things for an honorable reason. From the smaller name actors (Ben Chaplin, Adrien Brody, Larry Romano) to the major names salted all the way through the film (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack and George Clooney) and even those left on the cutting room floor (Bill Pullman and Gary Oldman), The Thin Red Line is an epic who’s who of contemporary actors. But one role, that of Staros, played by Elias Koteas (Apt Pupil, Crash, Exotica, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) is an unexpected treasure. Koteas, himself, is a gold mine. Born in Montreal, he was raised in Canada and left for the States in the early 1980s to study acting. He is quiet, like Sean Penn, and he carries with him a Force 10 intensity to match any performance of Penn’s. And then there is his face. He looks like Robert De Niro, almost more De Niro than De Niro. It is positively unnerving in person. This is Los Angeles and Koteas is in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. His voice, unlike what we hear in the film, is almost a whisper. There is, in retrospect, absolutely no recollection of what he was wearing because his eyes are magnetic. He curls around himself when he speaks. His hands gesticulate constantly. Then, like a pop-up toy, he straightens up and makes a point. It is impossible not to move in harmony with him as he talks. But the De Niro factor is in his eyes. He has the "squint." "I’ve been lucky," Koteas whispers about the star route which he does not travel. "I don’t want to ever be the guy who can’t move around. "I can’t relate to that. I have be one of the players, part of a director’s vision. That way I can bring out the strengths." Part of a vision? This ex-pat Canadian actor can translate Cronenberg into normal humanity! He played Vaughan, the crazed lead in Crash, and that was the weirdest role on the block next to Hannibal the Cannibal. But at the same time, Koteas has a sensitivity which is unlike any other actor. That fact was underlined earlier in the day when I asked him – in front of a group of journalists – what I thought was a reasonably simple question: What was his hardest scene in The Thin Red Line? He began to explain about having to deal with a fallen soldier who was dying out in the open, screaming so that Koteas’s character was worried for the morale of the rest of the men. As Koteas described this scene – which was shot almost two years before – his eyes became glassy and, silently, tears began to stream down his cheeks. He put his hand to his face and said quietly, "This isn’t supposed to happen." Admittedly, Koteas is not a known commodity – until you have seen him and then he is indelible. The reason is his motivation for choosing the parts he does. "I’m looking for things – since this movie – that scare me so much. It’s the only way I can get off. I don’t like being scared, but in some way, the anxiety, the fear, the wanting – all those work as electricity. That’s the only way I can use it, otherwise it becomes debilitating." Then what is his enemy, if not fear? "Me," he says. "My voice. The voices. Every day on The Thin Red Line, I’d wake up an hour before my call and it would start. Voices telling I’m the worst thing in this movie. ‘Guys,’ I’d say to the voices, ‘can you keep quiet, I don’t have to get up for another hour.’" |
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