Popcorn and Purple Stuff: A Journey Through 1990s Cinema, in 25 Films. (Part V)
The final article on this journey through 1990s cinema takes us to the very best the decade has to offer.
Well, here we are: the fifth and final installment in my series on the cinema of the 1990s, attempting to define the style and themes of the decade through a sampling of 25 representative films. This is the end of a long double series, which began in December 2023, examining both the 1980s and 1990s in cinematic terms and here we come to the end of the journey. This article deals with films from the final years of the decade, 1998-99. For Part I (1990-91), go here. Part II (1992-93), here. Part III (1994-95), here. Part IV (1996-97), here. I think you probably know the drill by now, as to what this list is (and what it isn't), but if not, it's described in the first article. Here, now, is the end of the Nineties.
The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick, Director)
The 1990s was a critical time in popular memory of World War II. It’s the decade when the generation of veterans who served became “The Greatest Generation,” lauded in American culture as valorous heroes who fought selflessly to preserve democracy and save us all. As you may recall, I have some major problems with that interpretation. In any event, a significant piece of myth-making that helped cement this vision was Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan, with which Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line is compared, usually unfavorably. The Thin Red Line, however, has aged extremely well; Saving Private Ryan has not. That’s because Malick’s picture has nothing to do with “The Greatest Generation” mythology and has no idea what that’s supposed to mean. As Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn) remarks to his commander after an act of heroism that proves eventually meaningless, “The whole damn thing,” meaning the war, “is about property.”
