The Thin Red Line - Who are you?

I was walking through Walmart the other day and decided to scan the bargain bin DVD stack. It was, as usual, full of junk. But then I saw a copy of The Thin Red line, one of legendary filmmaker Terrence Malik's few projects. I had seen the movie a few years ago, and I was surprised to find such quality work in the bargain bin. I snatched it up for a mere $5! Those of you that haven't seen it really should. The film is, to put is mildly, unconventional. It is more poetry than narrative, more photographic artistry than film making, more philosophical essay than war movie. Its aspirations are high -- to be the Homer of the modern age. And it almost succeeds.

The film often uses the seldom used voice-over technique. The soldiers in the film reflect on what's going on in the battle (and in their own lives) mainly through a quiet voice-over. Their speech retains the ungrammatical cadences of rural America. But at the same time, their rough drawls are transformed into metaphysical poetry. At times, it is even difficult to know who is speaking -- the confusing mixing of the voices suggests, perhaps, our deeper connection to each other. The clip above is an example of the film's visual and literary artistry.

The film is about many things. It asks how conflict arises in the human heart. It ponders the many ways in which this conflict is manifest. Is seems to ask: How can a world that contains both love and beauty also contain such terrible cruelty and destruction. The film is even more amazed, it seems, at the mixtures of love and conflict, destruction and beauty, that reside in the same moment. Think of a predator taking down his prey.

Some key quotes:

What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?
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This great evil,where does it come from? How did it steal into the world? What root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who killing us? Robbing us of life and light? Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known?
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I remember my mother when she was dying. Looked all shrunk up and grey. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothing beautiful or up lifting about her going back to God. I heard people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be when I died. What it'd be like to know that this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw. I just hope I can meet it the same way she did. With the same...calm.

The film ends without any strong answer to the perplexities of human conflict. There is a suggestion that love and conflict, beauty and destruction, are both part of one big whole (e.g., it suggests an "opposition in all things" that creates the multi-textured reality we know, love, and hate). There is also a suggestion that peace can be found in reflective pauses, and in such pauses, one can find courage to face such a difficult and beautiful oppositional world. When we stop to think, to be calm, to reflect, we recognize our ties to the world and to those around us. We realize our connection to those we fight with, those we love, and those we love whom we fight with.