Life and death become almost trivial matters in a war. Corpses, injuries, disease, burials, recommendation letters, survival, the ones waiting back home, yes, it’s been portrayed countlessly, but what is the meaning of all this in the context of a such a struggle? When soldiers are caught between living and dying in the midst of combat and decay, what is all the soul-searching for? Is there something more than this, this bloodshed and dirt? Where is the line between what’s earthly and transcendental?
If those questions sound familiar, that’s because they’re modeled after the metaphysical musings found in the brilliant voiceover narration of thegreat ’90s war filmThe Thin Red Line. Those are also some of the central questions throughoutTerrence Malick’s filmography, one concerned with the human soul’s purpose on earth as well as the natural world that binds existence together, and how the beauty of nature is almost spiritual, forging a path to something beyond the material world.
The Thin Red Line Brings Back Malick with a Massive Cast
The Thin Red Linemarked the auteur’s return to the world stage after a two-decade-long absence following his ’70s masterpiecesDays of HeavenandBadlands. When he returned, everyone in Hollywood seemed to want to work with him. So when he took the 1962 novel by James Jones to the screen, a star-studded cast joined him — George Clooney, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, John Travolta, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, John C. Reilly, and so many more. However, Malick couldn’t care less about star power; most of these actors saw their roles cut to basically cameos. This would happen in the following films directed by Malick, whose notorious editing process ends up delivering very different films to the ones originally scripted.
InThe Thin Red Line, Malick’s profound voice as delves into the subject of the battle of Guadalcanal, an essential battle for the control of the south pacificin World War Two. He does so in a way no other filmmaker ever has witha war picture, creating a poetic passage of life, finding transcendental beauty and knowledge, and yet all side by side with the horror and struggle forged in war.
Nature, the World, and What’s Beyond
The first shots of the film show a crocodile (an almost unchanged species for thousands of years) and the deep forest of the Solomon Islands, where both animals and nature precede the presence of humanity. They are as important toThe Thin Red Lineas the humans partaking in the war that’s to fall upon this natural paradise. Nature here is no neutral force, as if suffers the destruction and death that come with the arrival of the belligerents; it also covers, traps, and affects its human inhabitants both physically and psychologically.
As Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall (as brilliantlyplayed by Nick Noltein one of his best performances) would put it, “nature is cruel." Nature devours itself, the trees all fighting for sunlight, the animals looking out for their survival. Like human nature itself, it may be beautiful, but it sure is filled with savagery and struggle.
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Malick intentionally uses the natural world as an allegory for not only existence in general but the ways of the human heart, especially in a context of struggle. The fight, the desperation, the need for a meaning to survival and life, all of this is found in the world that surrounds the soldiers in the film. It’s a world in which grass, trees, and foliage twist and turn as history is written on top of them, becoming witnesses of the passage of time, and blending themselves into it.
Nature Is the Point in The Thin Red Line
Probably the most recognizable metaphor set by nature in all of Malick’s films is in the form of dichotomies. Whether it’s represented by fire and water, horror and beauty, nature and grace, or the visible versus non-visible, the balance, relationship, and mutuality of what’s earthly and what’s celestial, is at the core of the moral, spiritual, personal and holistic conflict of his entire work. Whether it’s the father and mother inThe Tree of Lifeor the man and woman inBadlands, there is frequently a dialectical clash between two things, usually nature and man, beauty and cruelty, or innocence and corruption.
One of themost iconic deaths scenesinThe Thin Red Lineis followed by a shot of the treetops and the light coming through them, as the sound of a gunshot is swallowed by waves crashing down. Almost as to say that both life and death, horror and beauty are one and the same, two sides of a coin, an ever-existing duality which the human soul must learn to make peace with, as wherever there might be joy there will forever be tragedy, soon to follow. Nature then not only is a conceptual passageway to the ethereal and holy, but a physical dimension in which a game of domination takes place and this brings upon the horrors that the soldiers face.
Terrence Malick Films Faces as Souls
There is something inThe Thin Red Linebeyond what is usually seen in the faces of actors playing soldiers at war. It’s something that goes beyond the numbness or pain in reaction to the abominable sights of the battlefield. It’s something beyond what’s palpable to the eye, something that is being brought out of the very bottom of their souls and into the world through their sight.
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The film’s first scenes, featuring Jim Caviezel as Private Witt, begin the questioning about death and what’s beyond it. As mentioned before, the ever-present matter of life and death in war films is her explored in deeper philosophical terms, interrogating what gives meaning to both of them. Throughout the movie, the characters engage in inner monologues which intertwine anger, frustration, fear, desire, and most of all, doubt. It’s the kind of doubt over what’s to come of their lives, the purpose of war, what gives sense to their sacrifice in this battle of gigantic proportions, and what the value of their actions might be in the face of eternity.
Voiceover in The Thin Red Line
Here themasterful voiceover narrationof Malick’s style works as a subjective vehicle for the inner mechanics of each character trying to find individual meaning, but never as a strictly narrative form. The magic of these voiceovers transcend mere plot dynamics, as all of these narrations work together a collective cry to the whatever is beyond the physical world for answers to their current predicaments. This element makes the film, despite being an obviously linear story, feel more like a poetic examination on the human soul at the verge of decay rather than an account of a battle.
Through this alchemy of ideas and landscapes,The Thin Red Linestands alone among war films as one filled with poetry and magic. The simplicity of its delivery marks its complexity — there are noCGI special effectsto bring these ideas to life, only the cinematography and how it captures the expression of its characters, their inner dilemmas, and the environment that surrounds them. These are the expressions of the human soul looking for purpose through the madness of war.
While at times it may feel as though there is a main character, the truth is that there is no central protagonist inThe Thin Red Line, in war, or in nature and life itself. All the souls presented here share the load of existence; while they all have different ideas, questions, or goals, they are all in the same boat, as in the beginning and end of the film — floating, moving, changing, and learning.
