The Thin Red Line: War Told Through Poetry

Malick’s reclusive artistry has once again proven to be fruitful. After twenty years of absence from the film industry, he resurfaced in 1998 with a war epic told through beautiful cinematography, lyrical narrations, and remarkable, affecting characters. 

The Thin Red Line is an adaptation of James Jones’ autobiographical novel about the Battle for Guadalcanal during the Second World War. I will not trifle with the infantry numbers and company letters; these are minute details to remember compared to the film’s deep and profound message about the nature of man in the face of war and war itself. 

The film opens with the contemplating voice of Pvt. Witt (James Caviezel) who has gone AWOL from his company and is living with Malenesian natives in the South Pacific. He is in raptures with the simplicity and innocence of their ways and the beauty of the trees and the ocean that make up their community. This is to the degree that when he is finally found out and brought back into his company, he makes it a point to show his immediate commanding officer Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn) his displeasure, going as far as telling him “I am twice the man that you are.” At this point, we get an understanding of Sean Penn’s patient character, who doesn’t react but seems to silently—maybe even melancholically—agree. A good deal of the film’s metaphysical strain is carried out by the profound exchanges between Pvt. Witt and Sgt. Welsh: Witt believes in hope and beauty beyond the present while Welsh is your “there ain’t no world but this one” type of cynic.

But Malick’s philosophical vision doesn’t so much intend on elucidating the existence of an afterlife, but more on painting the face of war—a face hideously twisted, barbaric, and sad. He does this with a poetry so fluid and honest that you can’t quite help but attach yourself to the characters: weeping with them at the loss of their friends, cursing at the mad thoughtlessness of their superiors, rooting for them even as you know that the other side deserves as much to come out the skirmishes alive.

This I want to highlight because it is so telling about the pointlessness of war. At first Malick hides the Japanese soldiers from our view; he only gives us the perspective of the American soldiers: how scared, desperate, thirsty they are. We see them get killed brutally as they approach the Japanese line, one by one they fall dead and bid their surviving mates to “please write my mother.” We form sympathies for the wasted American soldiers and aversion to the cold-blooded brutality of the Japanese. As the troops get closer to the Japanese-invaded hill, we also get more shots of Japanese soldiers. When the Americans finally breach the Japanese defense and topple them over with a decisive victory, Malick also blows us over with a dramatic, gut-wrenching scene: the Japanese soldiers are shaking and crying. They are just as afraid, just as desperate, just as thirsty. 

This is where the question presents itself. Why? 

This great evil, where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine?

Malick doesn't give us the answer but encourages us to ask. He doesn't overtly preach to stop having wars either but instead approaches it as a given. War is real and it is ugly, but what does it mean if it means anything at all? Who issues the orders to send men to their deaths and what gives them the right? What good comes out of this sacrifice? Peace? Freedom?  The paradox is almost laughable.

Maybe I haven't read enough books to make philosophical claims on the nature of violence, but I understand that it all boils down to love. If men only understood love, the Source of it, would there be a need to covet power? To usurp territories and oppress people?

There is a point in the film where Pvt. Witt says something very striking to me:

Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man.

And Genesis 1: 27 comes to mind:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them . . .

If only men took time to understand the great love behind this gesture of God to make us using His own image, His face, it would've been enough to just look at another person and see all the beauty and goodness and hope that this world holds. It would've been enough just to love. There would be no need for more lands, more influence, more wars. 

Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.

But God did not stop at creating us in His own image. When the world forgot what love was, He came down to be Love Himself in Christ incarnate. Christ taught us how to love again, to look at each other with a gaze that shakes us to our core. Christ has bought us freedom and peace with His passion and thus rendered all violence useless. And even now that people are still fighting and killing each other, "no war can put it out." We have been set free. We already have peace. The problem is we don't know where to look for it. 

Nevermind that I'm shamelessly proselytizing. Whether or not you believe as I do, The Thin Red Line gives you a sense of a mystery, a Mystery that works behind the flight of birds, the silence of the ocean, the humble whisper of trees, the smile of a beloved, the dear company of friends—even as death, fear, and pain hang like a dark tinge in the background. 

Malick might have sacrificed the general audience in favor of a thoughtful narrative, but I feel like he has made the right decision with this film. Fluctuating from one character perspective to the next through narrations that never fall short of poetry, he shows us that humans in the face of war are not bullets that can be disposed of at the drop of a word. Each one of them have homes they long to go back to, families they missed, internal fears they struggle to overcome. Toward the conclusion of the film, it didn't even matter anymore which side won, the audience is made to feel that both sides lost. And yet! There is hope!

Sgt. Welsh: You still believe in that beautiful light, are ya? How do you do that? You're a magician to me.

Pvt. Witt: I still see a spark in you.

Perhaps in the end, whether set in war or in a less violent circumstance, we are just looking for a way to remember where we came from, to find meaning toward which we can drive our lives. And all this is a mystery. All this is the Mystery.

You're the death that captures all. You too are the source of all that's going to be born.