The Thin Red Line

1998

Director: Terrence Malick

Distributor: Fox Movies

Key Elements: Characters – Lines – Concept

My Review:

This movie is poetry.

Malick’s flow of consciousness storytelling style gives us a glimpse into the broken psyche of men fighting the WWII pacific war.

My favorite character is Whit, the main character. Despite all the darkness surrounding him, he holds onto his belief in a “Great Light” – what I take to be God – and continues to see beauty all around him. It’s this faith that gives him peace when all is lost.

Trailer:



Quotes:

• Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?
• I've lived with these men, sir, for two and a half years and I will not order them all to their deaths.
• We were a family. How'd it break up and come apart, so that now we're turned against each other? Each standing in the other's light. How'd we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What's keepin' us from reaching out, touching the glory?
• I look at that boy dyin', I don't feel nothin'. I don't care about nothin' anymore. - Sounds like bliss.
• Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.
• We. We together. One being. Flow together like water. Till I can't tell you from me. I drink you. Now. Now.
• 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? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?
• Everyone lookin' for salvation by himself. Each like a coal thrown from the fire.
• Everything a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.
• I seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination.
• Do you ever feel lonely?
  - Only around people.
• Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man.
  I remember my mother when she was dyin', looked all shrunk up and gray. 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 nothin' beautiful or uplifting about her goin' back to God. I heard of people talk about immortality, but I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be like when I died, what it'd be like to know 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. 'Cause that's where it's hidden - the immortality I hadn't seen.
• What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?
  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.
• What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.
• How did we loose all the good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered careless.
  Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you. If I go first, I'll wait for you there, on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now.War don't ennoble men. It turns them into dogs... poisons the soul.

Stills: