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Spiritual anti-war masterpiece

‘The Thin Red Line’

Published : Thursday, 29 December, 2016 at 12:00 AM  Count : 484
Shariful Islam
To understand the movie, we need to understand the meaning of spirituality. What kind of image pops in your head when you hear the word 'spiritual'? Most probably of a middle aged or an old person meditating, or the face of an old monk or an overly pious man. But the remarkable thing is that there is not much relation of these with being spiritual.
If you want you can be spiritual even sitting at the busiest corporate office desk, you necessarily you have to sit and meditate for it.
'The Thin Red Line' (1998) is an anti-war masterpiece which portrays tormenting situation of World War II, atrocity and meaninglessness with touch of spirituality. The story of the movie is called Battle of Mount Austen's fictionalized version. Terrence Malick, the director of the movie had taken 20 years long break before making the movie.
However, he casted famous stars in this movie as Nick Nolte, Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Jared Leto, John Reilly and John Travolta. But the interesting fact is that the Director did not give 'special care' to anyone in this movie as it portrayed the spiritual 'we are one' theory. Hence, you won't find a central character in this movie. And that is the real beauty of this movie.
Some have got annoyed as they didn't find any certain character development in the movie and given the reaction in IMDb. Because most viewers like to watch/please themselves with a certain character while watching a film, otherwise they don't find it amusing.
This movie is not made on economical nationalism like most of the war movies represent the war. Rather it tried hard to remove the thin nationalism part.
Same say, the year this movie was released, 'Saving Private Ryan' was released too, and this was under appreciated because of the huge fame of 'Saving Private Ryan'.
This might be true, though there is no comparison of this movie with the other one.
On the basis of the setting of the movie, subject matter and plot, this run time is the 'perfect length' run time 2:50 hours is perfect.
Its voice over narrative captivates any movie enthusiast's heart. The probability of it being a not so easy to watch war movie is too high as the narrative structure of this movie is a bit complex.
In the opening of the movie, we see the US army escapee Private Wick is living happily with his unit in the south pacific island in 1942. But his Commander Sergeant Welsh finds him and takes him to war from that peaceful island. The war is against the Japanese army.
In the story, the different fates of the soldiers, their responses to the war, their emotions and horrible life or death situation is seen. Here is the difference of this with other war movies. In other war movies, the soldiers go to war driven by 'Patriotism'. They have full enthusiasm in the beginning. But at the time of the war all get tired and done. When there is only the smell of blood around, everything becomes foggy. The soldiers then feel, "Why are they in this war? Why are they killing? Who are their enemies? Are they really their enemies? Is there really any difference?" This is shown strongly in this movie.
The most touchy and important voice over in the movie --- "Where is it, when we all were together? Who are you, with whom I stayed? Brother. Friend. Darkness. Light. Anger and love. Has all these originated from one place? Are these different parts of the same face? Oh, my soul! Let me merge in you. Look into the world through my eyes. See how everything is sparkling."
Thus, leaving a strong epiphany or a valid question in the mind of the audience the movie ends.





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