Similarities Between The Thin Red Line And Apocalypse Now
MED325 – Hollywood Cinema 2, Assignment 1
The Thin Red Line & Apocalypse Now: War, Humanity and Nature on the Silver Screen
Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) are widely regarded as two of the finest films belonging to Hollywood’s War genre. They both deal with similar issues and burning at the heart of each film is the notion that war is a futile practice. However, the two directors approach the subject matter in different ways. Malick with his attempt to understand war in the context of nature and Coppola’s unflinching filmic re-imaging of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Throughout this essay I will aim to compare and contrast the …show more content…
two films and illustrate the differing approaches of each director and the effect this has on the overall feel of each piece as well as discussing some of the aspects of each film that set them apart from the rest of the genre. Before delving into the films themselves however, it is important to contextualise each film in terms of the conflicts represented and also, to recognise a few traits synonymous with each director. The Thin Red Line is based on the Battle of Mount Austin which took place on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. In 1942, American troops fought Japanese forces for control of the strategically placed island, regarded as the key to the South Pacific. The location also lends itself impeccably to Malick’s eye for beauty and detail. Apocalypse Now deals with the 16 year-long Vietnam conflict. The exact year is not explicit, but there are a few hints, such as references to the Charles Manson trial which suggests it is based around 1970, a time when Tricky-Dick Nixon was sitting behind the controls in the White House and support for the Vietnam War was dwindling, a theme apparent in Apocalypse Now. As far as the directors are concerned, there are a few parallels to be drawn. Firstly, they can both be seen to operate in similar ways in relation to the Hollywood studio/ star system. In order to produce Apocalypse Now how he wanted, Coppola set up a production company, American Zoetrope, with George Lucas in 1969. This was primarily a way of avoiding the often conservative restraints of the bigger Hollywood companies, however it also had the knock on effect of alienating any potential funding them and, as such, Apocalypse Now was put on hold. Production was eventually started in 1975, by which time Coppola had 6 academy awards under his belt and no shortage of potential investors vying to throw their cash at him. Similarly, Malick has chosen to disregard the traditional Hollywood star system in The Thin Red Line, with arguably the two biggest stars (at the time of release), George Clooney and John Travolta being seen only briefly onscreen. It also stands to reason that Malick’s largely unexplained 20 year break between Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998) may be due, in part, to a feeling of disenfranchisement with the Hollywood studio system which is prejudiced towards projects which aren’t immediately considered as potentially profitable. When Brad Pitt, the star of Malick’s latest film The Tree of Life (2011), was questioned about Malick’s absence he responded with, “he sees himself as building a house. He doesn’t want to focus on the selling of the real estate.”
The different approaches taken towards each of the films is first evident when comparing their starting sequences. Apocalypse Now opens with imagery of conflict, fiery explosions, jungle landscape and helicopters cascading across the screen, all the while the face of the protagonist, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is superimposed upside-down over it all, which suggests that the ghostly images melting into each other are, in fact, his memories. The opening scene is also reminiscent of the Detective or Film Noir genres,
“Our first look at Willard is the classic opening of the private-eye movie: his face seen upside down, a cigarette stuck to his lip, under a rotating ceiling fan, and then the camera moving in a tight close-up over his books, snapshots, bottles of brandy, cigarettes, Zippo, and, finally, obligatory revolver on the rumpled bed sheets” (Geng, 1979: 70)
We can hear The Doors’ song The End playing, as Jim Morrison wails we see Willard descend into a drunken breakdown, punching a mirror and ending up slumped beside his bed surrounded by blood stained sheets. In contrast, The Thin Red Line couldn’t serve up anything further away from that frantic, image saturated introduction if it tried! We see a crocodile sliding silently into a river and disappearing under the thick, green algae. This shot opens up into a jungle scene, with spectacular pillars of light permeating through the tree canopy above, a voiceover then asks us, “what’s this war at the heart of nature, why does nature vie with itself for land to contend with the sea?” The Thin Red Line is constantly reminding us of the brutality which is a part of nature. What makes the film so special though is its ability to convey brutality, destruction and the inevitable finality of death in such a beautiful and moving way, the film truly touches on the sublime. We are left to dwell on these questions with the melodic, soothing singing of the Melanesian tribes-people ringing out over idyllic images of a desert island paradise. The opening sequence doesn’t feel like the start of a film based on the conflict at Guadalcanal in WWII, it feels uplifting and comforting. It is visually beautiful when compared with Coppola’s use of garish colours, lighting and disjointed editing.
The Thin Red Line is a film with overwhelming depth and meaning.
From the outset we are encouraged to consider the two sides to nature, creation and destruction, life and death, “Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?” One possible reading of Malick’s film as a whole is that the wars we fight are simply part of the natural universal order. We fight because nature is cruel and competitive, and we are a part of that. As Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) points out to Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), “look at this jungle. Look at those vines. The way they twine around the tree, swallowing everything. Nature is cruel Staros!” Malick reminds us that nature doesn’t discriminate, just as war doesn’t. He examines the positive forces inherent in human nature and how war overshadows or destroys them, Simon Critchley identifies 3 main themes of loyalty, love and truth, elements which are expressed in three main relationships, and each of which is eventually poisoned and overcome by the destruction of war. The relationship between Lt. Col. Tall and Capt. Staros is representative of loyalty, “at the core of this relationship is the question of loyalty, a conflict between loyalty to the commands of one 's superiors and loyalty to the men under one 's command” (Critchley, 2002). When Staros refuses to lead his men to their deaths he isn’t rewarded, instead he is relieved of his command for failing to have loyalty to his superiors. In war, human life is disposable, “we’re just dirt”, there is no place for mercy or compassion, they are not desirable qualities in war. Similarly, and perhaps the point Malick is trying to make, there is no mercy or compassion in nature, only drive for survival. Similarly, the theme of love is explored through the relationship between Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) and his wife Marty (Miranda Otto). We see the two only in dreamlike sequences together. Bell is constantly thinking about her, we get the impression that the
thought of her is the only thing driving him through the conflict, his one glimmer of motivation. Again, as with loyalty, love is extinguished by war, “after the battle, we hear Bell reading a letter from his wife saying that she has left him for an Air Force captain” (Critchley: 2002). The final theme that Critchley points out is that of truth, “the question at issue here is metaphysical truth; or, more precisely, whether there is such a thing as metaphysical truth. Baldly stated: is this the only world, or is there another world?” (Critchley: 2002). The two characters at the heart of this theme are Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) and Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn). Welsh can be viewed as a nihilist, “there’s not some other world out there where everything’s gonna be okay. There’s just this one, just this rock”, he posits at the beginning of the film, to which Witt responds, “you 're wrong there, I seen another world. Sometimes I think it 's just my imagination.” But we have seen that other world too, and when Witt is shot down and dies, it evokes a certain inner turmoil as to whether he will return in some capacity to that Melanesian paradise or will he simply,. Welsh’s view of the world is rooted in experience, he sees pain and suffering, “everything is a lie. Only one thing a man can do, find something that 's his and make an island for himself.”
Coppola’s study of war, by comparison, is certainly more of a tongue-in-cheek affair, by no means comedic but certain elements combine to give it a certain teenage appeal. The presence of Playboy models, or “bunnies” as they’re referred to, for a bit of high-school movie style gratuitous nudity, a very quotable, surfing Lieutenant Colonel played by Robert Duvall and the use of Cannabis and LSD alongside a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack combine to remind us that the people dying in this war are regular, young people, easily identified with. Furthermore, there is arguably a certain mocking element aimed towards the Vietnam conflict, the entire narrative hinges around Willard killing Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an American, one of their own. It essentially reflects the actions of Nixon’s government at the time (and the 3 previous presidencies involved in the conflict): Americans sending Americans to their deaths for what was quickly being realised as an unjust cause, “Vietnam was viewed as the self-projected historical nightmare through which America can awaken from its dream of innocence into mature consciousness” (Anderegg, 1991: 68). The conflict wasn’t about achieving peace, it was about forcing the ideologies of Western democracy onto the Vietnamese people, “here the Vietnam context… gives it a specific commentary on the American identity: not just the corrupted American reality, but the American self-concept of a unique national idealism is itself a fraud, a cover for the brute drives for power that dominate Americans” (Anderegg, 1991: 76). There are of course darker elements at work in the film, elements which oppose entirely the beauty inherent in The Thin Red Line. While one film depicts an open and naturalistic environment, the other takes place under the cover of choking fog and perpetual gloom. The violence, while no less severe, is exacted upon the seemingly defenceless. We see Private Clean shoot up a boat full of innocent Vietnamese people because, as it transpires, a young girl on board was attempting to save her puppy, when it transpires that she may be saved, Willard shoots her so he can continue his mission rather than detour to the nearest village so she can receive treatment. There is a sense of hopelessness at work here as well, as they travel further upriver, further into the heart of darkness the effects of the unwinnable nature of the Vietnam War are apparent all around: soldiers scrambling through the river to try and hitch a lift, no leadership in sight, men firing wildly and aimlessly at treelines. There is no semblance of order; Coppola successfully captures the chaos of war, “illustrative of both the brutality enacted by the American soldiers and the terror experienced by the Vietnamese civilians.” (Locke, 2009: 69)
Perhaps the most striking difference between the two films is in the way that they are lit. Malick’s film, for the most part, is lit in a clean, calming white light and as well as that the light is often utilised in such a way to dissipate moments of horror or violence, we see heavenly beams of light soaking through the jungle surroundings or shining over the side of a grassy hill. The way the film is lit changes the entire mood of the piece. For a film that deals with war so candidly, perhaps the word one would most expect to be associated with it would be ‘violent’ or ‘shocking’; instead however, Malick’s war film inspires awe with its beauty. Malick has somehow managed to make war beautiful. Contrary to this, Apocalypse Now lurks shrouded in shadow and dread and trepidation. The way it is lit serves to confuse and disturb the audience. Bright, lurid colours juxtaposed with areas of shaded mystery in nearly every shot has the effect of making the film quite unsettling, and in many ways allures to conventions of the horror genre. The lighting in the scene in which we first see Colonel Kurtz is reminiscent of a scene from Nosferatu or some other early horror, with darkly lit surroundings, a small flame casts shadows dancing over his face. If The Thin Red Line is the light, then Apocalypse Now is most certainly the darkness. That said however, both films allude to and recognise the duality in nature. At the end of The Thin Red Line we hear a voice over questioning poetically, “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?”, while in Apocalypse Now, at the French plantation as Willard smokes opium with Roxanne she says, rather poignantly, “There are two of you, don’t you see, one that kills and one that loves.” We all have the ability to create and to destroy, such is nature. Both films also have their respective anti-war sentiments, both of which can be summed up by two key monologues. In The Thin Red Line we hear Witt asking, “this great evil, where’d it come from? How’d it steal into the world, what seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doing this, killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might’ve known?”, a sentiment which is echoed by Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, “the horror, the horror!” In slightly less poetic terms than Malick’s film, Kurtz previously mentioned “horror”. A speech which sums up the futility of the Vietnam conflict, the terror of war and Kurtz’s own reasons for going AWOL and operating under his own authority,
“I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children…We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms...I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn 't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it...And then I realized, like I was shot, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men…If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly”
War has no redeeming quality and Kurtz’s death doesn’t really give a satisfactory end the narrative arc of the film just as there is never a satisfactory outcome in war, only destruction and death.
To conclude, it is evident that there are certain conventional similarities as well as thematic parallels between The Thin Red Line and Apocalypse Now, however for the most part these two films deal with war in vastly differing ways. Malick tries to understand war in the context of humanity and nature, he examines the subject from an array of viewpoints but essentially leaves his initial questions unanswered, perhaps the message here is that war can’t be explained but it can be partially understood in the wider context of nature, a violent and seemingly malevolent force. Coppola, on the other hand takes us on a journey along a metaphorical river Styx, literally into the heart of darkness, against the backdrop of war. There are other generic elements at play; Willard can be viewed as a kind of warped detective archetype from a Private Eye film, while the visual style is often reminiscent of a horror film, not to mention all the trappings of 70s American pop-culture featured in the film, surfing, rock ‘n’ roll and drug use (groovy). A theme which is central to both however; and the common ground for war films in general is human sacrifice. Death is expected, love is eclipsed and truth is exposed as a lie, “the horror, the horror!”
Bibliography
Simon Critchley, Calm - On Malick 's The Thin Red Line – 2002, Film Philosophy
John Belton - American Cinema, American Culture – 2005, New York, McGraw Hill.
Sinnerbrink, Robert - A Heideggerian Cinema? : On Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line’, (2006) - Film-Philosophy
Brian Locke – Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen – 2009, Palgrave Macmillan
Michael Anderegg – Inventing Vietnam, The War in Film and Television – 1991, Temple University Press
Robin Wood – Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan…And Beyond – 1986, Colombia University Press
The Thin Red Line & Apocalypse Now: War, Humanity and Nature on the Silver Screen
Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) are widely regarded as two of the finest films belonging to Hollywood’s War genre. They both deal with similar issues and burning at the heart of each film is the notion that war is a futile practice. However, the two directors approach the subject matter in different ways. Malick with his attempt to understand war in the context of nature and Coppola’s unflinching filmic re-imaging of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Throughout this essay I will aim to compare and contrast the …show more content…
two films and illustrate the differing approaches of each director and the effect this has on the overall feel of each piece as well as discussing some of the aspects of each film that set them apart from the rest of the genre. Before delving into the films themselves however, it is important to contextualise each film in terms of the conflicts represented and also, to recognise a few traits synonymous with each director. The Thin Red Line is based on the Battle of Mount Austin which took place on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. In 1942, American troops fought Japanese forces for control of the strategically placed island, regarded as the key to the South Pacific. The location also lends itself impeccably to Malick’s eye for beauty and detail. Apocalypse Now deals with the 16 year-long Vietnam conflict. The exact year is not explicit, but there are a few hints, such as references to the Charles Manson trial which suggests it is based around 1970, a time when Tricky-Dick Nixon was sitting behind the controls in the White House and support for the Vietnam War was dwindling, a theme apparent in Apocalypse Now. As far as the directors are concerned, there are a few parallels to be drawn. Firstly, they can both be seen to operate in similar ways in relation to the Hollywood studio/ star system. In order to produce Apocalypse Now how he wanted, Coppola set up a production company, American Zoetrope, with George Lucas in 1969. This was primarily a way of avoiding the often conservative restraints of the bigger Hollywood companies, however it also had the knock on effect of alienating any potential funding them and, as such, Apocalypse Now was put on hold. Production was eventually started in 1975, by which time Coppola had 6 academy awards under his belt and no shortage of potential investors vying to throw their cash at him. Similarly, Malick has chosen to disregard the traditional Hollywood star system in The Thin Red Line, with arguably the two biggest stars (at the time of release), George Clooney and John Travolta being seen only briefly onscreen. It also stands to reason that Malick’s largely unexplained 20 year break between Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998) may be due, in part, to a feeling of disenfranchisement with the Hollywood studio system which is prejudiced towards projects which aren’t immediately considered as potentially profitable. When Brad Pitt, the star of Malick’s latest film The Tree of Life (2011), was questioned about Malick’s absence he responded with, “he sees himself as building a house. He doesn’t want to focus on the selling of the real estate.”
The different approaches taken towards each of the films is first evident when comparing their starting sequences. Apocalypse Now opens with imagery of conflict, fiery explosions, jungle landscape and helicopters cascading across the screen, all the while the face of the protagonist, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is superimposed upside-down over it all, which suggests that the ghostly images melting into each other are, in fact, his memories. The opening scene is also reminiscent of the Detective or Film Noir genres,
“Our first look at Willard is the classic opening of the private-eye movie: his face seen upside down, a cigarette stuck to his lip, under a rotating ceiling fan, and then the camera moving in a tight close-up over his books, snapshots, bottles of brandy, cigarettes, Zippo, and, finally, obligatory revolver on the rumpled bed sheets” (Geng, 1979: 70)
We can hear The Doors’ song The End playing, as Jim Morrison wails we see Willard descend into a drunken breakdown, punching a mirror and ending up slumped beside his bed surrounded by blood stained sheets. In contrast, The Thin Red Line couldn’t serve up anything further away from that frantic, image saturated introduction if it tried! We see a crocodile sliding silently into a river and disappearing under the thick, green algae. This shot opens up into a jungle scene, with spectacular pillars of light permeating through the tree canopy above, a voiceover then asks us, “what’s this war at the heart of nature, why does nature vie with itself for land to contend with the sea?” The Thin Red Line is constantly reminding us of the brutality which is a part of nature. What makes the film so special though is its ability to convey brutality, destruction and the inevitable finality of death in such a beautiful and moving way, the film truly touches on the sublime. We are left to dwell on these questions with the melodic, soothing singing of the Melanesian tribes-people ringing out over idyllic images of a desert island paradise. The opening sequence doesn’t feel like the start of a film based on the conflict at Guadalcanal in WWII, it feels uplifting and comforting. It is visually beautiful when compared with Coppola’s use of garish colours, lighting and disjointed editing.
The Thin Red Line is a film with overwhelming depth and meaning.
From the outset we are encouraged to consider the two sides to nature, creation and destruction, life and death, “Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?” One possible reading of Malick’s film as a whole is that the wars we fight are simply part of the natural universal order. We fight because nature is cruel and competitive, and we are a part of that. As Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) points out to Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), “look at this jungle. Look at those vines. The way they twine around the tree, swallowing everything. Nature is cruel Staros!” Malick reminds us that nature doesn’t discriminate, just as war doesn’t. He examines the positive forces inherent in human nature and how war overshadows or destroys them, Simon Critchley identifies 3 main themes of loyalty, love and truth, elements which are expressed in three main relationships, and each of which is eventually poisoned and overcome by the destruction of war. The relationship between Lt. Col. Tall and Capt. Staros is representative of loyalty, “at the core of this relationship is the question of loyalty, a conflict between loyalty to the commands of one 's superiors and loyalty to the men under one 's command” (Critchley, 2002). When Staros refuses to lead his men to their deaths he isn’t rewarded, instead he is relieved of his command for failing to have loyalty to his superiors. In war, human life is disposable, “we’re just dirt”, there is no place for mercy or compassion, they are not desirable qualities in war. Similarly, and perhaps the point Malick is trying to make, there is no mercy or compassion in nature, only drive for survival. Similarly, the theme of love is explored through the relationship between Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) and his wife Marty (Miranda Otto). We see the two only in dreamlike sequences together. Bell is constantly thinking about her, we get the impression that the
thought of her is the only thing driving him through the conflict, his one glimmer of motivation. Again, as with loyalty, love is extinguished by war, “after the battle, we hear Bell reading a letter from his wife saying that she has left him for an Air Force captain” (Critchley: 2002). The final theme that Critchley points out is that of truth, “the question at issue here is metaphysical truth; or, more precisely, whether there is such a thing as metaphysical truth. Baldly stated: is this the only world, or is there another world?” (Critchley: 2002). The two characters at the heart of this theme are Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) and Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn). Welsh can be viewed as a nihilist, “there’s not some other world out there where everything’s gonna be okay. There’s just this one, just this rock”, he posits at the beginning of the film, to which Witt responds, “you 're wrong there, I seen another world. Sometimes I think it 's just my imagination.” But we have seen that other world too, and when Witt is shot down and dies, it evokes a certain inner turmoil as to whether he will return in some capacity to that Melanesian paradise or will he simply,. Welsh’s view of the world is rooted in experience, he sees pain and suffering, “everything is a lie. Only one thing a man can do, find something that 's his and make an island for himself.”
Coppola’s study of war, by comparison, is certainly more of a tongue-in-cheek affair, by no means comedic but certain elements combine to give it a certain teenage appeal. The presence of Playboy models, or “bunnies” as they’re referred to, for a bit of high-school movie style gratuitous nudity, a very quotable, surfing Lieutenant Colonel played by Robert Duvall and the use of Cannabis and LSD alongside a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack combine to remind us that the people dying in this war are regular, young people, easily identified with. Furthermore, there is arguably a certain mocking element aimed towards the Vietnam conflict, the entire narrative hinges around Willard killing Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an American, one of their own. It essentially reflects the actions of Nixon’s government at the time (and the 3 previous presidencies involved in the conflict): Americans sending Americans to their deaths for what was quickly being realised as an unjust cause, “Vietnam was viewed as the self-projected historical nightmare through which America can awaken from its dream of innocence into mature consciousness” (Anderegg, 1991: 68). The conflict wasn’t about achieving peace, it was about forcing the ideologies of Western democracy onto the Vietnamese people, “here the Vietnam context… gives it a specific commentary on the American identity: not just the corrupted American reality, but the American self-concept of a unique national idealism is itself a fraud, a cover for the brute drives for power that dominate Americans” (Anderegg, 1991: 76). There are of course darker elements at work in the film, elements which oppose entirely the beauty inherent in The Thin Red Line. While one film depicts an open and naturalistic environment, the other takes place under the cover of choking fog and perpetual gloom. The violence, while no less severe, is exacted upon the seemingly defenceless. We see Private Clean shoot up a boat full of innocent Vietnamese people because, as it transpires, a young girl on board was attempting to save her puppy, when it transpires that she may be saved, Willard shoots her so he can continue his mission rather than detour to the nearest village so she can receive treatment. There is a sense of hopelessness at work here as well, as they travel further upriver, further into the heart of darkness the effects of the unwinnable nature of the Vietnam War are apparent all around: soldiers scrambling through the river to try and hitch a lift, no leadership in sight, men firing wildly and aimlessly at treelines. There is no semblance of order; Coppola successfully captures the chaos of war, “illustrative of both the brutality enacted by the American soldiers and the terror experienced by the Vietnamese civilians.” (Locke, 2009: 69)
Perhaps the most striking difference between the two films is in the way that they are lit. Malick’s film, for the most part, is lit in a clean, calming white light and as well as that the light is often utilised in such a way to dissipate moments of horror or violence, we see heavenly beams of light soaking through the jungle surroundings or shining over the side of a grassy hill. The way the film is lit changes the entire mood of the piece. For a film that deals with war so candidly, perhaps the word one would most expect to be associated with it would be ‘violent’ or ‘shocking’; instead however, Malick’s war film inspires awe with its beauty. Malick has somehow managed to make war beautiful. Contrary to this, Apocalypse Now lurks shrouded in shadow and dread and trepidation. The way it is lit serves to confuse and disturb the audience. Bright, lurid colours juxtaposed with areas of shaded mystery in nearly every shot has the effect of making the film quite unsettling, and in many ways allures to conventions of the horror genre. The lighting in the scene in which we first see Colonel Kurtz is reminiscent of a scene from Nosferatu or some other early horror, with darkly lit surroundings, a small flame casts shadows dancing over his face. If The Thin Red Line is the light, then Apocalypse Now is most certainly the darkness. That said however, both films allude to and recognise the duality in nature. At the end of The Thin Red Line we hear a voice over questioning poetically, “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?”, while in Apocalypse Now, at the French plantation as Willard smokes opium with Roxanne she says, rather poignantly, “There are two of you, don’t you see, one that kills and one that loves.” We all have the ability to create and to destroy, such is nature. Both films also have their respective anti-war sentiments, both of which can be summed up by two key monologues. In The Thin Red Line we hear Witt asking, “this great evil, where’d it come from? How’d it steal into the world, what seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doing this, killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might’ve known?”, a sentiment which is echoed by Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, “the horror, the horror!” In slightly less poetic terms than Malick’s film, Kurtz previously mentioned “horror”. A speech which sums up the futility of the Vietnam conflict, the terror of war and Kurtz’s own reasons for going AWOL and operating under his own authority,
“I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children…We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms...I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn 't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it...And then I realized, like I was shot, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men…If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly”
War has no redeeming quality and Kurtz’s death doesn’t really give a satisfactory end the narrative arc of the film just as there is never a satisfactory outcome in war, only destruction and death.
To conclude, it is evident that there are certain conventional similarities as well as thematic parallels between The Thin Red Line and Apocalypse Now, however for the most part these two films deal with war in vastly differing ways. Malick tries to understand war in the context of humanity and nature, he examines the subject from an array of viewpoints but essentially leaves his initial questions unanswered, perhaps the message here is that war can’t be explained but it can be partially understood in the wider context of nature, a violent and seemingly malevolent force. Coppola, on the other hand takes us on a journey along a metaphorical river Styx, literally into the heart of darkness, against the backdrop of war. There are other generic elements at play; Willard can be viewed as a kind of warped detective archetype from a Private Eye film, while the visual style is often reminiscent of a horror film, not to mention all the trappings of 70s American pop-culture featured in the film, surfing, rock ‘n’ roll and drug use (groovy). A theme which is central to both however; and the common ground for war films in general is human sacrifice. Death is expected, love is eclipsed and truth is exposed as a lie, “the horror, the horror!”
Bibliography
Simon Critchley, Calm - On Malick 's The Thin Red Line – 2002, Film Philosophy
John Belton - American Cinema, American Culture – 2005, New York, McGraw Hill.
Sinnerbrink, Robert - A Heideggerian Cinema? : On Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line’, (2006) - Film-Philosophy
Brian Locke – Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen – 2009, Palgrave Macmillan
Michael Anderegg – Inventing Vietnam, The War in Film and Television – 1991, Temple University Press
Robin Wood – Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan…And Beyond – 1986, Colombia University Press