The Thin Red Line | Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen | The World as Will and Representation

The Thin Red Line | Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen | not just a war movie

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The Thin Red Line

	The Thin Red Line Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen 20th Century Fox, 2002 average customer review:based on 930 reviews view larger image
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The World as Will and Representation

This is not a "war film" and it is not an "antiwar film." What Malick (a former philosophy student) has done is *use* the setting of modern warfare as a way of communicating the essence of Schopenhauer's metaphysics and ethics. Underneath the surface of the observable, individuated phenomena, the essence of the world is will: a non-individuated, passionate yet pointless destructive striving. The will is embodied in Nick Nolte, who lives to fight and win, while recognizing that his way is the way of "nature." "Look at those vines, Staros, swallowing everything. Nature is cruel." True insight into the nature of the will, however, leads to compassion for the suffering of others, since we are all One behind appearances, and renunciation of desiring (and its inevitable concomitants, conflict and suffering). The denial of the will is represented by Jim Cavaziel. According to Schopenhauer, if one recognizes the futility of willing but cannot achieve this state of complete ascetic denial, the only other alternative is to mitigate one's own suffering by keeping one's expectations as low as possible. This stance is embodied by Sean Penn. From the first, crucial dialogue between Penn and Cavaziel, the agenda of the film is placed before us: given that the world is as it is, should we cling to this world and despair, or should we turn away from it and transcend? As Penn says, "there's no world but this one." Cavaziel replies, "I've seen another world." *That* is what the film is about: a choice between mysticism and nihilism.

The film is not pro-war, because it assumes as Schopenhauer did, that moral justifications of war are always nothing more than rationalizations of a more fundamental need for violence. The film is not anti-war, because unlike all other anti-war films, it does not set up a contrast between a morally praiseworthy form of ordinary life and a morally repugnant form of activity created by and creating war. If war is an expression of the cruelty of nature, or reality itself, moral judgment of it makes no sense---one might as well condemn the jungle for being jungle. This goes some way toward explaining the peculiar detachment the film aspires to and achieves. The catastrophe the characters are caught up in is the world itself, and the film offers no adequate response to it than to serenely transcend it.

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not just a war movie

you may have already realized this, but this is not just a movie about war. It is a movie about the struggle to survive, the fact that conflict exists in every moment of our existence. Personally, I rate a movie based on how it holds up over time. I saw this movie when it was released in the theaters and loved it, and I just watched it again years later and loved it even more. This movie takes it's time. I get the feeling that massive amounts of film were shot and massive amounts of flim were chopped to get this movie. whoever did the chopping did a damn fine job. I can watch this one throughout my life and see something relevant.

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"There's only a thin red line between the sane and the mad."

This is the only movie that you will probably ever see that is the most realistic and moving as this one is. This movie shows everything from the compassion, courage and pain of the soldiers to the beauty of the land that they were in, including the pictures of the wildlife to the uglyness of the war in itself. The narriation of the soldiers was excellent and was there to show the feelings and the compassion for each other on the battlefield. This movie is a must see to everyone especially to those that think that war is "glory and victory". Highly recommended!!!!

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