The Thin Red Line - Joseph Hancock

“The Thin Red Line” has many similar themes to “Apocalypse Now.” This makes sense, as both are war films focused on a squad of American soldiers with diverse backgrounds and personalities heading into enemy territory. However, although both films tackle similar ideas, they approach them from different perspectives.

For example, “Apocalypse Now” views the natural world as a part of the sacred. Meanwhile, the arbitrary war between human countries is profane by going against nature and destroying it through bombs, napalm, and firefights. But while nature is sacred, that doesn’t mean it is friendly, as the jungle is hostile towards the main characters to the point that they only feel safe on their boat after an animal attack; even then, several squad members still die on the boat as a result from unseen attacks coming from the jungle. 

Comparing these ideas to those found in “The Thin Red Line”, there is plenty of overlap. Many of the visual shots in the film focus on how nature, especially native animals, are reacting to the human war around them. Often animals are seen to be dead or dying as a result of the firefights between the Americans and Japanese. The most prominent of these is the bloody baby bird with a broken wing stuck on the ground, unable to fly as a result of man. However, that’s not the only way animals are portrayed. While there is suffering on their part, the animals are also surviving as a result of man. There are numerous shots and references in dialogue to dogs, birds, and insects either about to or in the process of eating dead soldiers as a food source. There are also references in the dialogue to soldiers becoming a part of nature, such as when Private Witt says that war “turns men into dogs” and another soldier earlier states that he can’t tell the physical difference anymore between human remains and dog remains after a battle. During and immediately after some conflicts, several American soldiers state that they’re nothing more than grass or dirt, which are fundamental parts of nature, although far beneath what they consider to be important. While an argument could be made that war is portrayed as being just as profane and corrupting the sacred in “The Thin Red Line” as it was in “Apocalypse Now”; I believe that in “The Thin Red Line”, war at its core is just another form of survival of the fittest, with humans being brought down to a more basic animal level, and having to use their skills and luck to survive it.

The idea of what is sacred is also more up to interpartion. Nature could be the sacred aspect in “The Thin Red Line” as it was in “Apocalypse Now.” After all, in the first scene, the native Melanesians who lived in a peaceful, but simple tribal society could be seen as the natural state of humanity. With the tribe seen later on the island being fearful and fighting one another due to the profane influence of the war between the Americans and the Japanese, thus taking away their sacred way of life. However, despite all the profane actions that may occur because of them, I think that the sacredness in this film comes from humanity. Throughout the movie, there are narrations from major and minor living, dying, or died characters from both sides of the war. The narrations spend time asking philosophical questions about the nature of man, life, love, and warfare. These topics are all encompassed by the idea of the sacred. All of these diverse people are essentially asking the same set of questions. To be honest, at first I only thought it was a single person speaking during these narrations, and it was only later that I discovered that there was more than one, and that misconception may be an intentional part of the film. It reminded me of a story called “The Egg”, in which all of humanity is just one soul continually reincarnating into different points in time. This movie gave me the distinct idea that all of the people's narrations were just separate consciousnesses within this single idea of the sacred trying to understand itself.