Patricia Ohanian blog-thin red line 4/1/2020

The movie The Thin Red Line is about young soldier in the brutal and gruesome fight at the Guadalcanal.  I have always felt like many war movies have deep and hidden understandings, but this one seemed to be even more than others.  The voice overs, the body language of the soldiers, and the music all seemed to emit a constant questioning, longing, and confusion.

Similar to Apocolypse Now, the chaos that the young soldiers were met with in the wild proves the existence of the sacred, by showing them the profane; the complete chaos that surrounds them.  In both Apocolypse Now, and the Thin Red Line, we often see the soldiers questioning the violent acts they are being forced to commit, wondering if their authority really justifies what is going on.  This is similar to the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna questions Krishna and what he is being ased to do. Further, war movies emit a search for the "truth".  The clear right and wrong.  How paralleling to religion that this is. 

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