Thin Red Line- Buddy Powers

The landscape in Thin Red Line played such an important role in the movie. The short opening scene with the alligator slowly coming into view and then fading away provided a wonderful symbol of the films prevailing theme of lurking doom. The quote from the Japanese after Pearl Harbor comes to mind, “we have awakened a sleeping giant.” In this case it was shown through a stealthy and deadly crocodile. At the same time the film is more directly about the fear or death looming over every person. The main character, Private Witt, begins hiding from the war amongst natives on a tropical south pacific island, fearing death. Once he is captured and forced to return to battle, he embraces death and plays a key role in the battle of Guantanamo. “What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?” This quote was made by Private Witt towards the end of the movie and another good one is, “This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?” Witt is exploring in the depths of himself, within a beautiful tropical landscape this is marred by gruesome war, is there purpose? What he is getting at is whether or not he should fear death. At the end of the movie Witt on a mission upstream to locate the enemy, sacrifices himself for the men with him because he has conquered his fear of death. The closing scene is of Witt swimming in beautiful south Pacific waters with native children, symbolizing that he had attained immortality.