The Thin Red Line -- Daniel Forrest Mann

“The Thin Red Line” was a very interesting and heavy war film showing the struggles of war on both sides of battle, as well as showing life and religion during times of war. In the film, during times of war and battle, the scene would change to shots of life like some beautiful shots of animals, or trees in the sunshine, and change back to men being shot by an onslaught of machine gun bullets or being blown up by mortars raining down. It seemed that the movie was portraying that even though there was a struggle going on between two sides, life still went on in that place and in others. Birds still chirped, and the trees still grew. It also used the scenes of life to show that life and death coincide. At the end of the movie, when the surviving soldiers were on the boat, the film emphasized the waves being left behind by the boat. This could possibly signify what war does to a place. Like the water right behind the boat, war stirs up a place and damages it, but eventually, the water returns and gets calmer and returns to normal, similar to a place long after a war is over.

I think the film did an okay good job on showing the humanity on both sides of battle. While it does portray one side much more than the other, most movies would only show the struggles of one side, but “The Red Thin Line” does show a little of the other side. It focuses mainly on the American side and its struggles. For example, showing men dying, showing the brother like relationship between the soldiers, as well as showing the sympathy and emotion when someone is hurt, killed, or missing. However, the movie does show the struggles from the Japanese side as well. It shows Japanese men clinging to their fallen soldiers, and one particular scene where Witt (an American soldier) finds a dead and mostly buried Japanese soldier that talks out to him saying that he was liked once and had a family. By doing this, “The Red Thin Line” portrays that there are two sides to every story, and in this case two sides to every war.

The film also showed hoe religion finds its way into even the most terrible places like on the lines of battle. On both sides mid-fight, men were praying as bullets flew by their heads, mortars exploded beside them, and their fellow soldiers were shot by enemy fire. Furthermore, we see a solider named Witt find his religion it seemed. In the beginning, there were scenes of his mother dying and Witt saying he “was afraid to touch the death in her.” But after a fellow soldier blew his butt off by accidentally pulling the pin out of his grenade, Witt smiles, seeming to show that he was no longer afraid to die. And later in the film we see this, he distracted the enemy for his fellow soldiers and was surrounded. As they tried to get Witt to surrender, he stood there, unfazed by them, and even tried to lift his gun to kill one of them before he was shot down.

The film was a very heavy one, with its relentless scenes of death and hardship on both side s of the battlefield, but I think the movie had good symbolism and represented both sides better than many other films about war.