Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The Thin Red Line


This goes back to 2002 when it was put to use as a contrast to Guadalcanal Diary in studying WW2 for History, First Hand. In this scene Nick Nolte displays the blatant disregard for soldier's lives that Burns' "The War" revealed on many occasions.
Terence Malick's movie is one of those with an available online script. This matches with the above, but I inserted a little of Malick's heady internal monologue (italicized):

Who are you to live in all these many forms?
Your death that captures all.
You, too, are the source of all that's gonna be born.
Your glory.
Mercy.
Peace.
Truth.
You give calm a spirit,
understanding, courage.
The contented heart.
Get a medic here!
Maybe all men got one big soul
who everybody's a part of.
All faces of the same man.
One big self.
Everyone looking for salvation by himself.
Each like a coal drawn from the fire.


We're going straight up that hill there.
We can't do that, Colonel.
Well, there's no way to outflank it.
On the left is a cliff
that falls down into the river.
The Japanese hold the jungle.
It has to be taken frontally.
What about water, sir?
It's not getting up here.
My men are... passing out, sir.
Only time you worry about a soldier
is when he stops bitching.

We're all gonna attack abreast.
Third Platoon in reserve.
We've gotta cross
those three folds of ground. You see?
Once we get beyond that,
we gotta attack that hill.

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