TALK ABOUT MOVIES

2004 Talk About Movies
December
November
October
September
July/August
June
May
April
March
February
January

Little Notes
Letters

Confessions
Roamin' Catholic
Follow Me




Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

TALK ABOUT MOVIES
February 2004

---

Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn. 1998, Color, English, USA/Canada, 170 minutes. Available at Kensington Video

Matthew: Witt starts out as something of a philosopher, wondering at the violence in nature.

Ernie: He's going AWOL all the time, hanging out with the peaceful natives. But the more the war touches him, the more he gets in touch with the spirituality of the whole situation -- wondering, "Why are we doing this to each other when we're essentially parts of the same body?" -- the better he becomes as a soldier.

Matthew: At the beginning, he's jealous of his mother's calm in the face of approaching death. By the end, through soldierly duty, he finds it. He leaves the psuedo-peace of life with the natives, and finds real peace by immersing himself in the war.

* * *

Ernie: Welsh mocks Witt for talking about the light and the glory, but he keeps engaging him about it.

Matthew: He wants to despair, to build a wall around himself.

Ernie: But when another soldier laments that he doesn't feel anything any more, Welsh says he's not there yet.

Matthew: He can't bring himself to despair, so he has to keep poking at it.

* * *

Ernie: Staros prays not to fail God and not to fail his men, and I think he leaves knowing he made the right decision. That's his consolation.