Atheists, how much do you enjoy this film?

I am atheist too.
I have not the time tonight to write you a lengthy answer, I will do it tomorrow or in the coming days probably.

But Malick is in each of his movie expressing the views of Heidegger and Wittgenstein on the World ( Thoreau or Whitman are often evoked but there is a kinship between what said Heidegger and Wittgenstein on the world and what have said the Transcendentalist)

Heidegger was an atheist.. When Wittgenstein developped his concepts on the World, he was still atheist too (before becoming theist later)

What Malick likes to retain from Heidegger (and what Malick will tell more clearly than in his previous movies in The Tree of Life) is that the miracle of being overtakes every finiteness of it.. That you have to see the World each time as begun again, each time as if you were seeing it for the first time. The loop that is the death of Pocahontas in The New World that echoes the beginning of the movie, invites us live in the world like she lived in it, each time as begun again. With serenity, accepting the world as it is.

The death of Witt and the words about the death of his mother, express the same serenity, because they have lived understanding how precious life is.
Malick do not lead us to any god..
He just tells us that our present, our being is the Miracle, as much as it is a Miracle that the Universe exists. That there is something instead of nothing. That every second has to be enjoyed, that every second now is the Heaven and that there is no worry it ends someday, because we will have lived, we are as miraculous as the whole universe.


"Oh my soul, let me be in you now, look out through my eyes, look out at the things you made, all things shining."

In these words there is the enjoyment of every moment of our present.
There is too an allusion to the Being, the perfect essence in Heidegger view, that for a brief moment in this sentence seems to make one with the Man (in fact it is one of the rare lines where Malick gives us a key to understand what the voice overs are in his movies : a rare instant where the human thought touches the thought of the Being, understands what is eternal in our present)
And finally there is a pure Wittgenstein view, that everything Is because we Are. That the world is there because we are there to conceive it, to understand it, to admire it, the world is a miracle that ends with us. With our death, nothing proves the world goes on without us. That can be summed up by the world
"The World is my World". In a way, we are the frontiers of the World, it starts and ends with us. So "The Thin Red Line" is not only a journalistic and military term about a defensive frontier or some words that recalls James Jones a Rudyard Kipling poem and a old midwestern proverb ("There's only a Thin Red Line between the sane and the mad"). The Thin Red Line means also for Malick a frontier. The frontier of the World : each being, each of us.

Yes, I especially enjoyed the message, being an atheist. It granted me the spiritual experience which I always seemed to be yearning for, and a couple of insights. It probably wouldn't have this effect if it asked me to be religious to understand it (raising my protest) - on the other hand, it might have converted me :). It would be quite right to describe my experience of the movie as 'religious', so much for the lack of better words as for the intensity of it. Thankfully, the message is godless, it kind of adopts and digests any particular religion in its godlessness.

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since when have believers ever been in tune with the world around them or sincerely searched for a tangiable truth? i say malick's films are more so for athiests than anyone who buys into religion or the conventional notion of what spirituality is...

It's still my favorite film even though I don't believe in God. In my mind I don't think God and heaven has anything to do with The Thin Red Line. To me the film is about the constant battle between man and nature and the battle with ourselves.

This is my signature.

To me this film was about the exploration of, or the search for truth and mans place in nature. This questioning and longing dosent belong to those who believe in God. It belongs to man. The spiritual aspect of this quest isnt necessarily a religious one.

This seems an unfortunately misguided question--and by misguided I mean an unnecessary distraction. Malick's cinema transcends (if you will) all such simplistic reductions or binary arrangements. The whole atheist-theist divide, as it is understood at present especially, is a modern construct using concepts invented and sustained with modern definitions. It is not a permanent or definitive arrangement.

Anyway, and for what it's worth, Simon Critchley (who is certainly no theist)wrote a wonderful long piece on Malick and TRL and Heidegger which you can access here: http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n48critchley.

The questions Malick presents us with and considers are not meant to be explored in some purely strictured and systematic way but left open to context, dialogue and interpretation as with the best poetry and philosophy--which is not to say this kind of subjectivity is in any way subordinated to more supposedly objective notions. The "atheism" or "theism" label is just a self-designated distinction to indicate personally set limitations of vision which is what allows for any construct of comprehension to exist; so we have to be willing to acknowledge that we start there. The key seems to be in maintaining an ironic self-awareness and a receptivity to new perspectives and ideas; a willingness to go deeper and more thoroughly into our own existing pre-conceptions, remaining open for what can change us (which, I would argue, is the whole point with regards to the Penn-Caviezel conflict).

Outside of the cinematography and the music, I thought the beauty of the film wasn't only Witt himself, but the way Witt's transcendence affects Welsh at the end.

"If I never meet you in this life let me feel the lack. A glance from your eyes and my life will be yours".

I've been watching this movie for years; I've probably watched that scene a hundred times. I still don't fully understand what it means.

It's my belief that Welsh is talking to God (or at least the "beautiful light"/ higher power he thinks Witt has experienced). My idea of why he would want to "feel the lack" if he doesn't get to meet God is he refuses to believe in any higher power on blind faith.

Welsh comes off as a skeptic that truly wishes to change by the end of the film. The tragic part is he doesn't just give himself to God's grace so readily; he would rather make the condition that God must meet him halfway (or at least somewhere in between). It seems clear that he is completely ready to embrace God if God would meet Welsh halfway.

Witt (apparently the messiah figure) could be construed as the "halfway point" between Welsh and God, but it seems Welsh wants more than that. Again, this seems tragic since it's unlikely God will ever make the first step to meet Welsh halfway and probably has already given his olive branch to Welsh with Witt.

Anyways, I might be looking too far into the Christian overtones (there is no way to the father except through me) and I'm probably way off. But that line has always perplexed me and I've never been able to get a definite answer on it (which I'm pretty sure is intentional). Nonetheless, it's fun to think about :).