Thursday, November 08, 2007

This is one of my favorite movies


The song toward the end of the movie trailer is the touching hymn "Jisas yu holem hand blong mi" (which I think translates "Jesus, you hold my hand") sung by the choir of All Saints' Anglican Parish, Honiara, on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
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2 comments:

Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) said...

Father, I must confess that I have been a bit biased against this movie since the day I first saw it. It struck me then as a perfect example of Hollywood importing a heavy dose of New Age pantheism into a film so as to undermine the traditional Judeo-Christian underpinnings of American culture. ("all part of one big soul", etc). Certainly the intense spirituality of the film derives far more from Thoreau and intellectual Hinduism than the Gospel, despite the hymn at the end of the trailer, don't you think?

What do you find so appealing about the film, Father? I am willing to give it a second chance. ;-)

9:01 AM
Fr Timothy Matkin said...

I take your point about the spirituality of the film. However, as with other movies like the Star Wars series, I guess I don't really hold that against it because it is not a Christian film nor a film about Christianity.

I like The Thin Red Line mostly because it is beautiful. It's one of those films that is thin on plot; it's just about observing people's experiences.

I do find intriguing themes, however. Such as the beauty and cruelty of nature and the need for spiritual hope, the importance of family and the strength it gives, and the interest in individuals rather than the overall war.

I like Witt's story, who is taken out of paradise, but brings that paradise within him and people know it. He comforts others at their death, but there is no one to comfort him at his moment of death. A further irony is that the person who kills him in the end is saying in Japanese, "I don't want to shoot you; please surrender." But Witt doesn't know it.

9:17 PM

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