The Thin Red Line

In the beginning of the scene, the camera tracks forward to show the environment the scene is being shot in. The landscape view is cut by the mountain in the distance. This could symbolise that something bad happens near or on that mountain as it’s blocking any further view. It then quickly cuts to the soldiers, tracks backwards and focuses on a particular soldier’s expression as he is scouring the surrounding environment.  The camera keeps cutting back and forth to track backwards and forwards to show that the soldiers are becoming aware of their surroundings. A local man, who seems disorientated, passes them by and all but one soldier takes any notice of him.

Following that scene, it cuts to deep in the rainforest, in the marshes. This contrast shows how something so beautiful can turn to something unappealing and somewhat restricting as they’re struggling to walk through the marshes. 

Continuing on from the previous scene in the marshes, the camera cuts to 2 very colourful birds that symbolise the beauty of nature. These soldiers have the potential to harm or disturb the birds which show that humans and war can be disturbing nature as a whole.

The soldiers continue on to climb up a hill that symbolises the metaphorical climb that comes with war and people involved.

Upon reaching the top, the camera focuses on a particular soldier as the narration starts. The use of the camera focussing on him shows the viewers that it’s him narrating without it making it obvious.  The narration continues, showing other soldier’s faces and the local man and his facial expressions. The camera tilts down to the man’s feet to show that he has no shoes which informs the viewer more of the lack of wealthiness of this location.

Shortly after, there is a flashback to the narrator and his wife to show the contrast of how simplistic and wonderful life is but when life is faced with such hardships as war, it can be taken away.  When filming his wife, there are many times when camera starts with a profile view of her and tilts down to show her entire body. This could imply a very sexualised view of his wife.

Following this the soldiers bask into some long grass upon which they discover two bodies. The camera is tracking forward in the point of view of the soldiers to give the viewers a sense of reality and that this, or something similar, really happened. There is a range of mixed emotions which is clear amongst their facial expressions.  There are two young soldiers who seem to be strongly affected by what they’ve just seen. To express this, one soldiers shields his eyes and the other has a horrific look upon his face and turns away slightly. However there are 2, senior soldiers who seem to be barely phased by what they’ve seen. This shows that they’ve seen this type of thing before and see it as the norm. 

The soldier who is narrating the scene gets very agitated from seeing the bodies and becomes quite angry.  He aggressively moves a branch of long grass out of his way. The anger he expresses is open to interpretation, it could be because they may have been able to save these dead soldiers or possibly he knew them.  Another possibility is that he may be extremely fed up of being at war and is expressing his anger.  

Throughout the entirety of these scenes, the pace is kept slow to get across the idea of reality.  There is minimal editing to also support this idea.