Abstract

Chapter 2, ‘Time and History in The Thin Red Line and The New World’ looks at the marked nature-culture dichotomy that plays out in these historical narratives and reframes them in non-mythic terms. Malick's mid-career films reveal two visions of finitude and materiality in nature: a mechanistic and organicist vision, where parts are reciprocally connected; and another vision of nature, where parts are totally disassociated from laws of causality and reciprocity. These visions articulate the complexities of what Benjamin calls legal violence, mythic violence and messianic violence. Corporal Fife's (Adrian Brody) and Rebecca/Pocahontas’ (K’Orianka Kilcher) gestures reveal a poetic looking of camera work as pure mediality and cinematic disruption of mythical approaches to nature, time, and storytelling.

Keywords: mechanic time; violence; pure means; messianic time; nature; time-image.

At the beginning of The Thin Red Line, we observe the unfolding of life in a Melanesian community in the Solomon Islands, as witnessed by Witt (Jim Caviziel) an American soldier gone absent without leave (AWOL). Images of Melanesian people living in their twentieth century Christian ways and customs are shown on screen. One of these images is of children intently playing a game with rocks. The children just move the rocks displayed in a circle, rhythmically and in unison, in a circular movement that never ends and under the absorbed gaze of two other children waiting for their turn in the game. The shot cuts as soon as one of the two waiting children lifts his eyes towards the camera and looks at us. Similarly haunting gestures of play and immersion in nature occur in The New World, when Captain John Smith is held captive in the Powhatan village, gradually admitted to the village's customs and rituals, and falls in love with one of the Chief's daughters. The sequence shows children playing, men and women gathering and preparing food, attending traditional ceremonies, games and dances, interspersed with images of the unfolding and overwhelming attraction, proximity and love between Smith and Pocahontas. The crescendo ends with an emblematic and ambiguous call directed to the future Rebecca, and Smith's voice-over explaining his imminent return to James Town. In both instances, Malick's editing and direction emphasizes the artificial, cinematic relation with the events narrated.