Malick and Transcendence Terrence Malick: Term Paper

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" The narrator of the film asks: "What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself, the land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature?" Because it is a war film set during the Battle of Guadalcanal, the film explores the meaning of death and acts as a meditation on death much in the same way Christian eschatology contemplates the Four Last Things. In this sense, Malick's Thin Red Line explores themes similar to those explored by Whitman and recognizes the need for spiritual transcendence in a world obsessed with death.

Likewise, just as Emily Dickinson represents the force and power of eternity in "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," so too does Malick in the Tree of Life. Dickinson writes in her poem of her understanding of immortality: "Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet / Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses' Heads / Were toward Eternity -- " and Malick attempts to do as much by illustrating the relationship of life, death and eternity through the representation of a family as the focal point of a narrative that spans the creation and death of the universe. While Dickinson's poem is small and simple, Malick's film is enormous in scope.

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But he uses poetic images and music to express the over-arching theme of Tree of Life, which is that though we walk in the shadow of death, our souls are not doomed to die. Preisner's "Lacrimosa" accompanies the segment representing the creation of the world, literally reminding one that tears water the seeds of life. An excerpt from Smetana's "The Moldau River" adds a dimension of joy to the innocent days of youth. And Berlioz's "Agnus Dei" at the end of the film when the dead are brought to the shore of eternity places a poignant and subtle emphasis on the transcendent philosophy and Christian theology at work in the depths of Tree of Life.

In conclusion, Terrence Malick is a modern artist who represents the transcendental ideals of the American transcendentalists like Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and Dickinson. In the Thin Red Line he shows the need to strengthen one's soul against one's surroundings and rise above them, as Thoreau implies in "Civil Disobedience." In both the Thin Red Line and the Tree of Life, Malick shows the connectedness and unity of all things, as Emerson describes, as well as the struggle in Nature, as Whitman sees it. And like Dickinson, he reflects the fact of immortality.

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