All things shining

My favourite film is Terrence Malick's WWII masterpiece The Thin Red Line. Set during the Pacific War as the Americans attempt to take Guadalcanal, the film gives voice to the inner thoughts of many characters.

When watching it again recently I noticed fragments of Malick's ecletic Christian worldview. For instance after raiding a Japanese camp and killing or capturing all the enemy soldiers the most spiritual character, Private Witt, contemplates the fractured nature of the world:

We were a family. How did it break up and come apart so that now we're turned against each other, each standing in the other's light? 

How did we lose the good that was given us, let it slip away, scattered, careless? What's keeping us from reaching out, touching the glory?

Towards the end Witt leads a company of Japanese soldiers away from his unit before sacrificing himself in the face of overwhelming odds. In the final scene the film closes with a shot of new life against a voiceover from Witt's character reflecting on the glory of creation:

Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light--are they the workings of one mind, features of the same face? 

Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. 

All things shining.