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98  may 1, 1999 A moral leadership that is to work must mobilize a following in the name of a virtue; it must both inspire and coerce. T hat obedience has to contend with instinct, Terrence Malick’s latest movie, The Thin Red Line, makes abundantly clear. It is the central psychological exploration in the film. American Marines are in far-off Guadalcanal Island to win a decisive battle with Japanese foes, who have established themselves in a commanding position. Below themarethejungle’swildsandthedesirousnewcomers,whoselandingwe behold, and who will have to risk death in order to uphold and complete their mission. The crocodile that figures at the start and the end of the film is meant to make a point about war and conquest, about human nature, and, indirectly, about leadership and its sometimes driving, demanding , relentless affirmation, whether it is pursued up a river in Africa (as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) or in the far Pacific near Australia. But leaders, by definition, have to come to terms with followers, and so those who affirm an intention have to obtain the consent of those whose deeds (their very lives sometimes in jeopardy) are to make the ideal real. This is an utter necessity if the dreams of planners are to be realized. (In the military, they are admirals, generals; in the business world, company  99 officers or, lower down, entrepreneurial bosses such as Conrad chose to give us in his tale of greed come to naught.) Malick wants to consider the risks attendant upon desire or greed as they get worked into a particular course of action. In this case the action is military—with all the human consequences of moral leadership implementedinaparticularsetting —namely,abattleforheight.Thosewiththe height of leaders who claim a military vision that is being implemented for the sake of a nation’s survival and strength ask others to fight for a height—so that the loftiness of a country, and of a fighting tradition (that of the Marine Corps) may be affirmed yet again, secured inch by inch on a selected, then directed, battlefield exertion. An ideal becomes an ordeal. Men die, and their buddies, friends hitherto at their side, must persist or risk the wrath of leaders quick to garb themselves in purpose, rules,mandates,urgencies,customs—themoralparaphernaliaofwartime. Unerringly, fiercely, and implacably, as befits a military story, a movie director gives us a psychoanalytic scenario worthy of Freud’s metapsychological theory-making: Eros and Thanatos live “naturally” on an island, butalsointhecontrivedorman-madeorartificialwaysofmilitaryengagement —even as the id of instinct and impulse, of yearning, of affection, of camaraderie with its attachments and bonds, has to meet the superego’s agreeable or nay-saying scrutiny (conscience alarmed or persuaded in the name of pieties), and also meet the muster of the ego’s watchfulness, its ever-present capability of critical examination, of assessing odds and determining this or that likelihood. A moral leadership that is to work must mobilize a following in the name of a virtue, a cause, an occasion. It mustbothinspireandcoerceothers,thosetwolinesofcommandworking together intimately. Malick reminds us that endangered warriors are tied together by affection (the id); but they also harbor the fear and grief, and 100  ultimately the anger, that accompany us when death threatens, takes away those we know, have grown to love and now lose. Our Marines figure out a way to win (the ego’s resiliency, canniness); our Marines are loyal (the superego) to their patron military tradition, to their country, and that being the case, they take orders, stick their necks out, stare vividly apparent, noisy, almost certain death in the face. The Thin Red Line tells of moral leadership that ultimately won’t give ground (officers have to shout, make clear their steady conviction, no matter what) and tells also of obedience or compliance or assent—what follows when what is proclaimed, ordered, gets taken to heart, gets believed , even when the clatter of a machine gun threatens not only bodies but the willing minds of followers that are essential for a victory. True, the jungle’s law opens and closes the movie—the alligator’s appetite; but military law, the ethical constraints of leadership as it gets passed down the ranks, also pervades the film. It is, in fact, its central subject of investigation. Fighting men, who must take orders, must contend with “mourning and melancholia,” Freud’s phrase become omnipresent. That psychoanalytic abstraction has to do with the...

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