Terrence Malick makes spiritual humanist films. He also decided to make this war film.

OK, "anti" war film. Whenever we watch an anti-war film the comment attributed to Truffaut comes up: "there's no such thing as an anti-war film". We don't entirely think that's true. We've seen spiritual and humanist anti-war films as recently as last week's episode that I would say achieve their goal. Unfortunately, as we discuss this week, American culture, particularly post WW2, may be so steeped in war that an American cannot make an anti-war film.

Still, Malick tries, and if the production stories are to be believed, it took quite a toll on him.