What does one say about a film that makes napalm and purple haze look beautiful and yet still takes a critical view of war? How does one unpack a story with so much detail? I’m not exactly sure but I’ll try…
Last night was not my first experience with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now but it was the first time I’ve watched it from beginning to end. My immediate reaction was that I was overwhelmed at how masterfully this story was told. I was impressed that a film could contain so much detail in regards to cinematography, lighting, characters, style, scenery, etc. and yet it all comes together in a great, cohesive narrative. What’s more, all these elements combined create a mood that I’ve never experienced in any other “war movie.” For now, however, I’d just like to focus on a few of these elements.
For one thing, I loved the way Coppola used background noise to create mood. Whether it was the sound helicopters, gunfire, or voices of people yelling and crying, the incessant background noise created a tension about the film. It was not till about halfway through that I realized that this was what made me recognize that tension. Another element of the film that greatly impressed me was how much depth of personality was conveyed through the characters. As a result, they were not just some group of soldiers they can be lumped together. They were not five of the same guys fighting the same war during which time four of them would receive “Dear John” letters and the fifth one would die in some epically emotional scene because, well, his girlfriend was actually waiting for him to come home. On the contrary, the fact that these men were fighting together did not immediately unite them. Nor did they discard the person they were before the war. The first scene on the boat is a great example of this: there’s Tyrone “Mr. Clean” Miller, (Lawrence Fishburne) who pretty much just wants to be the seventeen year old boy he is. Then there is “Chef” (Fredrick Forrest) the terrified man who would probably rather be home cooking. And Lance Johnson, (Sam Bottoms) the famous surfer from Cali who still surfers, sunbathes, and abuses drugs while serving in the war. Clearly none of these men what to be soldiers; they are a stark contrast with Martin Sheen’s character Captain Willard who has committed himself to a potentially hopeless mission.
So many elements of Apocalypse Now create a unique mood, especially for a film of this genre. However, the use of background noise and the roles of the characters were what impressed me the most. The juxtaposition of the other soldiers with Captain Willard is brilliant. It is, at times, somewhat comical but overall it is very profound. Some scenes can be terrible while many others are amusing or even beautiful and yet one does not miss Coppola’s criticism of war.
Apocalypse Now Movie Photo [Captin Willard]. Digital image. Http://www.flickr.com. 6 Aug. 2006. Paramount Pictures. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/divxplanet/2739408457/>.
3 comments:
Ok so this movie was a mix of hit and miss, and by mix I mean that there were only two parts of the film that were hit and the rest of the film should have been washed out like Galveston in the 1900 hurricane. Who doesnt LOVE Col. Kilgore? The only thing standing between he and I living in perpetual bliss is reality, but maybe by my mid-seventies I can persue my romantic fiction while I fade in and out of senility. The other great part is where Marlon Brando tells the story about the people cutting off the children's arms after the children had been innoculated for polio, I found this story to be particularly inspiring: a true tale of survivalism and the sense not to trust your health to the U.S. Military. This story is similar to the incidents involving the military's anthrax vaccine of the current.
As far as the rest of the movie, I cannot extend to my fans and readers the intensity of the boredom that this movie exudes. For one thing, the characters, except Kilgore, are so boring. When the die, no one watching can be coerced to care. Like when Mr. Clean dies, you're left thinking, so what? He's so hopped up on drugs now, just think what havoc he's going to wreak on the welfare system once he gets back to the Bronx. But all the ancillary characters, as boring as they are, are so much more sentilating than the main character Willard. Even if Willard was played by a capable actor, the movie would still be lacking on this point.
About 3/4ths of the way through the film I realized that the river was a very symbolic device...it symbolized the plot line: shallow, slow moving, winding, washing out to sea, and every time the characters get out of the boat and onto land, they leave the plot line behind.
This movie was not about war, this movie was about how poorly you can make a movie, a script, a screen play, and how terrible you can cast a movie and STILL get academy awards etc.
I didnt get ANY mood watching this movie. In fact, in my moodlessness, I think I returned to a sort of fetal mental state in which my mind was simply overcome by the boredom of nothing happening that I can't remember any feeling of any kind.
There is no story going on here, there are no events. If you watch the end credits only you will have a better idea of what the movie was trying to portray than if you actually watch the movie.
I'll tell you of a war movie that creates tons more mood, has a plot line, and intriguing characters: Star Wars. SW is incredibly low budget, but they hired a cinematorgrapher to "Zoom in" and "zoom out" rather than just have a videographer pan across the rain forest for the millionth time. In SW, the scenery required artistry to build and film rather than using purple and orange smoke and an obvious fog machine spewing out fog from under a cambodian woman's butt. Watching my cat's play-fight I get a better glimpse into a protrayal of the darkness of the human psyche shown through the lense of a modern guerilla war.
I saw Apocalypse Now for the first time during my second year of undergrad. I immediately liked the requisite "cool" scenes: Martin Sheen's drunken dancing, the "terminate with extreme prejudice" line, Lance water skiing, and of course every moment of Col. Kilgore (not with quite the intensity that niamh does). However, after a second viewing, one does get the impression that the cool scenes were the memorable vignettes in a film that much of the time gets lost in its own sense of epic-ness. Reading about the trials and tribulations Coppola endured to produce it, it can seem very much like art imitating life. This is not to say that the film doesn't portray the madness and loss of reason in war. Nor does it cease to effectively mirror its roots in Heart of Darkness, it does. I think though that unlike Heart of Darkness, the individual scenes do not stand on their own without the aid of wide camera shots of the boat/river/jungle, or smoke/fog shrouded views of the PBR. As a viewer, I'm not convinced of the surrealness of the plot world.
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