“Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life?”
Apocalypse Now is a remarkable movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola (the director of the Godfather movies), starring Martin Sheen. It is an appropriation of the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam war.
There were many ingenious uses of lighting and contrast in the film. For example, Kurtz’s face was always seen in some semblance of darkness, with only sections of his face illuminated. The only time we saw Kurtz’s face in full (albeit dim) light, it was disguised with camoflague paint. This represents the fractured psyche that Kurtz has and the fact that we only see parts of him, but never a whole man.
The phrase ‘fog of war’ is used very literally in this film. There seems to always be a coloured haze covering part of the scene. This accompanies sections of the film like the playboy scene where the army men are starved for female attention under the ‘fog of war’, the scene on the boat where Willard’s friends are wary of a Vietnamese boat they suspect is smuggling weapons. As well, the fog of war could apply to the rampant drug problem the soldiers experience in Vietnam
When Kurtz spoke his last words, ‘the horror’, I think he was speaking about not only the horror of the Vietnam war, but also the horror that is thrust upon every soldier that has to fight and for whom killing becomes an everyday action. I think Kurtz is mourning the loss of innocence for these everyday people torn out of their sheltered lives and placed at the front of a battle, as much as he is mourning all of the lives lost in the war.
He is also commenting on the chain of command and the narrow path soldiers are allowed to walk in the army. I see his going rogue as a testament to how repressed the army can be, and I believe this is why he converts every soldier that tries to assassinate him into one of his followers: the soldiers gain a sense of autonomy and freedom if they follow Kurtz. They start to subscribe to the primal instincts of human nature instead of the very orderly, secretive society that is the army.
As for the discussion about whether this film is pro- or anti-war, I believe that it is primarily an anti-war film. As much as the affiliation with or against war may be irrelevant to the themes shown in the film, I think that the character of Kurtz and his immense accomplishments within the army and his complete separation from his past self in favour of being an unbridled, self-determined man. We also see how dependent people become on the thrill of war, and how they even get used to the feelings they get while out in the field. None of these have positive outcomes, so I would say that Apocalypse Now is an anti-war film.
No comments:
Post a Comment