Film/Viewer Interaction in Apocalypse Now

1530 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Creative writing of war

“The horror... the horror...”- Colonel Kurtz

are the last lines of Apocalypse Now, the Francis Ford Coppola directed war-film masterpiece, which truly explores horror. Typical war films, like Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket or Boulle’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, follow the camaraderie of a protagonist and his unit and their struggles that build up to a violent and climactic confrontation where both sides sustain losses to illustrate the tragedy of war. Apocalypse Now is different; there are only two moments of brief violence that the main character participates in and he rarely talks with anyone else. The real conflict of the movie is in the mind of the viewer and not on the screen. Apocalypse Now succeeds in its goal of bringing the audience’s minds into the insanity of war through hauntingly beautiful cinematography paired with an effective soundtrack to create a surreality and delayed editing to cause a desire for violence.

The opening sequence sets the stage for the surreality and subjectivity of the picture and sound of Apocalypse Now. Initially, helicopters fly over a palm beach in slow motion. Rotor blades beat much too slowly to be those of a life-speed helicopter. The viewer can immediately distinguish this as indicative of a dreamlike perception because common expectations suggest that life runs at normal speed and thus film of real life do the same. This gives the sequence a surreal feeling. Smoke, stirred by the helicopters, drifts subtly; elegantly; leisurely. However, the shoreline soon erupts into mini mushroom clouds of napalm fire. Still in slow-motion, it appears to the viewer both artful and fascinating. A normal shocked reaction to the destruction is suppressed in favor of wonder because of the films illuso...

... middle of paper ...

...s both beautifully illustrates the disgusting and senseless violence of war (since certainly the viewers look inside themselves and find some unwarranted craving for the violence) and how close to human nature that war really is. Instead of showing a war and its brutal outcome to conclude at the cliché moral of “war is bad for everyone,” Apocalypse Now attempts (and succeeds) to take an opposite perspective. It convinces the viewer that “war is good” so that when they* find themselves believing it, they* also find it contradicting their conventional notions and they* must examine why we really fight. As soon as we stop inherently trusting our own perceptions, with only a few hours of pictures and sound, Copolla first elicits the violent tendencies of his audience, and then shows them a picture of those horrors. The picture is a mirror and “the horror” is within us.

Show More
Related

  • A Comparison Of Dr. Strangelove And Slaughterhouse-Five

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    War is seen as a universal concept that often causes discomfort and conflict in relation to civilians. As they are a worrying universal event that has occurred for many decades now, they posed questions to society about human's nature and civilization. Questions such as is humanity sane or insane? and do humans have an obsession with destruction vs creation. These questions are posed from the two anti-war texts; Dr Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick and Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut.

    Read More

  • Comparing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now

    2092 Words  | 5 Pages

    Urch, Martin. Apocalypse Now: A film review by Martin Urch http://us.imdb.com/Reviews/30/3030 created 1994 (accessed 29 Jan. 2000).

    Read More

  • Apacolypse Now

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    The movie “Apocalypse Now”, directed by Francis Coppola, is based on Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness. The movie has to do with survival, obsession, and finding ones self. The inclination of this paper is to let the reader get a better understanding of how Captain Willard (the main character) goes through survival, obsession, and courage while trying to hunt down Kurtz.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse Five: A Warning Against War

    1727 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...Slaughterhouse Five, serves as much more than a just a Sci-Fi element in a war novel; it is a portal into the nonsensical and destructive nature of war meant to invite the reader to adopt an active stance against war. The realities of war have long been tainted by history, retailing the brutal events as a saviour’s tale full of honour, glory and patriotism. However, the truth sits far away from the textbooks and scholars. Those who have marched, fought and survived that blood thirsty, chaotic development can testify to its destructiveness. However, the absurdity and trauma causes scars that lay in deep ravines logic cannot reach. Therefore, Vonnegut resources to a parallel planet, as his only means of explaining the unexplainable, in hopes of unveiling war's folly and shake his readers into action so that Earth does not become a planet full of futile toilet plungers.

    Read More

  • Review of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried and Unbroken: Comprehending the Incomprehensible Pain of War

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    Individuals everywhere grimace at war. Images of the strike of the gun, the burst of the bombs, and the clash of the soldiers all elicit a wince and a shiver. Moviegoers close their eyes during gory battle scenes and open them again only once the whine of the bullets stops rattling in their ears. War is hell, as the common aphorism goes, and the pain of war is equally hellish. Most individuals naturally accept this conclusion despite never experiencing war themselves. Without enduring the actual pain of war injuries, individuals still argue the importance war and its miseries. Individuals rely on media and entertainment for education about the suffering and evils of war. Writers provide an acute sense of a soldier’s physical and mental burdens through vivid imagery and relatable metaphors. Books can express the seemingly inexpressible pain of war through graphic descriptions. Individuals may then assess war—its how and why, its causes and effects—with greater insight. The writer may use the audience’s acquired understanding of war’s pain to address the significance of suffering. Through the clarity and horror of war descriptions, a writer may successfully convey the pain of war and his or her perspective and purpose to a general audience. Through the use of startling imagery, both Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried and Laura Hillenbrand in Unbroken effectively recreate the pain of war for an audience which could not otherwise fathom its magnitude. However, while O’Brien uses his descriptions to criticize the evils which cause the pain, Hillenbrand employs her equally vivid images to praise the resilience which results from the pain.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of “The Sniper”

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...dusk. War takes away what makes people who they are and turns them into savage beasts that will do anything it takes to ensure they survive. Even if it means they have to take the life of an elderly woman who in everyday life could do no harm. The point of view of the story takes away the emotional aspect and really fits the theme of the story. It seems like how one would think in war because it’s all straight to the point, the character will do whatever is necessary to ensure survival. The style gets the reader on edge and keeps them reading on hoping to find out what happens. The structure builds with intensity until the climax that has a surprise ironic twist. This was a great short story that not only kept me engaged while reading, but made me walk away with a better sense of how humans can be in a time of crisis and the negative effects than can come with war.

    Read More

  • The Truth About War Revealed in the Film, The Thin Red Line

    2138 Words  | 5 Pages

    Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) is a film that examines the Guadalcanal Battle of World War II, looking past the physical results of the violence, in order to uncover the deeper truths and ramifications of war. The film conveys themes and ideologies that are somewhat uncommon to war films, especially WW II films. In this dark, surreal, journey, Malick takes us inside the minds of soldiers experiencing this battle to capture a remote pacific island from the Japanese. We do not hear or see gruff, hardened soldiers, anxious to die for their country. In fact, there are no heroes in The Thin Red Line. There are only regular men, scared of fighting and scared of dying, who have been thrown into a situation that will forever change their lives. The fighting is not suspenseful or glorious just brutal. Using an ideological approach to the study of film, this paper will examine The Thin Red Line’s messages about the truths of war, and how it challenges our society’s stereotypical view of war as a valiant undertaking where brave men fighting for good battle the evil of the enemy. Consequently, the ideologies that are uncovered will then be used to look at The Thin Red Line as a war film, and how it fits and does not fit into the genre.

    Read More

  • Setting Comparison in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

    1340 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.” This is the last line of the book Heart of Darkness and it summed up the setting and tone of the book. Apocalypse Now is an epic war film made in 1979 set in Vietnam directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on the book Heart of Darkness. The settings of both the book and the movie are very different; they take place in completely different places. However, their effects are very similar to each other and shown in a variety of ways: in character development, cultural aspects, as well as thematically.

    Read More

  • War and Memory in Irene Zabytko?s ?Home Soil?, Bruce Weigl?s ?Song of Napalm?, and Wilfred Owen?s ?Dulce et Decorum Est?

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.

    Read More

  • The Trauma of War Conveyed in Ninh's Short Story, A Marker on the Side of the Boat and the Film, Barbed Wire and Mandolins

    1810 Words  | 4 Pages

    War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.

    Read More

  • Comparison Of Conrad's Heart Of Darkness And Apocalypse Now

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    The aim of this work is a comparison between the novel "Heart of Darkness" and "Apocalypse Now," Francis F. Coppola film loosely adapted from the novel by Conrad. “Apocalypse Now” was performed as film based on the text of Conrad and placing it in the context of the Vietnam War. Although several elements were added, such as characters and situations that are not in the text, the film reflects in many ways “Heart of Darkness” in the history and development. Adapting the work of Conrad, many abstract things that are not in the text, jump to the screen. In other words, text transformation into visual representation vision adds a vision of evil in men, the fear of death, nostalgia for the home, etc. The film has

    Read More

  • Expression of the Opposing Sides in All Quiet On The Western Front by Remarque and Generals Die in Bed by Harrison

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceived notion about the indoctrination, "the enemy" and the "rights and wrongs" of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and perplexed. The story is not about heroism but about toil and futility and the divide between the idea of war and the real life and its values. The selected passages are full of violence and death and loss and a kind of perpetual suffering and terror that most of us have never and hopefully will never experience. Both authors ability to place the reader right there on the front line with the main character so vividly, not just in terms of what he physically experienced and witnessed All the complicated, intense and often completely numbed emotions that came along...

    Read More

  • Coping with War: A Comparison Between Slaughterhouse Five and A Farewell to Arms

    1622 Words  | 4 Pages

    Earnest Hemmingway once said "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." (Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference) War is a gruesome and tragic thing and affects people differently. Both Vonnegut and Hemmingway discus this idea in their novels A Farewell to Arms and Slaughterhouse Five. Both of the novels deal not only with war stories but other genres, be it a science fiction story in Vonnegut’s case or a love story in Hemingway’s. Despite all the similarities there are also very big differences in the depiction of war and the way the two characters cope with their shocking and different experiences. It is the way someone deals with these tragedies that is the true story. This essay will evaluate how the main characters in both novels deal with their experiences in different ways.

    Read More

  • Violence in Cinema

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ion allows the film to exist unto itself with its totality defined by distinctive (independent) subjectivity. Like in many of his other movies, Kubrick litters Full Metal Jacket with symbolism and metaphor, but these directorial techniques need not be examined to enjoy or understand the plot of the movie. Although the split nature of the film expounds upon both the ability of the viewer to concentrate and be distracted by representations (logic vs. overriding emotion), it is also an exhibit for the dualist nature of man, i.e., the final marching chant. The use of a Disney song in any respect implies an association to innocence and good-will; applying it as a closing scene in a sequence that is dominated by a tirade of destruction is a more obvious symbolic gesture on Kubrick’s part. Can man be both malicious & peaceful? Or is man both? Through making both explicit distinctions and connections between mercy and vengeance in the human condition as evidenced in Full Metal Jacket as the preparation for (1st half) and execution of technique (2nd half) when existing in a war-state, Kubrick illustrates the disjunctive corollary (1st half & 2nd half) that war is organized chaos.

    Read More

More about Film/Viewer Interaction in Apocalypse Now

Open Document