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Francis Coppola's famous quote, "This is not a film ABOUT Vietnam; this
film IS Vietnam", gives revealing insight into the filmmaker's intentions
when making his visionary war epic, "Apocalypse Now".
From that statement it is not difficult to draw parallels between the film
and the war it sought to portray: both were overlong and costly; both began with a sense of purpose and ended with ambiguous, unsatisfying
resolutions; and both displayed a surreality borne of a nasty little war
which simply could not be won under the absurd conditions imposed.
This absurdity is aptly highlighted by Lt. Colonel Kilgore's self-satisfied
statement, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning".
It is not by accident that towards the end of the film, the mad, renegade Colonel Kurtz read passages from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"; without
being specific, here are a few from the poem: "Shape without form, shade
without colour...Paralysed force, gesture without motion...Those who have
crossed with direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom...Remember us - if at
all - not as lost...Violent souls... but only as the hollow men...the
stuffed men...In this last of meeting places...We grope together...And
avoid speech...Gathered on this beach of the tumid river" - ("Mistah Kurtz-
he dead" - 1925).
"If all war is hell, then the Vietnam War was a patently absurd one" is
the statement I believe Mr. Coppola attempted to make in "Apocalypse Now".- AudioHead
as much as I love "Applesauce Now", this documentary is by far the best filmaking I've ever seen. It's the real deal. To see "Apocalpyse" without seeing the making of it, is like trying to visualize a donut without the hole.as a side note: when I went to see Applesauce in the Warner theater in downtown Pittsburgh (huge old theater with two balconys--the only way to see film), the only seats left were right in the front row (I guess there were 3000 people there that night). Directly behind me were 8 GI's, dressed in their jungle suits. The ad-libs they had more than made up for the sore kneck I had from looking straight-up at a 40 foot tall screen for 153 minuites.
Years later I met a guy who designs toys for Disney (he also did the Transformers line). We were both into hang gliding big time, and became fast friends. I asked him about his life once. Of all the things he told me, the least interesting was the two tours he did as a gunner on one of those river boats you see in the movie. Some people live--everyone else is alseep.
Hi,
Apocalypse Now (AN) was a great movie for it's day. It's still good, as far as i am concerned. The thing that i love is that it is the obvious standard for 'nam. But they can't admit it. Read a review of most of the literature and movies covering Nam, by a vet, in the Atlantic once. The guy
had little good to say about AN. But he referred back to it as a reference
in almost every paragraph. This movie hits a simple, awful truth. Like
a car wreck, you can't look away, can't admit your involvement. It's been over 20 years and i still remember the hair on the back of my neck standing
up when the sound stopped in the river battle.
There is a Vietnam vet that gave it a good review on Internet Movie Database site; however, I can see why it wouldn't go over well with some
vets. "Apocalypse Now" is unerringly accurate about some essential truths
of the Vietnam War, even if not accurate about various details; that's why
it hits a nerve with some vets. We have Truman and his doctrine for setting the stage for that mess; Eisenhower for funding the French and committing advisors; JFK for starting the initial troop and arms buildup;
Johnson for escalating that buildup; Nixon for maintaining that buildup and
letting things drag on and on and on. It was an exercise in absurdity,
something I'd like to forget, but "Apocalypse Now" won't let me. - AH
No offense, AH, but I liked petew's now-deceased review better.Tom §.
P.S. I almost burst when I heard the news that the DVD was coming down the pike.
No offense taken Tom; there were so many excellent reviews that covered
it from many different angles and depths at the Internet Movie Database
(IMDB) site, that I didn't have a whole lot to add; but of course, I
wanted to throw my 2 cents worth in. What essentially, did Petew have
to say about the film, if you don't mind me asking? I'm always like to
hear opinions and insights on movies I like a lot. - AH
It was a conglomerate of an amp review, an epic story of sardines in a can, a tour of dilapidated buildings, oogling audio gear, meeting shamu's cousins, and a survey of what is wrong with the world on the whole. The horror.....the horror........Tom §.
nt
The dolby digital sound on the DVD will never compare with the uncompressed PCM on the LD........
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