In "Apocalypse Now", the author is full of various binary discussions, as if the development of civilization is from one to another, from evil to good, from darkness to light, and war is the regression of human civilization. Or "backtracking".
But this kind of retrospect happens frequently, which makes people wonder whether war, as a means, is a tool for mankind to return to the past, and what mankind wants to do most besides eternal life is to return to the past, right?
Therefore, in addition to various moral images, war in Coppola’s films also seems to symbolize humans’ retrospect to time-of course humans cannot go back to objective time, but humans can re-experience the experience of childhood through certain tools. -If the development of civilization can be regarded as the growth of a person, here, the tool of choice for mankind is war or violence.
This sounds crazy, but Coppola keeps emphasizing in the movie, "You have two you, one to kill and one to love..." Modern civilization calls for the value of love on the one hand, and suppresses violence on the other. However, the violent side of humans has not disappeared. He just hides it, hidden in various secular norms. Through the collective behavior of war, the violent side of humans is released-because foreigners are not "humans." Therefore, for a long time, it is difficult for war to be constrained by the world.
If the image of "war as a human being's retrospective of time" is not clear, then war does amplify the ability of people to love and kill, then we may have another level of interpretation of Coppola's words. -War is a magnifying glass of human behavior.
For me, war is not just a magnifying glass, it is also a separator. In peacetime, love and violence are mixed together, darkness and light are mixed together, a person is a combination of different moral planes, but in wartime, a person is required to distinguish between love and hatred, and to be absolute for some people. To love, to hate other people absolutely, to show absolute light to some people, and to show absolute darkness to others-first of all, this is unscientific, it violates a person’s spiritual principles, and secondly It is impossible to do this. There has never been absolute love and absolute hatred in this world.
If you insist on doing this, if you insist on separating people's behavior, there will only be one result, and that is madness. So this is the conclusion that Coppola really wants: "War makes people crazy."
Nevertheless, I still cannot give up the unique image of "war as a human being's retrospective of time", even if Coppola did not deliberately express it. Because from the perspective of psychoanalysis, people always have an urge to go back to the past. He only needs a medium, which can be anything, but it’s best to be related to the past. For most people, this medium may be "children". Through their own children, people re-experience their childhood life, although the role played has been reversed.
But why is it "war"? Why can war also serve as a medium for people to go back to the past? I think the answer should be open, but in any case, war must provide something that a peaceful life cannot provide, such as violence, such as chaos-and these are the daily lives of many children, especially boys. We have already noticed the natural attraction of fighting and violence to boys. This attraction will still exist in another form after adulthood, such as a love of football and video games.
However, neither football nor video games can compare to real wars. In real wars, a person can experience the highest intensity of combat and violence, although this intensity is enough to overwhelm a person's nerves. However, there is another thing that a peaceful life cannot provide, and it is also the reason why people yearn for war, that is, a person can not take responsibility for his actions.
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