If "2001: A Space Odyssey" is the ultimate science fiction film, then "Apocalypse Now" is the ceiling of war films.
one. Doomsday Judgment in "Revelation"
From the perspective of its ancient Greek etymology, ἀποκάλυψις is composed of two parts: απο (leave) and καλύπτω (concealed). Si (Ὀδυσσεύς) is related to Calypso (Καλυψώ), the “goddess of the goddess” who “hidden” on Augustie Island for seven years. It can be seen that revelation is literally translated as "leave hidden", that is, "unmasking", which reveals "true" (αλήθεια). Both Xunzi and Heidegger have different interpretations of this. This year (2021) happens to be the 45th anniversary of Heidegger’s death. Putting aside the moral evaluation of his character, Heidegger is a pioneer of intellectuals reflecting on the crisis of modernity. He said, “In the age of technology, the gods Why must they escape? Because the gods must stay in a place out of reach of a person, with darkness and shelter as the prerequisite."
The key word of the "Revelation" in the "Bible" is "the last judgment" at the "end of the world". The guilty will be judged and be punished completely destructively. The typical guilt culture is similar to that of Colonel Kurz. The accused "judgement" is connected, "you have a right to kill me, but you have no right to judge me" "it's judgement that defeats us". It can be said that there are four levels of trials in the movie: 1. The trial of Colonel Kurz by the US military (CIA); 2. The trial of Vietnam by the US military; 3. Wilder's trial of himself; 4. The trial of human civilization by war. . The only scene where "Apocalypse Now" appears directly in the film is the motto painted with white paint on the stone walls of historic sites in Colonel Kurz's Kingdom of Cambodia. The jungle and the shores of the Mekong River are called "the asshole of the world" by the soldiers.
There is no lack of movies with the theme of Revelation in film history. Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" is an example. In this film, God is in aphasia and absence, and death is the only true god, which is reminiscent. To the famous Valyrian word "Valar Morghulis" in "Game of Thrones" (all mortals are mortal).
two. The absurd essence of the Vietnam War
The Peloponnesian War in the classical period was the biggest turbulence in history (κίνησις) in Thucydides's writings. It was not only a military contest, but also a political ideological dispute, but also order, faith, and soul. The level of disorder. The war that accompanies human civilization is still like this after thousands of years, and Thucydides's hope of writing "Treasure of Eternity" has not come to an end.
However, the reason the United States started the Vietnam War was a puzzle of "the answer is blowing in the wind", which particularly puzzled Vietnam soldiers and ordinary people. The most paradoxical thing is that the U.S. military won almost all the battles in the Vietnam battlefield, but finally lost the entire battle. war. The U.S. sent more than 500,000 troops to the Indo-China Peninsula. After ten years and more than 400 billion funds, the "honorable retreat" (returning without success) resulted in the fall of Saigon and the collapse of the South Vietnamese military government due to lack of U.S. military assistance. However, the U.S. expected The "domino" effect in China did not appear, and communism did not expand further in Southeast Asia, but the war brought tears and anger within American society.
The Vietnam War was a partnership between the establishment and military beneficiary groups in the United States to intervene in military operations in Vietnam. They sent and discarded thousands of young people in the "slaughterhouse"-the Indochina Peninsula. Kling (Growing up to play Morpheus holding the red and blue pills in The Matrix) is a 17-year-old boy from a black slum. When he was shot to death, the tapes sent by his relatives were still playing, Violet Colored smoke and mist haunted the boat for a long time.
In 1967, the civil rights activist Martin Luther King publicly condemned the U.S. government’s Vietnam policy in his speech "Outside Vietnam": "The Vietnam War is only a sign of a deeper malaise in the American spirit." Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.). Similarly, Gunhua hissed and mocked in "Civil War": "It feeds the rich while it buries the poor, your power hungry selling soldiers, in a human grocery store, ain't that fresh?" I want to ask the American authorities, is human flesh fresh?
In the film "The Last Supper" scene, the French tells the truth about "While you Americans are fighting for the biggest nothing in history". The colonial history of France in Indochina is intricate, and one or two can be learned from the popular Saigon love story written by Duras. The French fought in Vietnam for their historical status and the land of their ancestors, but the military intervention of the Americans was meaningless, and even the Viet Cong itself was established with the support of the Americans. ) The yolk (yellow species, that is, Vietnamese) is still there. Therefore, the French referred to Vietnamese soldiers as "Les Soldats Perdus", that is, the lost soldiers (The Lost Soldiers). The mental state of the writer-"The Lost Generation" has the same effect, and Hemingway has the most say in "You are all a lost generation." The film said "The war will be still here tomorrow" through the mouth of a French woman. At the beginning of the short story "In Another Country", Hemingway lightly wrote "In the fall the war was always there". War is the biggest in society. Turbulence is the biggest "change", but what is "unchanged" is that it seems to be there every day, in the tension between "change" and "unchanged", and the war seems to be endless. But just as Colonel Kilgore said with a little regret in the film: "Someday this war is gonna end." Naturally, all things have been sentenced to death, and all things have an end, and war is no exception. This is an inevitability. , I still remember the priestess in "The Matrix" said: "Everything that has a beginning, has an end."
three. From Beginning to End
Following the idea of "The Matrix", beginning and end are also important breakthroughs in the interpretation of the film. The category of "Apocalypse Now" can be jokingly called the sister version of the road movie-the "Waterway" movie. The Wilder group in the naval patrol boat has become the epitome of the entire American society. There are differences in class and skin color, but they are all "grasshoppers on the same boat" (in the same boat).
The river is a vital metaphor in the film. The Mekong River connects the beginning and the end. Willard’s behavior of tracing the source in order to perform the task is very philosophical metaphor, just like Odysseus in "Odyssey", trying to find where he came from Come and where to go, this is the process of complete self-recognition. The film can be called a "personal Odyssey", Bill's correction is like a cyclop, the bunny girl is like a seductive siren banshee, it is indeed a hodgepodge of symbolism.
In addition, the film also mentions Heraclitus’ dialectical philosophy on rivers, "Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?" "Yeah.'Cause it's always moving." Only "change" is eternal "Changeless.
At the same time, the river is often used as the image of the separation of life and death. There are many Styx in ancient Greek mythology. All the oaths in the name of Styx (Hate) cannot be cancelled. Even the Olympians God is no exception, and Gong Chiron is here to cross the soul into the underworld. The Mekong in the film can also be seen as a river leading to the underworld, to the cold and dim Hades residence. The hell on the earth along the journey is the same as the giant snakes and beasts guarding the underworld, and to the end of the river-Chur In this kingdom, people seem to be in a pure soul state, that is, the most true and thorough evil.
The iconic feature of highway movies is stage. The whole film can be roughly divided into four stages:
1. The legion headed by Colonel Bill is full of morale, eager for victory, and permeates the thrill and ecstasy of war;
2. The playboy bunny girl condolences the carnival feast of the US military, full of primitive instincts of sexual desire and destructive desire;
3. On the front line of the hell of the covered bridge, the U.S. military has become a war machine regardless of the enemy or the enemy;
4. Realize the primitive evil of human nature (φύσις) in primitive society.
The bunny girl is worth thinking about. "Make Love Not War" is an anti-war slogan of hippies, but for the Vietnam War and the U.S. military, which has become a symbol of madness, sex and violence are basically the same thing. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, human eroticism (Eros) is a natural impulse and desire, if not controlled, it will bring terrible consequences.
Colonel Kurz said: "Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared." Phoebus (Φόβος), a symbol of the fear brought about by war, Mr. Luo Niansheng translated it as "flight", "like the murderous Ares on the battlefield, accompanied by his powerful son, who flees fearlessly, can make Fighting warriors flee.” (Iliad, Volume 13, Lines 298-300), Hesiod’s “The Book of Gods” stated that Phobos was the god of war Ares and Kutheria (the god of love) The son of Frodite's alias, the original combination of war and eros is also in line with the madness of carnival feast.
There is also a level of phasing: Lance-Willard-Kurz, the perceptions of the three are also advancing:
1. "Unknowingly" type, Lance is still a surf star like a dude who just entered the battlefield, who treats the battlefield as a more fun vacation than Disney;
2. In the "later perception" type, Willard suffered the mental torture of PTSD during R and R. In order to perform the task of killing Kurz, after returning to the Indochina Peninsula again, he could clearly feel a kind of A sense of emptiness and absurd contradiction, but his deep understanding of war was only realized after the intersection with the French;
3. "Foresight" type, Colonel Kurz is in a state of "snail on the edge of a razor", like the Heath Ledger version of Joker said, "Madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push."
Willard took Lance away when he left Kurz's kingdom. Director Coppola explained in contrast: "We have driven our children crazy, we should bring them back and heal them." The devil drills. Into the innocent skin of young people, adults should be more responsible, because their world is full of wars, bombs and nonsense.
The film does not specifically portray Colonel Kurz's psychological transformation from a war hero to a king of the jungle, but it is not difficult to understand from the experience of Willard and his party upstream. Fear accompanies them all the way, but in the initial form of human society, that is, in the primitive kingdom of Kurz, what they find is not tranquility, but still mass killings and violence, corpses everywhere, bloodthirsty and brutal. , Absolute evil has been given absolute power.
Human nature is how a person is in a natural state. Judgment of good and evil based on this is the basis of political philosophy. We cannot deny that violence and evil are part of free will. Both thorough good and thorough evil are also inhumane. The most important thing is the right to choose morality. This is also the sword of Anthony Burgess and Kubrick in "A Clockwork Orange" Try to pass slantingly.
The 1983 Nobel Prize winner William Golding's masterpiece "Lord of the Flies" also symbolizes the ancient and inevitable evil. This work vividly displays barbarism, instinct and The process of totem worship defeating civilization, reason, and Christian faith. At the end of the novel, Ralph "sorrows for the annihilation of childlike innocence and the darkness of human nature." The bloodthirsty and fearful nature has become a powerful force that governs the transformation of children.
Modern people are full of thirst for knowledge and domination, claiming to be "the primate of all things", but they don't know their own boundaries. War destroys civilization and alienates people's hearts. We are as violent and cruel as primitive tribes, and we also advocate the justice of the strong, but we are dressed in the cloak of civilization. So what is the substantial difference between modern and primitive societies? Perhaps, human beings never progress.
As for the term "end", the beginning and end of the movie uniquely adopted the famous song "The End" by The Doors, "All the children are insane." The Vietnam War itself is like a psychedelic drug. And a rock concert, the tone of the film is absurd and crazy, in the misty Mekong wonderland, filled with the ritual madness of Bacchus, full of the destructiveness of destroying individuals, coupled with Morrison’s psychedelic The voice and Manzac's seductive keyboard were dreamlike, as if they were crazy and obsessed with LSD, just wanting to be naked and howling hysterically.
Jim Morrison is a wild poet. He was obsessed with the works of Nietzsche, Rimbaud, and Kerouac in his early years. The Doors was named after Aldous Huxley (Aldous Huxley, whose grandfather was a well-known evolutionary supporter Thomas Henry Huxley) published in 1954 a book about hallucinogens-"The Doors of Perception" (The Doors of Perception), and the title of this book came from William Blake (William Blake) “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” (If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.) As a "psychic", Rimbaud enters the unknown and creates verses with the help of the power of subconscious and fantasy.
At the end of the film, it also seems to open a door of perception (θύρα), leading to the most primitive evil (κακός). This is the end of the journey of seeking roots and the end of human civilization in a state of war.
Four. "We are hollow people"
There are many scenes in the film that expose or suggest the sense of disillusionment, emptiness, and tearing of modern people.
On the first leg of the journey, a pastor read "Matthew 6:9-13". When he said "Give us this day our daily bread", the camera cut to a cow that was taken to the sky by a helicopter, namely Food for the US army, and cattle as a victim were slaughtered at the end of the religious ceremony. This and Willard slashing Kurz, who was a victim of the Vietnam War, was edited into a meaningful cross-montage. Hemingway also used this prayer in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", except that all content words rich in Christian meaning were replaced with "nada", that is, "nothing" in Spanish. ：Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada. The Christian faith was bombarded with irrational warfare. Due to the absence of divinity, the world lost its foundation of existence, the traditional value system declined, modern civilization was on the verge of collapse, and Westerners became "hollow people."
Colonel Kurz's refusal to "judge" is actually a refusal of "meaning". Sitting in the bronze side backlight, holding a book of poems in his hand, he said in a hoarse voice: "We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men , leaning together at place filled with straw. Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass or a rat's feet over broken glass in a dry cellar. Shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force , gesture without motion. "The hollow men" by TSEliot has no heart, no soul, no faith, and the mind is full of straw, paralyzed and powerless, and the spiritual dilemma of modern people is revealed It's so vivid and vivid. Interestingly, the first sentence of the introduction to "The Hollow Man" is "Mistah Kurtz— he dead.", Mr. Kurtz here is no one else but the colonel himself. The allusion is from Joseph Conrad's modernist novel " "Dark Heart", and "Apocalypse Now" happened to be adapted from this novel. It just transplanted the Congo River to the Mekong River, from the hinterland of Africa to the hinterland of the Indochina Peninsula, and from the colonial era to the Vietnam War.
This poem hints at the death of Colonel Kurz. He also only asks for a death, but he refuses moral judgment and value judgment. To a certain extent, Colonel Kurz “suicide”. The main text of "The Myth of Sisyphus" In one sentence, "there is only one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Willard commented on Kurz: "He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken. up and ripped apart.” (He broke with them, and then broke with himself. I have never seen a person so isolated and ripped apart.) It can be seen that when Kurz examined the world and himself , It is extremely painful to find that the rest of his life is not worth living. The ending of "Hollow Man" repeats the "end" three times, not only in response to the film's classic piece-"The End" by The Gate Band, but also in the "Revelation" which shows a strong sense of doomsday, "This is the way the world ends" , not with a bang but a whimper."
five. A Restricted View of American Social Culture
There is no lack of social and cultural exhibitions in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.
After leaving Colonel Kilgore’s jurisdiction, the U.S. Army broadcasted a song (one of the British invasion F4) "Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones dedicated to the infantry regiment of "Big Sam", accompanied by "Heart of Heart". "The arsonist" Mick Jagger's provocative and sexy voice, along with Keith Richards' blues rhythm guitar riff, Klin dancing on the boat, and Lance surfing passionately behind the boat, added a lot of pleasure and rebellion to the movie sex. In 1965, the Rolling Stone single album "Satisfaction" turned out and quickly reached the top of the US charts. The band members turned from young Londoners to rock stars overnight. Among the "500 Greatest Songs in History" selected by "Rolling Stone" magazine at the end of 2004, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" ranked second (the first is of course "Like a Rolling Stone"! Belongs to "Imagine"). The song was so praised, largely because they burst out and shouted out the cynical voice of the younger generation. They couldn’t wait to grab the right to speak from the previous generation, and were extremely disappointed with everything around them, because "I can't get no satisfaction~"
After the bridge, a newspaper about Charles Manson appeared in the camera for a few seconds, "Charles Miller Manson ordered the slaughter of all in the home, anyway as a symbol of protest." Manson (the goth rock geek Marilyn Manson's stage name and surname was taken from here) controls the notorious cult organization "The Manson Family".
In the early morning of August 9, 1969, a cleaner came to the mansion in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, as always, but was horrified to find five bodies. Among them, a pregnant woman was opened by laparotomy, and the baby that was dug out was left behind. On the floor (perhaps "Salute" Polanski’s debut "Rosemary’s Baby"), the murderer also scribbled insulting words such as "PIG" on the wall with the blood of a pregnant woman, and this pregnant woman was the Hollywood star Sharon. Tate, the new wife of the famous director Polanski. Coincidentally, a couple was killed on the same night, and the crime scene left writings such as "Death To Pigs", "Rise" and "Helter Skelter". Quentin's ninth film "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" once again emptied history and re-interpreted this incident. The two male gods gave bloody and brutal punishments to the abandoned youths. It was enjoyable!
Obviously, these words come from the white brick "White Album" released by The Beatles in 1968 (the head of the four major groups of British Invasion), in which "Helter Skelter" is the first heavy metal rock in music history written by Paul. , "Piggies" is a song written by Xiao Qiao for the acrimonious satire of capitalists. "What they need's a damn good whacking." This slightly provocative lyrics is actually just for rhyming, but Manson is a worm group. Fanatic fans have severely distorted the lyrics, even using the Beatles as a prophet, and White Brick as a prophet of the revolution, and carried out a series of brutal massacres, which is terrible.
Manson also collaborated with Dennis Wilson (the only member of the band who can really surf), the drummer of The Beach Boy (The Beach Boy) who is going to be introduced next. They are friends. . By the way, the opening song "Back In The USSR" by The Beatles White Brick satirizing the Soviet regime originated from the proposal of Mike Love, the lead singer of Beach Boys, to Paul-to write a Soviet version of "Back in the USA" (Chuck Berry's patriotic single), so Pao imitated the lyrics of The Beach Boy's "California Girls" and created the famous song "Back to the Soviet Union".
In the film, Clean hummed "Let's go surfin' now Everybody's learnin' how", which is from the song "Surfin'Safari" released by the Beach Boys in 1962, which caused the rise of surfing in Southern California The nationwide boom of Surf Music. Surf rock is nicknamed "high, rich and handsome" music. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was very popular among middle-class children and dude youths. Most of them avoided social reality, turned a blind eye to social contradictions, had a gentle attitude, had no worries about food and clothing, and were sunny all day long. , Beaches, surfing, motorcycles, beautiful women... This is indeed a unique scenery in that radical social environment.
There is also a beautiful scenery in the film, that is, Colonel Kilgore who just wants to surf on the smoke-filled Mekong. He kept saying "Any man brave enough to fight with his guts, strapped on him can drink from my canteen." He handed the kettle to the seriously wounded Viet Cong, who covered the internal organs with the kettle, but the water had not yet reached the wounded soldier’s mouth. As soon as he heard the name of the surfer Lance, he went crazy and yelled and insisted on taking Lance to go surfing. In order to choose the best surfing location, he commanded a fleet of helicopters and bombers while listening to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", "Scares the hell out of the slopes. My boy love it." He arrogantly slammed to a dangerous stronghold controlled by the Viet Cong. The sound and picture alignment of the helicopter section is simply beautiful. The huge flames, the water jets in the sky, and the colorful smoke bombs, coupled with the passionate classical music, vividly show the beauty and shock of the war machine in overall and form.
But from another perspective, Yangchun Baixue’s opera served the atrocities in the village, and the elegant symphony scared the villagers (including the Viet Cong) to flee everywhere. As Kurz said, “We train young people to bomb others with warplanes, but They were not allowed to write the word'fuck' on the plane because it seemed very nasty." "Use a machine gun to beat the opponent into a piece of band-aid". This kind of contrast once again pushed the Vietnam War to an absurd situation. In this clip, the Viet Cong girl who was shot to death by a machine gun after stuffing a bomb into a U.S. rescue helicopter is similar to Kubrick's "Full Metal Shell". The Viet Cong sniper who fought hard with the U.S. military for a long time turned out to be a young girl. , The bravery of the Vietnamese girls has a kind of decisiveness, "Although Chu has three households, Qin must perish Chu", and it is full of tension.
six. Religious kingdom and god king handover
Coppola used metaphorical montages to interleave the scene of Captain Willard slashing Coats and the scene of the aboriginal slashing and killing a bull at the memorial ceremony of the indigenous people. This means that Colonel Coates has also become a piece on the altar of civilization. "sacrifice".
After killing Colonel Kurz, who was left to slash like a cattle, Willard walked out of the temple numbly, but the colonel’s people did not gather to attack, instead they knelt down and enshrined him as a new god This paragraph is quite puzzling, but in fact, the "Golden Branch" scattered on Kurz's bedside table has been the original and footnote of the religious phenomenon handed over by the gods and kings.
The classical anthropologist Frazer (Frazer) said in the "Golden Branch": "Modern people with primitive ideas believe that their safety is tied to the survival of a god-like figure, but he will eventually age until death according to the laws of nature. He died naturally. As he ages and deteriorates, his abilities are also weakened. This can happen at any time. The only way to avoid this danger is to kill him as soon as possible when he is already sickened. The spirit of rulership can be passed on to another powerful successor... The water gods and fire gods of Cambodia do not allow them to die naturally. Once they become seriously ill, they must kill them with a knife." Kurz was killed. Seen as a priest-king, Willard, as an assassin, made himself the new king of the jungle by completing the killing ritual, but he hated all this and hated this only witchcraft, evil, and crazy The kingdom, at the same time, was afraid of sinking, and resolutely boarded the patrol boat. As for the end, whether the U.S. military bombed the kingdom is an open question.
seven. Lens language and audiovisual feast
"Apocalypse Now" is the collision of light and color, the feast of sound and painting.
Photographer Vittorio Storaro said: "In this journey is not only up river, but also a journey of reading ourselves. It may be the only way to represent the same structure of our own life , with the structure of the light itself. So the journey into ourselves, the rule now is doing the journey they could do with the color spectrum." Travel. Perhaps there is only one way, that is to use the structure of light and shadow itself to express our own lives. As this journey goes deep into our hearts, we can also use the color spectrum to show it.) The film is suppressed by artificial light and color In addition to natural light and color (such as rainforest, riverbank, sky, sunset, etc.), through the use of red, yellow, and purple smoke bombs, the battlefield and jungle seem to become a surreal dream, and visual conflicts reflect cultural conflicts. .
The film also uses backlight, side light, contour light, and background light to shape the image of Colonel Kurz. His face is in the dark from time to time, and his majesty, depression, and pain are self-evident. Reminiscent of Coppola's other masterpiece-the beginning of "The Godfather", through the dark adjustment of lighting and contrast of light and shadow, the dominance and mystery of the godfather played by Marlon Brando can be seen at a glance. It’s just that in Apocalypse Now, one of the important reasons Coppola hid Kurz in the dark was to hide Brando’s blessed belly. The classics of film history under the dim light can be described as unintentional. Liu Chengyin is now.
Marlon Brando’s turbulent behavior and ability to be a demon is well known. Coppola has the "three evils" in the filming of "Apocalypse Now". Marlon Brando", but I have to say that Brando's innate Charisma makes the role of Colonel Kurz belong to him.
The expressionist picture that Willard slowly emerges from the mire is also a strong stroke in film history. The golden side light casts him into a firm (decided to kill Kurz) statue. This is a scene Holy and grotesque baptism.
At the beginning of the film, a transitional sound montage is used to mix the propeller of the helicopter and the ceiling fan of the Saigon hotel room through dissolving. The similar sounds of the two connect the two different scenes before and after, bringing the audience from one reality to the other. A reality. At the end of the film, the ancient stone statue, Willard’s painted muddy face, and the helicopter at the beginning are superimposed. At the same time, it echoes the call of "The horror. The horror." of Colonel Kurz before his death. hanging by a thread.
This is the end,
Beautiful friend,
This is the end,
My only friend, the end,
It hurts to set you free,
But you'll never follow me,
The end of laughter and soft lies,
The end of nights we tried to die,
This is the end.
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