"Apocalypse Now" is a Vietnam War-themed movie filmed by American director Francis Coppola in 1979. The film tells the story of the later period of the Vietnam War when American Captain Willard accepted the mission to kill a U.S. Captain Kuhl who had made great achievements. Ci, all the way up the river, gradually away from morality and civilization, the process of spiritual distortion.
"Apocalypse Now" is a film produced solely by Coppola under tremendous pressure and cost 36 million U.S. dollars. But the hard work of this huge investment did not get the feedback Coppola expected. Perhaps for some reason, the American critics for this film were dead silent, and the audience did not show the enthusiasm that Coppola was looking forward to. Shocked, physically and mentally damaged. But it is still undeniable that this is a classic and profound movie.
In our opinion, the works of director Francisco Pola are epic, deep and extremely heavy. Its unique movie language is full of the grandeur and eerie charm of an opera stage. At the same time, the profound themes in his works often start from a very high starting point, using a philosophical perspective to explore the relationship between the world and human nature. "Apocalypse Now" is such a serious Coppola epic. Although he was born out of Joseph Conrad's novel "The Heart of Darkness", the movie itself is independent and has different meanings. There are many different versions of "Apocalypse Now", one is a 153-minute cut-off version; the other is a 196-minute director recut version. We start with the 196-minute recut version that is closest to the director’s intention to appreciate the charm of this film and arouse self-reflection: any work with a clear stance cannot be called a great work, discussing war And the human nature is even more so. From the beginning of "Apocalypse Now" during a montage editing process, the flame battlefield, the wine bottle on the table, the cigarette butt in the hand, the rotating fan and the helicopter propeller, including the captain Willard played by Martin Sheen in a closed room Crazy behavior symbolizes a kind of chaos. This kind of chaos is not a simple chaos in order, but a kind of complete spiritual loss, which can be called "completely pure chaos" because it is purposeless. And this sense of confusion has been intensified by Yu Lie through the depth of the story. From the very beginning, Coppola never thought of discussing issues from the perspective of a so-called normal person. Instead, he explored the nature of war and human nature from the perspective of a "god" without emotion. This is the reason why this movie was sublimated to another level and succeeded. Friedrich Nietzsche posed a question: How can people re-establish the meaning of life in an era when traditional values have completely collapsed. And in the process of pursuing the answer to this question, he proposed the "Superman" philosophy. It believes that there is a transitional rope between man and superman. Those who walk past become superman, or fall into the abyss to be destroyed. The worldview of the entire movie is in an era when values are completely collapsed. What the Frenchman said in the film: "You Americans are fighting for the most nihilistic thing in the world." This kind of nonsensical warfare disintegrates the values of the past, and every character in the film is in a state of chaos. They are all "lost soldiers" as the film says. Those seventeen or eighteen-year-old youths were ignorantly taken to the battlefield, living in the rainy and humid tropical jungle of Vietnam, fighting for things they didn't know about, and they could sacrifice their lives at any time. As they go deeper into this jungle hinterland, the more they look like an empty shell with their souls lost.
As Colonel Kurtz read: "We are hollow people, we are scarecrows, leaning on each other, and our heads are full of straw."
In the chaos of values that collapsed suddenly, it brought infinite'fear' to people. Those who resisted fear were destroyed, and those who accepted fear began to climb the rope. Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, is a man who tried to reach superhuman heights but fell into the abyss. He was born in the West Point Military Academy, won numerous medals in the Korean War and airborne soldiers, and then went deep into the Vietnam battlefield, where he experienced the chaotic baptism like all soldiers did. The so-called extreme reversal seems to be his fate. He has his own soldiers and supports his people. He tries to be a superman who dominates mankind and society as Nietzsche said, but he runs counter to the madness that is closer to the razor.
The film seems to narrate Captain Willard's road-like "tracing" in a one-line way. But in fact, the story of Colonel Kurtz is constantly appearing in a dark line to compare with Willard's course, in order to show the causal relationship between each other. The process of Captain Willard's continual deepening into the jungle is also a process of steadily moving away from civilization and morality, entering into chaos and getting lost. The officer they met at first, Kilgore (Kilgore); in the meaning of the word, it means Kill (kill) gore (bleed). His character is also like a war madman. Will put playing cards on the enemy’s corpse as an announcement; will choose to attack dangerous enemy strongholds because of his love of surfing; will put Wagner on fire when the war begins; will drop because of the annoying tree The napalm bombs blow them up. In this large-scale and complex war segment, Coppola's powerful scene dispatching ability was fully embodied, compact and magnificent. And the character of Kilgore is very ironic in such a scene. Of course, as mentioned earlier, we cannot look at a story or character with strong personal emotions or a certain ideological standpoint. The director Coppola will not portray a bloodthirsty war madman in this way. Chief Kilgore has his versatility. He will give a sip of water to people he thinks daring to fight and disregard their lives, even if that person is his enemy; he will let his subordinates lead injured children and women into helicopters. Hospital; and then turn the battlefield into a beach party in the evening. You may play the role of a close officer and tell yourself the soldiers: the war will end and we will win. This is a hypocritical morality. The protagonist, Captain Willard, has already seen through this hypocrisy from the beginning. He doesn't like such a person, so when he forcibly drags away the officer’s beloved surfboard, he bursts into laughter. It's all sarcastic at all. But from another perspective, the hypocrisy of shooting you first and then giving you Bundy is not useless. As Willard said, a soldier would feel safe and purposeful with such an officer. This is called order, at least not to complete chaos and depravity. Coppola took advantage of the symbolic scenes of believers on the battlefield, broken churches, Vietnamese civilians waiting in line for medical treatment, cows hoisted by helicopters, etc., to deeply satirize this hypocritical war and hypocritical morality. The seemingly orderly order, and the sentient beings under these orders. Chief Kilgore is just one case. The boring thing is war, and the terrible thing is human nature.
But as the protagonist goes deep into the primitive jungle, these so-called orders begin to collapse, and even the hypocrisy is gone, and the primitive chaos begins to show up. In the beginning, the cook once again pulled the story into fear and chaos because of a tiger, and then a crazier military performance began. Yijun's performance is purposeful, as the host said: We are proud of you! This distorted values and exported them to these soldiers, but when these soldiers saw the real status quo on the battlefield again, they would conflict with each other, gradually making them more crazy, falling into endless chaos, and losing their humanity. So that the proper order no longer exists, everyone rushed to the performance stage, and the greed for sex and violence against their comrades began to show. Director Coppola used the perspective of Willard and the Vietnamese outside the iron net in this clip to show the madness and chaos of the show. Willard is a marginalized figure, and his journey is that of Kurtz. The director tried to look at the war from the perspective of a jump-off observer. But he does not just look at everything around him with a cold attitude, he is a multi-faceted personality. In another classic Vietnam War movie "Full Metal Shell" directed by Kubrick, the character of the clown wears a helmet with the words "Natural Murderer" written on it, but with a "peace chapter" on his chest. This suggests that a person is multi-faceted, and Captain Willard is a role in this state. On the one hand, he is indifferent and cruel. He has killed countless people, and will relentlessly shoot on the fishermen’s boat to make up for the death of the women injured by them; on the other hand, he is the one who can see the hypocrisy of this war best. Man, he hates this war. Sadly, he could not escape from either situation. It is hard to imagine how people like Willard would feel when they came home and listened to the news broadcast. The good name is that this war is a just war and a war to help the Vietnamese rebuild their homeland. . In fact, civilization and morality have never changed. It was only because of a war that Willard could see through his essence and hypocrisy. When this contradiction collided, Willard fell into the endless abyss and became the'lost soldier'. As the French woman said to Willard: "I don't know if I am a beast or a god, but you are both." Beast (primitive nature), human (human nature), superman (superhuman nature). Willard drifted away from the middle and fell into the abyss. Nietzsche said: The one who fell into the abyss is respectable. We turned our heads to look at the role of Lance, why not. If Willard’s journey is the journey of Colonel Kurtz, then the loss of Lance’s role is also the loss of Willard’s experience. Lance’s ritual dance at the bow and Willard’s in the hotel The inner crazy dance has different tunes but equal work. For the fear caused by chaos, other people on the ship may be swallowed, but Lance merged with this fear. Lance began to show this characteristic after listening to the playboy girl talk about the process of being exploited, because this dark side is in contradiction with the hypocritical "just war" he had been indoctrinated in the past. And as the plot deepens, Lance’s sense of loss becomes more and more intense. The puppy may still be a bond that can maintain his rationality and humanity, but when the puppy is lost, Lance falls into a complete loss. .
We are now disassembling the fragments of Dulangqiao in detail so that we can better understand the concept of the two characters and the story. First of all, director Coppola’s shot for Dulang Bridge darkened the light around the left and right, making Dulang Bridge in the middle of the frame show a sense of isolation, and rendered this atmosphere through the weak light of smoke and flares, and then A psychedelic feeling was added to this isolation. Then the camera was given to Chef Xiang and Lance. The chef asked: What do you think? Lance replied: Very beautiful. From this dialogue, it can be seen that Lance's mental condition is different from that of the chef and other crew members. He has no fear of the battlefield, but a kind of psychedelic acceptance. In the scene of this conversation, the puppy standing in the middle of the machine gun held by Lance is particularly eye-catching, which is symbolic. For directors like Coppola, every shot is carefully thought out and affects the plot and the character of the characters. Lance, with his face full of makeup, has sunk his humanity step by step, and the puppy is like the only place for him to step on. The wooden planks so as not to fall into the abyss. Then the camera was taken to Captain Willard, who looked at the situation on the battlefield of Dulang Bridge through his extremely "sorrowful" perspective. At this time, some soldiers screaming frantically in the river with guns appeared. The faint lights here appeared from time to time, and the soldiers' faces were almost invisible, showing hellish chaos and madness. Then a messenger appeared and delivered the details of Willard’s mission and the crew’s letter, and said something like this: "You don't know how happy this makes me sir." "I can go now, if I can find the way. ."
"If you can find the way." We might be able to understand this sentence in this way. In its superficial sense, this road is like a way to leave here and go home. Like every soldier's original wish, return home after the battle. But in the chaotic place of Dulang Bridge, the meaning of this road seems to have another way of saying that the road out of the hell of loss and chaos is an inner road.
Then Captain Willard and Lance went ashore to find fuel and supplies. The film director here intensified the environmental sound, such as the yelling of soldiers, the sound of blasting, the sound of flying bullets, etc., which constantly echoed around, plus the battlefield like a circus, dazzling colored lights, and sudden flames. The psychedelic atmosphere. The psychedelic and chaotic reality coincides with the confusion of Lance's heart, which is confirmed by the footage of Lance climbing up the trenches from time to time. The lens in the trenches weakened the light and shadow, leaving the character in the dark, almost unable to see the outline, and also symbolizing his inner dilemma. Willard has been asking about the whereabouts of the commander here in the trenches. I believe that the original intention of looking for a commander is to find some kind of'order'. In contrast, when Bi Willard asked about the whereabouts of the commander in the camp in the ruins of the rainstorm, someone replied: "He stepped on a landmine two months ago and he is finished." At Dulang Bridge, it seems that what the commander (order) is. No one knows. The black soldier who shot wildly answered Willard’s question like this: "(Commander) isn’t you?" In the chaos, there is no hypocritical morality, no basic order, no so-called patriotism in the past, and even no self and loss of humanity. The psychedelic sound of Jimi Hendrix’s electric guitar resounded in the trenches of Dulang Bridge, lost in chaos and lost in human nature.
There appeared a character named Roach, who showed a calmness different from the others. It seems like a veteran who has seen more fear, can distinguish the position by listening to the sound, and hit it in one shot. But we can clearly distinguish that he is not a well-trained soldier who can resist these fears, but a'lost soldier' who accepts these fears and chaos like Lance and merges with them. For example, there are two makeups on his face like Lance, which symbolizes his inner state of mind. He can't say that his psychological quality is superior to other people. It can only be said that he has learned to accept the constant madness of his heart.
Finally, when Willard and the crew sailed away from Dulang Bridge, the camera showed the collapse of Dulang Bridge behind him. It symbolizes the complete collapse of the soldier's heart. What is even more ironic is that the chief said: "Like this bridge, when we build it, the Viet Cong will blow it up, and the officials still say pass."
This infinite loop also symbolizes the soldier's situation. Just like the authority would say: it doesn't matter if we lose today, we stand up and fight again, sooner or later justice will win. But the reality is that the reconstruction time and time again was blown up and again and again instilled that we would win. The soldiers' will has been consumed and exhausted, which is like suffering from reincarnation in hell. War exposed all the hypocrisy, civilization, morality, and patriotism. In peace times, these hypocrisy can also produce culture for human consumption. It is harmless, and occasionally one or two heretics will come out to resist, just like the characters in the famous movie "Fight Club". Taylor, his alienation is a gradual resistance to the hypocritical civilization and moral culture of society, while the "Apocalypse Now" under the background of the Vietnam War is a complete subversion, chaos and madness. French Manor and Frenchman: Due to the length of time or some problems in the public release version, the fragment about the Frenchman was deleted, and this section was re-added in the director's recut version. I think the director should add this section and use this section as Willard's last stop when he saw Colonel Kurtz was not unreasonable. If the entire journey upstream of the ship expresses the process of human nature being constantly lost in chaos, then the river that finally leads Captain Willard to the Dark Heart is close to Kurtz. The French manor at the last stop is the last trace of rationality after the crazy chaos, as the saying goes. The noteworthy detail is that Captain Willard did not drink before and after the dinner at the French Manor, and refused to drink, in order to maintain this final rationality. Director Coppola even started from history and gave a fundamental reason why the chaotic, purposeless, and crazy world was like this. And tried to give a fact "truth" in this last rational occasion. We can get these points from the conversations of several people in the French family: In 1945, the United States assisted Vietnam in declaring war on France in exchange for independence, and inserted people into the Vietnam League (following Ho Chi Minh). This is the predecessor of the Viet Cong. Now when the United States has replaced the French, Vietnam has turned its back on the United States. After the French spoke this sentence, the lens aperture quickly widened and narrowed the depth of field, focusing on Captain Willard's surprised and dull look, and through this form of expression, he expressed the sense of the collapse of knowing the'truth'. When the French first came to Vietnam, there was nothing in Vietnam. They helped them from what they were to nothing. In the end, Vietnam still did not trust France. The United States has not seen this lesson learned. No matter who wins or loses in the two ideologies, it is the Vietnamese who win in the end. In the end, the French said the most ironic "You Americans are fighting for the most nihilistic thing." This is undoubtedly clear. In fact, no matter what the purpose is, you have to force yourself to recognize yourself It’s all hypocrisy that the civilization for which it brings to others, this is true of France, and the same is true of the United States. This essentially moral corruption was hidden in the hypocritical civilization, and was finally revealed to Captain Willard in the depths of the jungle, which brought him closer to Colonel Kurtz and his dark heart.
Before Willard executed Colonel Kurtz, Marlon Brando played Colonel Kurtz in a total of four scenes, all of which appeared in different attitudes. Willard, who was brought to Colonel Kurtz for the first time by his subordinates, he saw Kurtz in a state where both animals and gods are mentioned above, wandering in the abyss between man and superman status. The director Coppola used his usual top-side light in this paragraph. Kurtz's face is half in the dark and half in the light, which is also a good symbol of this; this state of Kurz is also reflected in When he read the poem for the fourth time, the light showed the same effect in that section. The other two appeared in an extreme state. The state that came from carrying the head of the cook appeared in a primitive inhumanity, more like a devil's posture, such as symbolic demonic makeup. The face; the evil colored statues and candlelights around; the weird music; the constant heavy rain and intensified thunder are all detailed renderings of director Coppola to strengthen Kurtz's extreme inhumanity; and then Kurtz appeared in front of Willard in a "god" state, such as bright backlighting and children representing purity. Kurtz's face was also clear in this section. Look at this section of Colonel Kurtz. The contents of the magazines I read all seem to expose the hypocrisy in these reports with the posture of'superman' and'god', and they have a noble and just quality in a certain sense.
Repeatedly watch these four appearances of Colonel Kurtz. The state of'devil' and'god' is very pure and clear, but when he is in an intermediate state, it is free, complicated, and chaotic. This highlights the confusion of the character itself. In fact, human nature is complex and multi-faceted, but Kurtz sublimated this human nature to another level. The complexity of human nature is the'fruit' that Willard finally got from Colonel Kurtz. It is precisely because people have complex human nature that they have their own judgments of good and evil, right and wrong, and good or bad. Because of this kind of inconsistency With pure complexity, talents will continue to fall into confusion and confusion when hypocritical morality and cruel reality conflict. Kurtz wants to be pure, so he hates judgment, because judgment is a manifestation of human complexity, so he will say: "You can kill me, but you have no right to judge me." If Willard accepts the task I can’t wait to see Colonel Willard in order to pursue his own meaning and doubts, so he actually got what he wanted when he finished listening to Kurtz’s “judgment”. Then the execution of Colonel Kurtz is more like a fateful cause and effect. They all understand this fate, so Willard's execution is more like helping Kurtz to sublimate completely.
There is another important reason. Colonel Kurtz said: "If I am killed, I hope someone will come to my house and tell my son that what I did and everything you saw, because there is nothing I hate more than lies. It smells bad.” In fact, the important thing is not to keep chasing the essence of chaos, but to expose the ugly hypocrisy and lies and give people the truth, even though the truth is sometimes undefined. Kurtz told Willard as if he had issued an oracle before he died, and the execution became self-evident. In the end, director Coppola used a montage technique to combine killing and religious rituals. This technique is the same as the concatenation of religious baptism and murder in "The Godfather", with a very solemn sense of ritual and epic temperament. As an animal, the water buffalo is absolutely pure. As a human, Kurtz must be extremely pure when he is dying. There is no need for a pure water buffalo to chop and kill it, and there is no need to judge it. Willard will execute Kurtz. Colonel Ci did not need to be tried. Because of the complexity and chaos that ends here... It has been 39 years since "Apocalypse Now" was released. The ideological core and artistic value brought by its content have not fallen into the inferior over time, but have gone through the years. The baptism of the novel and the improvement of people’s cognition have gradually become classic works, even surpassing the times. For such a huge epic work, a two-word interpretation is not enough. It has more value to be explored and discussed. The director Francisco Pola used his handwriting to depict the human beings in a chaotic background, and used a fatalistic way to show the complex causal relationship between the two main characters, deriving the profound philosophical thoughts behind it and the impact on humanity and war. Reflection. This is a tired movie, but why don't we reflect on ourselves? ! Under the severe impetuousness, aren't we also in a kind of chaos? We are equally complicated, lost, and depraved, and we transform this complexity into hypocritical morality, and criticize the innocent people on the Internet with humanity and call it "justice". Looking back at "Apocalypse Now", one of its inherent practical significance lies in how people learn to reflect. I think this is its value.
View more about Apocalypse Now reviews
