Apocalypse Now

[osprey_archer]

Myra and I watched Apocalypse Now, because it's on the AFI top 100 movie list, and holy shit you guys, this movie is so weird. (I feel this way about lots of the movies on this list. Myra's comment was that they're not necessarily on the list for intrinsic quality, but because they caused a sea change in the movie industry - hence the fact that the

Comments

[spoiledcat]

Its one of my favourite movies! Its such a Experience watching it

[osprey_archer]

It really is an experience. Not quite like anything else! So weird!

[sovay]

The film works on a kind of nightmare logic anyway; I'm not sure it's going to become clear in an intellectual sense no matter how many times one watches it.

I have only seen Apocalypse Now once and a couple of years ago, but it made immediate sense to me as a variation on the myth of the year-king, if that helps with the death/sacrifice.

[osprey_archer]

There's probably an interesting comparison to be made between Apocalypse Now and The Wicker Man. Two very different retellings of the year king story.

[asakiyume]

I've never seen it. How did it work as a retelling of Heart of Darkness?

[osprey_archer]

I read Heart of Darkness so long ago that I'm not sure I could meaningfully compare the two. But I found the movie haunting in a way I didn't really find the book (although "the horror, the horror" still seems melodramatic and OTT in both).

[rachelmanija]

I agree that it's supposed to feel like a nightmare/hallucination, and that the main reason is to reflect the theme that the Vietnam war made no fucking sense, drove people crazy while encouraging madness as a sort of twisted survival strategy, and felt like a nightmare/hallucination to most of the people engaged in it. So yeah, a lot of it is deliberately non-rational, because it's about a non-rational event

[osprey_archer]

It does feel like a hallucination. The scenes where he's at the army bases especially, they just feel so unreal - which of course ties back to Willard's inveighing against all the lies that the war spawns, and the fact that he comes to admire Kurtz in an odd way because at least Kurtz is honest, goddammit

[rachelmanija]

Oh, also: have you seen Full Metal Jacket? It makes basically the same point but I like it better as a movie.

[osprey_archer]

I haven't seen Full Metal Jacket. I actually haven't watched that many war movies (or westerns, for that matter, another movie genre that's all over the AI top 100 list; it's actually been quite a broadening watching experience).