Apocalypse Now
Jan. 17th, 2013 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficThen I bit the bullet and watched Apocalypse Now.
I've never watched any of the great Vietnam films, and any time I learn anything about Vietnam, I only realize how much I don't know about that war.
But--I'm not even sure I'd call this a war film, or a Vietnam film. I know Coppola has said it wasn't about Vietnam, it was Vietnam--but Apocalypse Now is the farthest thing from naturalistic. Because it is wedding the Vietnam experience with Heart of Darkness (and with The Odyssey), it has an allegorical distance from its subject matter that I think made it possible for me to watch. (I'm not ready for Platoon. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for Platoon.)
That being said, this is possibly one of the greatest films I've ever seen. It's the type of film that lets you know its awesome import at every moment it is happening. What I was struck by was the increasing surrealness as Willard journeys up the river. I felt like it was turning into Waiting for Godot. And I know a lot of what is shown is drawn directly from soldiers' accounts, so I guess it left me feeling that, for a civilian like myself, there is a certain level of atrocity that is so far from my experience that I cannot relate to it at all. It becomes fantastical. And Apocalypse Now exploits and heightens that.
I feel like I need to rewatch it just to get my head around it.
I also watched Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now. I cannot BELIEVE this movie ever made it to the screen. It cost $20 million--all of it borrowed against Coppola's personal assets. He hocked everything he'd earned from the Godfathers to make it. It was supposed to have 16 weeks of filming. It had 283 days of principal photography, over three years. They fired their main actor after the first few weeks. A typhoon destroyed most of their sets (and Coppola filmed in it anyway--rain so hard it hurt, according to Laurence Fishburne). The helicopters being used were from the Philipine army--and had to be called away repeatedly to fight rebels. Coppola had no ending to the film when Marlon Brando arrived to film it, and Brando, who was quite fat, demanded he not be fat on screen. They spent three weeks with him improvising dialogue, hoping that an ending would fall out of it somewhere. And Martin Sheen had a heart attack in the middle of filming. At 36.
Apocalypse Now did not win best picture. That year, best picture went to Kramer vs. Kramer, which I also watched recently and believe I said deserved every award it got. Both films are incredible. But they are so entirely different, I don't even think you can class them as the same thing. I quiet drama about a man and his son and--the psychedelic riot of the entirety of the Vietnam War.
I've never watched any of the great Vietnam films, and any time I learn anything about Vietnam, I only realize how much I don't know about that war.
But--I'm not even sure I'd call this a war film, or a Vietnam film. I know Coppola has said it wasn't about Vietnam, it was Vietnam--but Apocalypse Now is the farthest thing from naturalistic. Because it is wedding the Vietnam experience with Heart of Darkness (and with The Odyssey), it has an allegorical distance from its subject matter that I think made it possible for me to watch. (I'm not ready for Platoon. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for Platoon.)
That being said, this is possibly one of the greatest films I've ever seen. It's the type of film that lets you know its awesome import at every moment it is happening. What I was struck by was the increasing surrealness as Willard journeys up the river. I felt like it was turning into Waiting for Godot. And I know a lot of what is shown is drawn directly from soldiers' accounts, so I guess it left me feeling that, for a civilian like myself, there is a certain level of atrocity that is so far from my experience that I cannot relate to it at all. It becomes fantastical. And Apocalypse Now exploits and heightens that.
I feel like I need to rewatch it just to get my head around it.
I also watched Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now. I cannot BELIEVE this movie ever made it to the screen. It cost $20 million--all of it borrowed against Coppola's personal assets. He hocked everything he'd earned from the Godfathers to make it. It was supposed to have 16 weeks of filming. It had 283 days of principal photography, over three years. They fired their main actor after the first few weeks. A typhoon destroyed most of their sets (and Coppola filmed in it anyway--rain so hard it hurt, according to Laurence Fishburne). The helicopters being used were from the Philipine army--and had to be called away repeatedly to fight rebels. Coppola had no ending to the film when Marlon Brando arrived to film it, and Brando, who was quite fat, demanded he not be fat on screen. They spent three weeks with him improvising dialogue, hoping that an ending would fall out of it somewhere. And Martin Sheen had a heart attack in the middle of filming. At 36.
Apocalypse Now did not win best picture. That year, best picture went to Kramer vs. Kramer, which I also watched recently and believe I said deserved every award it got. Both films are incredible. But they are so entirely different, I don't even think you can class them as the same thing. I quiet drama about a man and his son and--the psychedelic riot of the entirety of the Vietnam War.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-18 01:49 am (UTC)There was just a Fresh Air interview with Dustin Hoffman where he discusses Kramer -- it was an interesting interview all around.