Apocalypse Now was released in 1979 and it was an influential film during the Vietnam War era. The movie took approximately ten years to produce costing $30 million to fund. The director Francis Ford Coppola had several setbacks with production, independence, and just being creatively free. All these setbacks brought doubt or questions about his work all the time. The film was shot and produced in the Philippines and financed from a Hollywood studio system. (Apocalypse, n. d. )
Both Conrad’s, “Heart of Darkness”, and Coppola’s, “Apocalypse Now”, greatly show the journey of man into their inner self and man’s encounters with their insanity, fears and demise. The novella and film are comprised of numerous pivotal themes that simplify the understanding of the deeper meaning of good and evil in that era. In 1969 Coppola founded American zoetrope with another filmmaker George Lucas in hopes to make a company that was finicially and creatively independent which would be different from the one now which was conservative and had a lot of restrictions.
The movie Apocalypse Now was a surreal movie as it enlightened me on what took place in the Vietnam War. The movie starts with Captain Willard psychologically damaged by the war, his crewmates, and they are about to experience similar crazy mental states. During this scene, he punches the mirror in which he is looking directly in and symbolically destroys himself. This allowed to me to understand that mentally he was not stable and allowed me to recognize the wars capacity to change a person’s psyche substantially. This indication prior to the next scene brought light to what are soldiers could be battling daily.
The intro was surreal to me as I seen Captain Willards face as unstable, unhappy and mad. How do we send people like that back to war and we don’t see the warning signs it’s almost like committing crime and getting away with it. Captain Willard oversaw a small battalion and they used a very small boat to travel to Cambodia with. He was sent on a mission with his team with strict orders to kill Colonel Kurtz. While on their journey to Cambodia to kill the Colonel, they ran into Vietnamese armies and American soldiers.
The movie consisted of a lot of graphic but more so realistic scenes to get an idea of what really happens and what really took place and how we view society. As the movie starts to progress through the jungle the crew’s morale starts to disappear quickly and each character’s sanity becomes less certain and you start to see it on their demeanor. One of the main themes is how arbitrary societal norms and or protocols where in that time era. When it comes down to people thinking that just anyone can do whatever that is within their human power to do. Captain Willards believes that his Achieved status is his just because and it’s not like that.
They he starts to think that he should be worshiped or treated differently because he is the eldest and had already been to war. Sounds a lot like the political leaders we have thus far in candidacy. Another theme was Age and the life course, we forget that kids enlist right out of high school know nothing about war or death. But if anyone is pushed just like these men where, people become savage and start to live by these lines between being civilized and being an animal like person. When someone make a war movie they must have been somewhere during sometime to experience these things.
Society has shaped a role in us thinking that all men are good for is to depend the country to kill and die. When you turn 18 it is ok for them to sign off and go to war but it’s not ok for them to write obscene words. The government especially our presidents have lead us straight in to war. Leading us straight into war we have a lot of people who are not mentally capable of living a normal life and would do anything like Captain Willard to back into the military and go to war. These are those types of cultural injustices and Americanization. Kurtz himself seems to appear like a capitalism.
These was a scene in the movie where they started eating animals, drinking Alcohol and other drugs and that showed the nasty side of capitalism. Also, they started worshiping in the jungle which is a clear representation of Dependency theory, or the notion that resources flow from a periphery of poor and underdeveloped states. Another example of imperialism was when captain Willard was so mentally unstable he started killing innocent people in attempts to gain order, power and control. He was chopping heads left and right and standing over the bodies as if nothing happened.
These countries that where presented during the film where countries who were not socially aware of their surroundings causing them men deployed to adapt to different social norms. What I learned was not to focus on the unimportant things but to focus on helping those who come back from combat mentally unstable. They return to a world that is not socially excepting or even capable of helping them. Sometime culture shock play a crucial role on how a person adapts to their surroundings. For this movie to have almost made this man crazy while he was producing this is a real red flag to me.
There was a lot of alienation with the military people in the jungle. I thought that I was going to see these men hallucinating but thank God, I did not see that. This movie reenacted the one that was created in 1898, but with a twist and sicker version. To conclude with the major view points of the movie one theme cannot be overlooked nor forgotten. The Looking-glass self is important because now I start to ask my self is this how people view the United States of America when we go into their country as opposed to as how we see them on TV killing people.
I covered some major themes, issues and concerns in this review. One of my social issues was Age and the life course. In this movie, we watched young men go to war but they were not allowed to part take on certain events like drinking or watching that half naked girl dance on the stage. I also choose Alienation, Cultural Shock, these men were stranded on a boat, in the jungle and it caused them to partake on this they would have not if they were in the naturalization.
Self-looking glass theory theme was important because I started to analyze how people see me as a person and I tend to get riled up sometimes and I wonder do people see crime in me. In this movie to conclude we can judge the Captain Willard for his decisions and many other reason. Most importantly he was deranged, he wanted to be socially in control of everything, but I feel that he was trying to do the best with what personnel he had and with the circumstance that he was in. I am proud to have learned a different psychological point of view from stress, evil, and negativity to power, control and protection.
