28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[transmogrifier]

So the film you saw wasn't full of references to the generals fucking things up, and didn't contain narration that explicitly contrasted US soldiers going to USO shows with "Charlie [squatting] in a bush," and didn't have Brando give a speech about Viet-Cong hacking off children's arms (never happened) in order to make the point that "they" were "stronger," and if the "we" had been "strong" like that, we "our troubles" over there would be over shortly?

So I guess all that's left is for you to explain what the word "clear-eyed" actually means to you.

[baby doll]

Yep.

Indeed, and it makes certain criticisms of how the war strategy was mishandled, but makes no criticism of the grounds for war. In other words, it wants to be an "apolitcal" film about genocide. And films that do take a political stance on genocide are often marginalized (although it's not about Vietnam, Dead Man is a film about genocide that was marginalized in the mainstream press on first release), while Coppola's film is lauded as a masterpiece by ostensibly left-leaning mainstream reviewers like Roger Ebert and institutions like the AFI. I think it's a very good film, even if I have problems with the last twenty or thirty minutes (Martin Sheen rising slowly from the mud is just silly to me--certainly in a film that wants to be taken seriously as an assessment of the Vietnam war, as this film so clearly does, as I've tried to show. Also, how does Brando know that Chef is about to call in an air strike? Does crazy give you telepathic powers?), but as a statement about the war, it's downright cowardly.

[baby doll]

So I guess all that's left is for you to explain what the word "clear-eyed" actually means to you.

In this context or in general? Well, Coppola might've given at least some thought to why the war happened at all. And although he devotes some attention atrocities committed by US soldiers, we don't see anything even close to the systematic mass murder at My Lai. I think what's fascinating about a film like Peter Watkins' Culloden, about the Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century, is how it moves from a minute-by-minute recreation of this one battle to a larger, more far-reaching look at its implications.

[transmogrifier]

.... in a film that wants to be taken seriously as an assessment of the Vietnam war, as this film so clearly does......

And although he devotes some attention atrocities committed by US soldiers, we don't see anything even close to the systematic genocide at My Lai.

It's like saying Beetlejuice obviously wants to be a somber treatise on the hollowness of grief, but it doesn't depict realistic funerals, and doesn't show anyone going into a deep depression over the death of a loved one, and it doesn't discuss the philosophical ramifications of death, and it doesn't document the process of decay on a human body. So therefore it's not really that good.

[baby doll]

Nup.

Then why set a movie in Vietnam in 1968, unless you're either going to make a statement about said war (and I've cited examples in the film, where he attempts to do exactly that), or a Green Berets-style action romp?

[baby doll]

....

As I said, acceptable criticisms. In the film, they shoot a woman because they think she was going for a gun; in other words, they thought their lives were in danger. Then Sheen puts her out of her misery. It's one of the stronger moments in the film, and it obviously resists a simple right/wrong reading, but when it comes to objectively genocidal acts committed by US soldiers during that war, the film remains utterly silent. Had any US filmmaker attempted that, in 1979 or today, they would undoubtedly be marginalized by the mainstream press.

[transmogrifier]

Then why set a movie in Vietnam in 1968, unless you're either going to make a statement about said war (and I've cited examples in the film, where he attempts to do exactly that), or a Green Berets-style action romp?

See above.

[baby doll]

It's like saying Beetlejuice obviously wants to be a somber treatise on the hollowness of grief, but it doesn't depict realistic funerals, and doesn't show anyone going into a deep depression over the death of a loved one, and it doesn't discuss the philosophical ramifications of death, and it doesn't document the process of decay on a human body. So therefore it's not really that good.

Except in Apocalypse Now, there are no supernatural fantasy elements apart from perhaps Brando's evident telepathy (he has spidey-sense for air strikes).

[transmogrifier]

It's like saying Beetlejuice obviously wants to be a somber treatise on the hollowness of grief, but it doesn't depict realistic funerals, and doesn't show anyone going into a deep depression over the death of a loved one, and it doesn't discuss the philosophical ramifications of death, and it doesn't document the process of decay on a human body. So therefore it's not really that good.

Actually this is fun.

Toy Story 3 is obviously trying to be a shattering look at psychological make-up of a sociopath and his co-dependence with mass media sensationalism, but it doesn't show anyone being killed and investigate the impact of that death on society as a whole, nor does it introduce the amoral reporting methods utilized by newspapers, nor does it even bother to have a character that is a sociopathic killer. Terrible!

[B-side]

I have no idea what's going on, so here's a funny picture:

[B-side]

Catfish was utterly compelling. Sometimes unsettling, sometimes baffling, sometimes highly emotional. Loved it.

[Winston*]

Anyone seen Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet? It is excellent, best filmed version of the play. If only it was in English...

[Morris Schæffer]

Really cool empire article on the fate of Aliens: Colonial Marines:

http://www.empireonline.com/features...ines-profiles/

[Boner M]

One characteristic moment comes during the storming of the village: When a Vietnamese woman throws a grenade into an American helicopter, Robert Duvall remarks (without any hint of irony), "Fucking savages." I'm sorry, who's the one leveling the treeline with napalm, and then saying it smells like "victory"?

Characteristic of what? Isn't the very fact that he says it w/o a hint of irony an irony in itself?

[Dukefrukem]

check this fucker out. 1000+ Minutes of shit! $139.99 U.S.

[baby doll]

Characteristic of what? Isn't the very fact that he says it w/o a hint of irony an irony in itself?

When I said irony, I probably should've said, "without any hint of satirical intent on the part of the filmmakers." (The problem with irony is that you can read anything as ironic.) Later, when Duvall says that he loves the smell of napalm in the morning, it's obviously meant satirically (only a crazy person would love the smell of napalm, since everybody knows that it smells terrible). Here, on the other hand, the comment passes unnoticed by most moviegoers, coming as it does immediately after a savage act of terrorism (the idea that the girl was defending her village from foreign invaders would never occur to this movie, for the very reasons I've been stating in this thread). Incidentally, during the same sequence, although Coppola gives us a handheld close-up of a wounded American screaming in agony, when US soldiers shoot down Vietnamese people, it's seen from a distance without much blood. The camera placement and editing have us identify uncritically with the American position, which is justifiable in certain respects (the story is narrated from the point of view of an American soldier), but in choosing that vantage point and sticking with it, Coppola approaches the war as if it were a high school football match (he doesn't know why he's rooting for the US; he just knows that he wants his team to win), which would be fine, if the film didn't hold itself up (and this is where it differs from The Hurt Locker) as a serious commentary on the war by having the characters in the film comment explicitly on how the war was being mishandled.

[number8]

It's better than Apocalypse Now.

[Raiders]

Has it occurred to you baby doll that telling a story from one vantage point does not necessarily equate to "rooting?" I mean, the central story after all is about an American going to kill another American. The film's goal isn't to show you both sides and to give you a scorecard on who's winning, why we're there, should we be there... (you seem to want to make this into a sporting match more than Coppola). The film is all about the quagmire, the complete and utter surrealty of being up the river without a paddle (pun intended) and of aimlessly fighting a war without any distinct purpose or directive from above. The only clear orders in the film are to find and execute a fellow American soldier. Sheen's character is barely even fighting a war; the skirmishes that happen do so only with Sheen as a bystander (to the obviously insane Kilgore) or as random events that happen along his journey. There are no battlefields, no formations, no victories. Just random encounters of violence. It's a pretty clear picture, and commentary, on the unique and ridiculous nature of the war.

Every film has to have a distinct perspective and purpose. You may as well ask why Peter Davis' Hearts and Minds doesn't properly give equal measure to the suffering of American soldiers and POWs as it does those for the Vietnamese and even seems to intentionally villify the American soldiers. Naturally the answer is obvious: his intention was to depict what the American soldiers and regime were causing in that region and to clarify some of the misconceptions on the nature of the Viet Cong and Vietnamese people. He had an agenda and made the best film he could around that agenda. Coppola too has an agenda. He makes a fiction film about the experience of a disillusioned soldier trapped in an unwinnable and disparate war where the purpose is as muddy as the landscape and his own mission is comically backward. Coppola is not interested in creating an encyclopedic version of the war. His is more personal, less political.

In response to your comments regarding the sequence with Kilgore and the Vietnamese girl, I must admit I think most filmgoers might actually just be quicker than you appear to be on this point. Not only are his own comments intended to be ironic (and this point seems practically explicit), but I think it is important to remember the song they fly to. They designated themselves the choosers of who lives and who dies, their felt superiority and arrogance made very explicit. The girl attacking them and being killed would normally, in a John Wayne-esque war film, be a moment of small victory for the US troops. But after Kilgore's callous and ironic response, it seems very clear that Coppola is at least superficially, satirizing the classic response such a scene would evoke. It would be silly to suddenly try and come at the scene from the Vietnamese point of view; Coppola has chosen his (the American, more specifically Willard) and stuck with it. We inherently understand that the girl was no more a savage than Kilgore and it equates the violent factions of both sides, which is about as human and fair a thing you can do.

[baby doll]

Has it occurred to you baby doll that telling a story from one vantage point does not necessarily equate to "rooting?" I mean, the central story after all is about an American going to kill another American. The film's goal isn't to show you both sides and to give you a scorecard on who's winning, why we're there, should we be there... (you seem to want to make this into a sporting match more than Coppola). The film is all about the quagmire, the complete and utter surrealty of being up the river without a paddle (pun intended) and of aimlessly fighting a war without any distinct purpose or directive from above. The only clear orders in the film are to find and execute a fellow American soldier. Sheen's character is barely even fighting a war; the skirmishes that happen do so only with Sheen as a bystander (to the obviously insane Kilgore) or as random events that happen along his journey. There are no battlefields, no formations, no victories. Just random encounters of violence. It's a pretty clear picture, and commentary, on the unique and ridiculous nature of the war.

If the film intends to portray the war as a quagmire, as you say, first of all, wouldn't it be in the film's interest to explain why the war was wrong from the beginning, and second, why then make the case--as Brando does in his celebrated horror monologue, and which reenforces points already made in the narration--that the US could've won the war had they been "strong" enough to go around hacking the arms off of schoolchildren? For that matter, while the US may not have gone around doing that precisely, how many children were killed by US soldiers, not only at My Lai but during the entire run of the war? I mean, maybe the single most famous image of the war is the picture of the girl whose clothes had been burned off by napalm. Yet the film makes the case, basically, that the US should have been even more indiscriminate and systematic about the children they killed if they really wanted to win.

Every film has to have a distinct perspective and purpose. You may as well ask why Peter Davis' Hearts and Minds doesn't properly give equal measure to the suffering of American soldiers and POWs as it does those for the Vietnamese and even seems to intentionally villify the American soldiers. Naturally the answer is obvious: his intention was to depict what the American soldiers and regime were causing in that region and to clarify some of the misconceptions on the nature of the Viet Cong and Vietnamese people. He had an agenda and made the best film he could around that agenda. Coppola too has an agenda. He makes a fiction film about the experience of a disillusioned soldier trapped in an unwinnable and disparate war where the purpose is as muddy as the landscape and his own mission is comically backward. Coppola is not interested in creating an encyclopedic version of the war. His is more personal, less political.

The adjective "unwinnable" brings me back to my other point, which is less about the film itself, than the film as a cultural phenomenon: There are certain acceptable criticisms that a filmmaker can make about the war in Vietnam (for instance, that it was badly mishandled and therefore unwinnable--basically, what Kronkite said about the war in 1968), but beyond a certain point, they face being marginalized. It's interesting to reflect that the war films most vigorously supported by Roger Ebert tend to be so-called "apolitical" war movies like Black Hawk Down and The Hurt Locker. Similarly, look at The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: Although it was made by a lifelong Tory and intended as propaganda, it was too hot for 1943 Britain because of its implication that England would lose the war if they didn't fight dirty, and consequently, was only shown after the war in a censored version. When the film was finally restored forty years later, the political climate having shifted, it was hailed as a masterpiece. My point is that I don't think that Coppola's film would've been so widely embraced as a masterpiece had its criticisms of the war been more pointed.

In response to your comments regarding the sequence with Kilgore and the Vietnamese girl, I must admit I think most filmgoers might actually just be quicker than you appear to be on this point. Not only are his own comments intended to be ironic (and this point seems practically explicit), but I think it is important to remember the song they fly to. They designated themselves the choosers of who lives and who dies, their felt superiority and arrogance made very explicit. The girl attacking them and being killed would normally, in a John Wayne-esque war film, be a moment of small victory for the US troops. But after Kilgore's callous and ironic response, it seems very clear that Coppola is at least superficially, satirizing the classic response such a scene would evoke. It would be silly to suddenly try and come at the scene from the Vietnamese point of view; Coppola has chosen his (the American, more specifically Willard) and stuck with it. We inherently understand that the girl was no more a savage than Kilgore and it equates the violent factions of both sides, which is about as human and fair a thing you can do.

As I said, you can read it as ironic or you can read it straight. But going back to the point I just made, had the film's criticism been more pointed, as opposed to sticking with the ideologically acceptable cliche of the Insanity of War, I doubt it would've been as widely embraced.

One could also argue that the film is opportunistically muddled: The Kilgore scenes, and Sheen's comically backwards mission of going upriver to kill another American, show the Insanity of War (therefore, the widespread agreement that the film represents some kind of anti-war statement), while the Brando scenes and much of the narration make the case the war could've been won had the US just gone all out.

[Qrazy]

So the film you saw wasn't full of references to the generals fucking things up, and didn't contain narration that explicitly contrasted US soldiers going to USO shows with "Charlie [squatting] in a bush," and didn't have Brando give a speech about Viet-Cong hacking off children's arms (never happened) in order to make the point that "they" were "stronger," and if the "we" had been "strong" like that, "our troubles" over there would be over shortly?

I feel you're misreading the film. I suggest reading (re-read?) Heart of Darkness and then re-watching. No, one doesn't have to read the book to understand all the ramifications of the film but it helps.

[Raiders]

I don't remember getting the feeling that I was meant to side with Brando's beliefs whatsoever. He's charismatically insane and does a lot of philosophizing, and I'm sure there is an intended truth to his position that a less political and more elemental, and brutal, regime would have "won" the war. But you seem to be taking this at face value, as if because it is in the screenplay and because Brando convincingly gives his argument that the film preaches it as gospel instead of another layer to the madness, and wicked and distorted logic, that can be wrought from such a war and experience.

I admittedly don't remember many specific details of the actual narration so I won't comment regarding that.

By chance, have you read Conrad's book?

[Qrazy]

If the film intends to portray the war as a quagmire, as you say, first of all, wouldn't it be in the film's interest to explain why the war was wrong from the beginning, and second, why then make the case--as Brando does in his celebrated horror monologue, and which reenforces points already made in the narration--that the US could've won the war had they been "strong" enough to go around hacking the arms off of schoolchildren? For that matter, while the US may not have gone around doing that precisely, how many children were killed by US soldiers, not only at My Lai but during the entire run of the war? I mean, maybe the single most famous image of the war is the picture of the girl whose clothes had been burned off by napalm. Yet the film makes the case, basically, that the US should have been even more indiscriminate and systematic about the children they killed if they really wanted to win.

The adjective "unwinnable" brings me back to my other point, which is less about the film itself, than the film as a cultural phenomenon: There are certain acceptable criticisms that a filmmaker can make about the war in Vietnam (for instance, that it was badly mishandled and therefore unwinnable--basically, what Kronkite said about the war in 1968), but beyond a certain point, they face being marginalized. It's interesting to reflect that the war films most vigorously supported by Roger Ebert tend to be so-called "apolitical" war movies like Black Hawk Down and The Hurt Locker. Similarly, look at The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: Although it was made by a lifelong Tory and intended as propaganda, it was too hot for 1943 Britain because of its implication that England would lose the war if they didn't fight dirty, and consequently, was only shown after the war in a censored version. When the film was finally restored forty years later, the political climate having shifted, it was hailed as a masterpiece. My point is that I don't think that Coppola's film would've been so widely embraced as a masterpiece had its criticisms of the war been more pointed.

As I said, you can read it as ironic or you can read it straight. But going back to the point I just made, had the film's criticism been more pointed, as opposed to sticking with the ideologically acceptable cliche of the Insanity of War, I doubt it would've been as widely embraced.

One could also argue that the film is opportunistically muddled: The Kilgore scenes, and Sheen's comically backwards mission of going upriver to kill another American, show the Insanity of War (therefore, the widespread agreement that the film represents some kind of anti-war statement), while the Brando scenes and much of the narration make the case the war could've been won had the US just gone all out.

The film is not pro-Kurtz.

[Duncan]

That line of Duvall's, "Fucking savages," is utterly ironic. That you could read it otherwise is possible, I guess, but beyond me. I think you've completely missed the point of the film.

[Melville]

you've completely missed the point of the film.

Fixed.

[DavidSeven]

Apocalypse Now really isn't just about the insanity of war. It's about the insanity of spreading democracy, "freedom", or whatever ideology through warfare. The insanity of building a "civilization" by launching grenades at it. The absurdity of how sending one American soldier up a river to kill another American Soldier could in any way advance the country's ideological goals. It's a very obvious adaptation of Conrad's criticism of European Colonialism (adapted to Western Interventionism). This is all very obvious within the film, but still very well done. Probably the most ingenious literary to film adaptation ever. But that's my opinion.