Apocalypse Sometime

I've been watching the Redux version of Apocalypse Now this weekend.

I didn't see the original film at the pictures when it came out in '79 -- I was a very young-looking 17, and wouldn't have been able to get in to a certificate 'X' film (as 18s were called in those days). I did catch the film a year or so later on a really snowy pirate video, and - a bit later on - I watched it on a 'pukkah' version.

I always liked this film. It appealed to me at lots of different levels.

Firstly, it was beautifully shot - I'm thinking particularly of the 'boat in landscape' shots, and of the awesome 'Ride of the Valkyries' sequence, from the trumpet-boy on the take-off grounds, all the way through the attack on the Vietnamese village: if there's a better live-action war sequence, I haven't seen it yet. (This segment appealed to me at a rather disturbing, visceral level -- the bit of me that gets excited by military hardware and explosive action. I recognise that these bits of me still get stimulated sometimes (eg, Band of Brothers), and it feels weird -- my intellect is saying no, but my brain stem is saying cor!.

Second, it keyed into a lot of the reading I'd done about the Vietnam war, and into the political beliefs I had at that time, particularly about the evils of US foreign policy. I remember looking at Tim Page's pictures of Vietnam, and going to see a play based on Michael Herr's Dispatches at the National Theatre -- the book and the play were brutal and compelling, and all of that fed into my 'reading' of Coppola's film.

Thirdly, of course, there's the whole Africa/Conrad/Heart of Darkness subtext, flowing through the film like a dark river. That parallel adds historical perspective and depth to Coppola's narrative.

The Redux version adds more depth and layers -- partly because of the additional footage, and partly because of the additional reading that I've done since I last watched the movie: in footage terms, I think the 'French Plantation' sequence is particularly telling, as it reveals more historical background, and deepens the 'depth of field'...the French as the former colonialists, the US as the original sponsors of the VC, and all of that 'superior European/white man' stuff; this also chimes with subsequent reading I've done on colonialism, European senses of superiority and 'ownership' of 'lesser' peoples and their land/resources, and the (racist) assumptions about 'civilising' others and drawing them into the homogeneous world of capitalism and (western notions of) liberty.

Finally...it made me keep thinking about current US foreign policy and overseas 'adventures': the flawed belief in the power of military technology; the kids operating the weapons of war; the uneasy alliances between 'sponsors' and native forces; the distance between rhetoric about the war, and its reality; the battle for hearts and minds; the demonisation of the enemy in racist and 'subhuman' terms; the sense that conventional military force is not the solution to this 'problem'; the double standards and lies.

So...quite a deep film. (I think FFC needs to upgrade the soundtrack, though -- those synths sound a bit dated...)