On the docket for Schmoo at the Movies

The 50 greatest films of the past decade. The Onion AV Club did it, now I'm doing it!

The 10 best films of 2009. There are still a few films I need to see, a few of which might just make the list.

Award Season suggestions/predictions.

Also: What I'm looking forward to seeing this year.

Holmes and Watson at The Rep

The hour is getting late and Watson is all alone at 221b Baker Street. He has not heard from Sherlock Holmes in six days. The two were on a case at the Gaiety Music Hall when Holmes vanished, leaving Watson confused and concerned. However, near the stroke of midnight, Holmes reappears through the window and he has quite a story to tell; actually, he has quite a story to sing. A lowly entertainer, Freddie Fish, is blackmailing the queen. He is in possession of an item that could implicate the Queen’s son, Bertie, in some illicit activities. The new home minister, Major Timsayer, had charged Holmes with returning the item, a mere cigarette case, but once he has it in his possession, he realizes that things aren’t as they appear.

How could Freddie Fish, a known illiterate, send a ransom note? A recent photograph of Bertie with his cigarette case is dropped at Holmes’ door, so who is the rightful owner the case at 221b Baker Street? And has anyone else heard of Major Timsayer? These are mysteries that Holmes and Watson intend to uncover. If Fish wasn’t the mastermind behind the blackmail, who was? And to what purpose? The duo is quick to discover that they are not outside participants in this conspiracy, but actually pawns being arranged and secured for a particular time and place by a familiar foe for an unspeakable objective.

This is one of Holmes and Watson’s most dangerous cases. They need to stay clear of mind, unless the occasion specifically calls for them not to be. Such is the case when the two are locked in their sitting room and inundated with poisonous gas which can only be filtered out with a hookah and a popular herb from the orient. This is all before being attacked by their nemesis and his henchmen. One can only imagine how their landlady, Mrs. Hudson, will feel when the body count starts to climb.

Abundant references to Conan Doyle’s literature coupled with a style that will have you rolling in the aisles makes HOLMES & WATSON A MUSICAL MYSTERY a rich and vastly entertaining addition to Holmes lore. The detectives must sing their way through the clues and hope they come to the conclusion on time, or their lives and the lives of the royal family could be at stake. The game is afoot! Now comes their finest hour!

HOLMES AND WATSON A MUSICAL MYSTERY will be playing at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater through January of 2010.

Summer's Here

The summer movie season has arrived and I'm gearing up for the best and the worst! I plan on composing reviews for the lot of them, but at the moment I'll just share my first impressions:




Star Trek - I'll be shocked if anything this summer comes close to being as good as this. Even better than people say, A.








X-Men Origins: Wolverine - The film starts off promising, but quickly deteriorates into something cheap and ridiculous (even by comic-book standards), C-.





Night at the Museum 2: Battle For the Smithsonian - I actually quite like the first "Museum" flick, but this wasn't even enjoyable. Any avenues the film could have taken to save itself were swiftly abandoned. However, Amy Adams earns this film a slight boost, C-.






Up - This film proves that I'm not prejudiced against Pixar Films. It may seem like heresy, but I typically don't like their films and this year's effort had an uphill battle getting me to enjoy it. "Up" is a beautiful, poignant, and genuinely hilarious piece of animation. Pixar's best to-date, A.




Terminator: Salvation - This was certainly a disappointment. I've been looking forward to a post-apocalyptic Terminator story since I was just a child. The trailers had me convinced that this might be good. Early reviews made me more skeptical, but I still wanted to see it. It wasn't a bad film (certainly not good though), but it doesn't commit to the vision set forth by James Cameron with the first two installments. Very tame, what I'd call apocalypse-light. Also, a lot doesn't make sense. The PG-13 rating probably didn't help. C.

Memento: Creating the Male Victim

If you take a look at Spicer’s description of the “male victim”, you’ll see that he differentiates between two types of the character. The first victim is a middle-class drifter or professional; he is morally weak, attempting to escape the frustrations of his daily life and he uses his story to explain or excuse his actions. The second type is in the wrong place at the wrong time; he has to battle his way out of adversity displaying some heroic qualities; he often doubts his sanity; he is resilient and courageous, but he almost always needs outside help. We get the sense from Spicer that these are two distinct versions of the “male victim”, but Leonard Shelby in Memento is a composite of both. Due to his unique psychological condition, Leonard is a character that can encompass all the qualities the noir figure, creating an ultimate “male victim”.

Leonard is both a professional and a drifter. The part of his life that he remembers is as an insurance salesman, but the life he’s been living since his wife’s murder is as a drifter. Director Christopher Nolan says of the character, “Shelby knows who he is, but not who he has become”. This fact allows for the juxtaposition of the victim types. He is attempting to escape his frustrating life through memory tricks, but he often finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Due to his memory loss, he can’t completely trust the reality he finds himself in. Leonard wants to be the good guy and he appears to be one throughout most of the film, but that’s only because he’s living in the past. He can’t live in the present and engage with the man he has become. At the film’s conclusion (stories beginning), we see that Leonard’s present character is morally weak. He sets himself up to be a killer just so his life will have purpose. He’s a Jekyll/Hyde character; his cognizant self plays off his confused self to create targets for execution.

We can’t blame Leonard entirely though. Robert Porfirio says that “noir’s ‘non-heroic’ hero is such because he operates in a world devoid of the moral framework necessary to produce a traditional hero”. The noir universe that is the setting of Memento is so corrupt and twisted that Leonard cannot gain his moral bearings and thus becomes an anti-hero. Teddy, a cop, and one of his only friends, is an incredibly amoral character. Instead of stopping Leonard or helping him, all those around him encourage murder. In this type of environment, he doesn’t stand a chance.

The complex narrative structure of Memento gives us a better experience of the anti-hero’s condition. All the uncertainty and ambiguity that arises out of the backward narrative confuses the audience, putting them in a better position to understand Leonard. This style, attached to noir’s existentialist questions creates a film that deeply ponders the nature of perception and humanity.

Lost Highway: Bringing out the Noir

Spicer writes about the complexity of the postmodern noir’s narrative. In them we see the excess often associated with neo-noir. The complex stories and “convoluted plots often circle back on themselves” creating “a pervasive uncertainty about the reliability of what is being shown or told” (CP 116). Lost Highway fits this description, but goes even further. The Lynch film amps up noir’s complexity and convolution by placing it in the realm of the surreal where things don’t need logical solutions or explanations. The rules under which the world of Lost Highway operates throw away any certainty or reliability about the plot, which allows the audience to be fully engaged its noir-ness. Instead of trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, we can sit back and appreciate the plot as something without sense. In Lost Highway, we see the noir narrative made manifest.
Naremore writes that Lost Highway is such an effective noir because it creates a complete loss of psychological bearings (CP 135). What sense are we supposed to make of the Robert Blake character? Is there really any explanation about his presence? What are we to make of Fred becoming Pete in the jail cell? What rules of existence allow for such an unbelievable occurrence? The film presents a million more questions than answers. It’s deliberately meant to be a confusing film. David Lynch has said that the film takes place in the same universe as his show “Twin Peaks”; this revelation only elicits more questions. The whole experience of watching the film is very off-putting and disorienting. Any attempt to make sense of the happenings of the plot would result in further headache. The fact is that there aren’t any answers to the boundless questions and the quicker we realize this, the sooner we can allow ourselves to be enveloped by the darkness. This sense of confusion is not something we can fight our way out of through any manner of rational thought.
There are many nods to more specific noir tropes. There’s jazz music, darkness, murder, dames, schemes, and dark pasts to beat the bend, but these are just minor supplements to the noir narrative. Patricia Arquette portrays two femme fatales, one with red hair and one with blond, which resemble specific femmes from noir’s past. Their actions aren’t overly important and they don’t fulfill the potential of their archetypes, they’re just scenery, mise-en-scene for the noir world. Most of the individual noir tropes function this way. However, Lost Highway does fulfill the potential of the noir narrative, which few films can claim to have done; even the most convoluted of noirs will end with exposition to alleviate our confusion. There is no big reveal to this film and nothing can ever truly be brought to light. The audience remains in the darkness of noir, without their psychological bearings, until the film is mercifully turned off.

The Big Lebowski: The Noir Comedy

In The Big Lebowski the noir world is tested. The film showcases a number of tropes, twists, and conventions of the noir genre. In a typical film, these things would result in a serious and often tragic story; Lebowski is neither. Injected into this story are a number of characters outside the noir world, namely The Dude, Jeffrey Lebowski. He’s a lazy, easy-going, individual with little desire for material gain, which makes him immune to the pitfalls of the noir world. Sure, he goes through all the motions, but all he wants is the rug that “really tied the room together”. The genius of the Coen brothers is their utilization of such a character in a noir plot. Their film isn’t a comedy set in the noir world; it’s a comedy because of the noir world’s failed attempt to exert itself on The Dude.
The noir aspects of Lebowski’s plot are a nod to classic noir films like The Big Sleep. However, instead of injecting a proper P.I. into the kidnapping case, the Coens give us an unemployed slacker. What’s ironic about The Dude is that he’s more aware of certain twists than your average P.I.. He assumes off the bat that the kidnapping is a ruse. His divulging of this deduction to Walter leads to making the story a lot more complicated. When he attempts to read Jackie Treehorn’s note via the North By Northwest tactic, he just ends up with an illustration of a penis. His attempts to engage with the noir world and utilize his knowledge of it end absurdly. This, on a larger scale is what the Coens accomplish with the film as a whole. When placing noir under a comedic lens, the genre becomes ridiculous. How can one enter such a world without becoming hopelessly lost and disenchanted? They would be likely to say, “fuck it, let’s go bowling” and retire to the real world.
This exposes what can be done with genre when altering tone. Noir, in itself isn’t as specific as your typical noir film. The classic films incorporate elements from drama, mystery and melodrama. Noir, as an idea, is broader than that and can be infused with comedy to create something very funny. Any genre can be funny, sad, or scary, it’s just a matter of how you treat it.
The Dude’s abiding strips the expectations from classic noir, which aims to punish its protagonists. The noir comedy shows someone who will not give in to its dramatic and tragic elements. The film isn’t a drama, tragedy, or really even a mystery, so why shouldn’t he just abide. There’s no need for a big reveal or downfall because noir doesn’t have to be about those things. The Big Lebowski is about the perpetuation of the human comedy, especially in the face noir. Naremore writes about Mulholland Dr. at the conclusion of “Noir in the Twenty-first Century” that if postmodern noir is capable of creating such a “wrenching dramatic effect, then it remains capable of almost anything” (162). Postmodern noir’s ability to create such an effective comedy in The Big Lebowski also speaks to its vast potential.

Cronenberg and the Human Virus

When you watch David Cronenberg film, you’re watching an exhibition of the unnatural. You bear witness to grotesque conceptions, telepathy, human parasites, and violent transformations. Those involved in these actions or displaying these traits are easily deemed “Others”. The Other is the most central source of terror in the horror genre. However, what’s important to the depiction of the Other and to the magnitude of horror it elicits in the viewer is its basis in humanity. Yes, the scientists present in Cronenberg’s films are able to transform humanity into something terrible and inhuman through the use of biological alchemy, but their motives are perhaps more frightening. They are all attempting to better propagate or sustain humanity. The monsters continue with this aim towards prosperity, mimicking human nature with more expedient results. The horrors of these films are all based on the tendencies inherent in the virus of man.
Alchemy is a field that reflects the aims of mankind perfectly. We wish to transform the natural world to our advantage, so that we may be more prosperous and therefore healthier, more comfortable and longer living. However, today is an age when humanity swims against the current of its nature. We all desire love, companionship and immortality (both in life and legacy), but the world today forces us to question these desires. Sex can be hazardous due to the proliferation of STDs. Trust in others can lead to disappointment or betrayal. The methods of science to prolong life and increase fertility add to the catastrophic potential of overpopulation. It is these anxieties that make Cronenberg films so effective. The mad-scientists of his films are mad because they pursue the desires of human nature. This leads to rapid, immaculate conception and birth in The Brood, but the children are monsters. A fertility drug creates a generation of telepathic humans, who are forced to deal with the knowledge that privacy no longer exists in Scanners. They then exploit this by forcing intimacy amongst themselves and the non-telepathic world. In both Shivers and Rabid sciences created out of mankind’s sexual necessity cause mutations. These mutations lead to the unchecked spread of disease and thus a new humanity. This is a nightmare for a world that now fears excessive reproduction and the risks of sex. We fear what we can do to ourselves and our fears are magnified by the presence of modern science.
If viewed by a superior being through the lens of an otherworldly telescope, our world would appear as a Petri Dish and man would be a virus. Our population continues to grow exponentially. Mankind tears through the environment, taking what it needs to survive. Our doctors aid us in resisting death. We build up a resistance to our own maladies, so that we may be a more supreme virus. Our goal is a healthy and never ending existence, just like any form of life. These tendencies run rampant threaten our goals in the long run, that is why we have started to resist them. We are still a virus, just an evolving one. In his films, David Cronenberg presents us with a transformed humanity that embraces the other side of the spectrum. His reactionary mutations fully embrace the desires of humanity we now wish to repress, for they may destroy us all.

The Father, The Son, and the Family Apocalypse

We are all born with a clean slate. We are innocent, hopeful, and untainted. The world we see before sexuality is full of possibilities. We go on to spread the seed and heritage of our parents. It is children who keep the past, present and future alive. It was this pattern that kept the visage of the American family, with all of its values, intact. This all changed when Rosemary’s baby was born. In the realm of the horror genre, the family’s last possible escape was turned on its head. No longer was “the other” a member of the family who had grown into evil, but one who had been born so. There is no future in this, no recurring pattern to save the family norm, there is only a family apocalypse.
It is at this time that all aspects of horror are begun and exhibited within the confines of the family structure. The illusion of the family life that represses the fears and anxiety associated with child-bearing has manifested itself in the children themselves. However, these children don’t simply remain infants. Rosemary’s baby developed on screen within the horror film. He became Damien, then Regan, then Carrie and so on. Although, by the time it had grown into Carrie, the dynamic within the family had evolved. The apocalypse of the family is no longer wrought by the little children, instead the blame lies with the parents. Their ineptitude, absence and harshness forces their seed to further destruction, giving reason to the horror where there once was none.
Although there are some instances where the mother is at fault (Carrie), the father is the primary culprit in this. Even in Carrie one could argue that the father’s absence is important. When the father is absent, he allows for his children to destroy and/or be destroyed (such is the case in slasher flicks). But there are more direct ways in which the father becomes the root villain. In hindsight, we can see that the cause of the apocalypse of which I speak is the father. Rosemary’s baby was born to change the face of horror and the family, but why was it born? John Cassavettes sold his wife to the Devil in exchange for an acting career and its monetary gains. Subsequently the Devil begat the demon spawn. This trend also follows directly into The Amityville Horror and The Shining in which the fathers go crazy while struggling to deal with financial or creative difficulties and attempt to eliminate their offspring. This idea relates less directly to Poltergeist, where the father’s shady real estate venture brings his family to a haunted house. John Cassavettes was able to stave off this more blatant insanity by nipping his problems in the bud. Sell your wife and potential child to the Devil and your worries are solved.
This one selfish act has seemed to doom the horror film family forever. His act in creating Rosemary’s baby spawned a horror child that transcended all horror, destroying the innocence of the American family in the process (or at least the appearance of it). Then the parents began to agitate and cultivate more terror from their children in an attempt to cope with this evil. This forced the hand of the father, who was too busy dealing with the rigors of capitalist society to act rationally. So, the cycle that was started by the father came to a halt with the father and began again.

Home Alone and the Violent Tradition

When I watch characters on screen that I deem entertaining or likeable being tortured or persecuted, I cringe. I can’t help but root for the protagonist on most occasions, even when my better judgment begs the question, “who cares?”. Usually, I want them to live; I want them to get some sort of retribution against their aggressor. I wanted this at the resolution of Hostel, so much so that I disregarded all its ridiculous coincidences and poor storytelling. When I saw our hero slice off his friend’s torturer’s fingers with a scalpel, I beamed with satisfaction. I leaned back in my chair with a smug look on my face and thought mmm, good, all is well. Movies always seem to push their audience towards expecting and hoping for these types of situations to play out. To us, the protagonist can do no wrong. This isn’t simply the case in only torture flicks and monster movies, it applies to most movie categories, even holiday family comedies. That’s right, my attitude as it pertains to antagonist force in films was cultivated by the highest grossing holiday family comedy of all time, Home Alone. At the age of 3, in a Marcus Theatre close to home, I watched on approvingly as Kevin McCallister, aptly played by McCauley Culkin, shot Daniel Stern point blank in the face with a BB-gun and blowtorched Joe Pesci’s skull, among many other potentially more lethal acts. The little boy smirked and carried out his punishment of the “Wet Bandits,” who, in hindsight, meant him no true harm and with the police and neighbors only a phone call away. Sure, when I think about it now, I know that John Hughes based his entire plot on the foiling of criminals by a little boy and that it is meant to be fun and cute, but when you boil it down, Kevin McCallister is my generation’s David Sumner.
In Straw Dogs, David Sumner creates a situation in which a few men, who, at the time, mean him no true harm and would simply be turned into trespassers inside his home. In protecting his home, he devises several sadistic tactics to maim his oppressors. With a pleasant, albeit slightly insane, smirk, David displays the violent and cruel nature of man. The movie’s end isn’t as triumphant as Home Alone’s, it actually paints a pretty grim picture. However, it doesn’t matter what scholarly essays say about the matter, or what Sam Peckinpah intended, when my father walked out of the UWM Union Theatre in 1971, he thought Dustin Hoffman was the good guy. He was the down and out weakling throughout the entire film, outmatched by any single member of the gang he fought. We want him to get revenge on the men who have been emasculating him. We want him to prove that he is a man and to stop being such a cowardly and passive victim. He’s our hero, damnit, and we want more from him.
It is obvious where the movie is heading from the start. David’s avoidance of confrontation with the men who have asserted their dominance over his home builds to a point where there must be direct confrontation. His inability to take action with words or lawful intervention against the hooligans and possibly prevent their transgressions against his home allows for creation of his final situation.
The argument behind this movie is that David does not truly prove his manhood, because his idea of what it takes to be a man are skewed and primitive. However, humans are primitive creatures at heart and dominance in the mastery of violence will always correlate to masculinity. At least a manly David Sumner is a character we can get behind. His outbursts of outrageous, cruel, and unnecessary violence in the final scenes of the film do not deflect the empathy of the audience. He is the kid who has to prove himself against the bullies, just as much as Kevin McCallister. Both have fairly infantile views on adult responsibility, but it’s their situation as an underdog and emphatic dominance displayed in the face of greater size and years that earns them our kudos.
Such an emergent fury in the face of adversity also comes into play at the climatic end of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. William Munny is a sad and sorry character who does not fit in the world of a western genre film. His stance against violence and bible thumping does not make him an appropriate protagonist in for the audience of western films. It’s hard to understand and relate to the man. His final conflict is not nearly as contrived as that of the two previously mentioned heroes, but it echoes similar feelings. The centerpieces of Straw Dogs and Home Alone do not take place when David is backing down and not when Kevin is crying for his mommy, they both take place during violent bids for dominance. The most important scene in Unforgiven is the shootout between Munny and Little Bill’s men, at which time Eastwood reasserts himself as the cold-blooded killer of his youth. His masculinity is restored and he gains a measure of revenge and then some, but we do not fault him for it because he is our hero and we are behind him. He did not need to ride back into town and walk into that saloon, but he created that situation for himself so he could take lives. He is definitely not a good guy, but he is a lot more entertaining and fulfilling than the part of his character that was. Munny’s final reply Little Bill rings true as it relates to the film audience’s feelings too. Little Bill may not deserve to die, but “deserves got nothing to do with it.” It does not matter who truly deserves to be punished or in what fashion, all that matters is that we have been pushed in the corner of Clint Eastwood since the first bell, but now we are cheering because he is wielding a Spencer Rifle, killing people left and right – like a true badass.
Eastwood practically trademarked the master of violence character in the Leone trilogy and in High Plains Drifter. He never misses his mark. He deals death and pain to those in his way, yet he is once again portraying the champion. In High Plains Drifter, he shoots down three men who are harassing him. His actions are not a question of self-defense and they rarely are. He takes everything these men and everything they will ever be from them and he does not look back.
How can we cheer for a man like that? Well, it is because he has been established as our central character, his opponents are scummy, and he carries out his actions like an ace. Apply the same formula to the Culkin character in Home Alone, and you have a super fan favorite. Even forgetting the immense likeability of a child, he is our central character, his adversaries are slimey, and he’s just so damn good at inflicting pain. His shots with an air rifle land precisely where they mean to (mid-forehead and scrotum), the nail he carefully placed finds its way into Marv’s foot, and he swings paint cans with deadly accuracy at the faces of both intruders. He is a master of violence if I have ever seen one. Every careful scheme he devises works in his favor and it all results in the eventual capture of the antagonists. No matter what he did to two undeserving men, or what sick thoughts entered his mind while coming up with ways to torment the burglars he expected instead of calling on someone who could help, he is still a smiling, innocent child who weeps in the arms of his mother in the end. What an interesting dichotomy, the two sides of Kevin McCallister. Eastwood may have never wept in the arms of his mother before he shot her dead, just as the Culkin character never raped a woman for being impolite (that we know of), he is just such a badass that we have to love him. He does not have the universal popularity of a kid, but he has attitude. The protagonists of both respective movies rely on their attitude and deadly accuracy to maintain the favor of the audience.
Many of the films we watched in class make comments about how we watch violent media. Funny Games seems to say that what the audience wants is for the charismatic characters to prevail and for the prolongation of violent scenes. As illogical as the boy’s acts are in the end part of Home Alone, we want him to continue his antics because we like the character and it is a satisfying and entertaining course of action. The likeability of Kevin is eerily reflected in Funny Game’s primary antagonist, Paul. Both are boyishly charming, always smiling, mostly cool, and moderately aware of their part within a film. They both carry and decide the course of the film and we follow them along for the ride. Kevin McCallister makes more trouble for the Wet Bandits than is truly necessary because the audience derives entertainment in it, Paul continues to play with the feelings of his victims and deny them escape or retaliation because under the circumstances it just does not seem necessary, nor do we truly want to watch our movie guide and his partner get gunned down. Through Paul, we are allowed the ability to rewind and change the actions perpetrated in part of the film that we did not enjoy.
Soon after Kevin’s family abandons him for France, he is plopped in front of the television watching a VHS of a fictional gangster flick Angels with Filthy Souls. After a scene of bloodshed, Kevin seemes scared and pauses the film. However, he could not have been that bothered by it for he utilizes it cleverly and effectively to scare off burglars and an unsuspecting pizza guy, rather unnecessarily. He used the gruff film dialogue to give the appearance of tough grown ups living in the house, which makes sense in terms of the Bandits because it momentarily makes them apprehensive about breaking in to the house. The pizza guy was an innocent victim, Kevin had no reason to not buy directly from him, and he paid him accordingly. The little boy simply gets his jollies tormenting people and because he enjoys it; we enjoy it, too. He uses the television as a weapon just as the creators of Videodrome do. They use the allure of violent media to hurt those that they deem to be weak members of society because they watch it. Watching the enticingly illicit images of Videodrome turn the film’s protagonist into an assassin.
The same is argued about violent media today. Many think that watching such things can cause us to commit the deeds carried about within them. As an American child, Kevin McCallister’s interests already lie within the realm of violence when left with no parental restrictions. He picks out a movie that was deemed too violent for him to watch by his parents and he watches it, he is then driven towards playing with his brother’s pellet gun. When using the violent film’s context to scare away visitors, Kevin is shown emulating its brutal villain. Later on, he continues to reflect the antagonist by gunning down and repeatedly berating his attackers. The violent film obviously had some effect on how the boy thinks it is appropriate to conduct one’s self, specifically while in potential danger. It does not quite turn him into an assassin, but it makes him dangerous and prone to violence at an alarmingly young age.

Apocalypse Now: A Journey into the Primitive

For years after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, Hollywood mostly refused to comment through depictions of it on film. Since opinions on the war were so varied and the public so split, there was no conclusive way to attack a Vietnam Combat Film. How could they truthfully reflect what went on there? Would they be forced into pro-war or anti-war sentiment? Would a single aspect or account be satisfactory in creating Vietnam? No single war story is going to ring true to every honest experience of the war. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979, Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now, is not about something that anyone experienced during the war; it was about the experience of Vietnam. Coppola himself said, “It is Vietnam” (Woodman 103). Such a statement may seem pretentious, but his claim isn’t far off. The film is about the journey into darkness that must accompany war, an often confirmed idea. The events that lie within represent accurately the idea of primitive madness as a necessary component in war. Such an element cannot be put into frame within the confines of a truthful or literal war film. Coppola sticks to the thinking that “those that capably aspire to represent it accept the imperative that fictions must be used to tell the truth” (McInerney 11).
The story of the film revolves around the mission of one Captain Willard. Willard is sent by his superiors on a confidential mission into Cambodia to exterminate the command of a Colonel who is described by them as “unsound”. This Colonel, Walter E. Kurtz, is seen as having lost his mind because of the brutal and illegal tactics he implements. As Willard’s journey continues he finds himself “unaccountably sympathizing with the man he was assigned to kill” (Steier 3). The men who sent him on his mission, his boat crew, Lt. Kilgore, and practically every soldier depicted within pushes him closer to Kurtz’s mindset.
Over the course of the film many characters lose themselves to the horrors and insanity of this primitive war, but Willard is able to survive through his acceptance of it. He is a visibly disturbed individual in the opening scenes of the film. He flails around wildly drunk, taking in very few of the amenities that his hotel room provides him, save for the alcohol. The narration of his mindset has him still in the jungle with the enemy, as if he had never truly returned to humanity. His actions are reminiscent of a wild animal that has been caged.
It takes the forceful hand of a group of officers and a quick shower to shake him back into reality. This was to be short-lived as his assigned mission unleashes him again into the wild of Vietnam. The men who assign him the mission have never had to face the war. They are calm, cool, and collected, with clear convictions about the way war should be conducted. Theses men represent an important part of Coppola’s thinking, that “civilization is the mask the animals wear to hide his true nature”, which to many is perhaps, “the greatest evil of all” (Steier 8).
These men are barely at odds with Vietnam. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore is another one of these characters. His ability to crush VC villages with his cavalry of helicopters keeps things fairly stress free for him. The war hardly seems to faze him. Bombs hit less than ten feet from him and he doesn’t even flinch. When the fighting has finished and he’s acquired the proper waves for surfing. Charlie doesn’t surf, like these men. Later on, Willard also exclaims, “Charlie doesn’t get no USO”. These distractions for the soldiers to make them feel more at home are frowned upon by Willard, for they distract from the cruel war being waged. If they were sent into the thick of the war, they would fail as soldiers, as our Nation did, because they lack the proper mindset for war.
An episode with the highly strung character, Chef, illustrates a prominent theme in Apocalypse Now. After smoking some pot, he tells Willard that he wants to venture into the jungle to collect some mangoes. While out in the thick of things, he discusses his life before the war. Then out of the darkness of the forest a tiger charges the men. They shoot at it and run. Chef is particularly shaken by this. He proceeds to carry on hysterically, “don’t fucking get out of the boat!” This crew is not allotted the same comforts as Kilgore’s men. They can’t make the war like home, even talking about home while out in the jungle gets the men into trouble. The tiger is there to remind them exactly where they are; the wild. Chef can smoke pot while in the boat, but he can’t have the mangoes he desires. This instance displays the boat as a symbol of separation from the war. The men don’t want to get out of the boat and let their states of mind wander into the primitive jungle. By the end of the film, all the men in Willard’s crew will have gotten out of their respective boats, most do not survive.
A prime example of men who have gotten off the boat is described in Brian J. Woodman’s essay Images of African American Soldiers in Vietnam War Combat Films. Part of this essay describes the nature of the African American soldiers our protagonists meet at the Do Lung Bridge. The character of Roach is particularly examined. He is focused on the kill and calm despite the hectic conditions that surround him, he carries a grenade launcher painted with tiger stripes; he also dons war paint and a necklace of teeth. These elements are obviously meant to portray the character as an African warrior. While at war, Roach has reverted to a primitive part of his history, to a time when his ancestors were a part of the wild that now surrounds him (p.102). This wild seems to be consuming the sanity of others present at the bridge, chipping away at whatever civility may remain. If they do not become like Roach, then they will not survive.
It is also around this time that Lance begins to slip from his former self. To help cope with the madness around him, he inflicts another sort of madness upon himself through the use of acid. He carries and shields a puppy as he crouches and slips through the forces at the bridge, watching everything in awe. From this point on, Lance seems lost in the nature he has come to accept. He is a part of it even more as the story commences, presumably without the influence of anymore psychoactive substances. This attitude keeps him alive while the members of his crew drop like flies, it even allows him to thrive amongst the natives in Kurtz’s compound.
The last stop of boat comes at Colonel Kurtz’s compound. This is where the idea of the boat as a safety net is completely stripped away. The natives in the area hurl spears at the boat, killing both Clean and Chief Phillips, who clung to their senses of ethnicity and to the comforts of home. Clean is even listening to a tape from his mother when he is struck down. This just goes to show that the notion of home has no place in Vietnam. “The Chief on the boat is killed by a spear, (the jungle reconquers the urban ghetto)…” (Steier 8) The primitive inhabitants of the area even have their own boats. With them they create a barrier in the middle of the river that Willard and his remaining men must part to get to Kurtz. They are allowed through; this signifies the moment when they become completely immersed in nature. Whether they are in it geographically in the boat or not, makes no difference. Chef even meets his demise while waiting in the boat. The primitive creature that is Colonel Kurtz emerges from the jungle to brutally decapitate him; the jungle is now everywhere, and those who do not accept it will die.
Upon arrival, the photojournalist is the first man the crew meets. He is a wild man, obsessed with Kurtz’s dogma. He responds to Willard’s looks of disgust with only mild embarrassment, explaining that Kurtz’s sometimes goes too far. This man has seen the true brutality associated with war and is insane because of it. He is meant, as a journalist, to bring the truth about the war to the people, but he will never do that. It’s the truth that caused his meltdown and binds him to the compound. He will never tell his story about his descent into primitive madness, but others will tell their less than truthful stories. The cameo by Coppola himself, filming the attack by Kilgore’s cavalry, shows him setting up a shot and telling Willard not to look at the camera; this is the representation of the war that is shown to the masses. The story of this man seems to reflect the idea that a truthful representation of war is unattainable by those who did not experience it.
The man representing the truth about war is the epitome of madness, Colonel Kurtz. In a passionate speech made to Willard shortly before releasing him, Kurtz recalls events that lead him to Cambodia. He tells of a village his men were sent to inoculate and how the Vietcong amputated every arm they touched soon after their departure. It was upon seeing this that he knew victory was impossible. The horrors of war would continue for eternity if he didn’t aim to become more primitive and ruthless than the enemy. He brought it upon himself to bring an end to the war. To do this he would need to “utilize primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment because it’s judgment that defeats us.” Yes, the evolved brain’s capacity for judgment was the greatest enemy.
Kurtz told Willard to tell his son what he tried to do. He was proud of what he attempted to do and was sound in his reasons for it, but he knew that the madness had won out and that he had failed. In accordance with his mission and with Kurtz’s own desire, Willard returned to the compound under the cover of darkness and slaughtered him “. The scene in which he does this cuts back and forth between another scene of a water buffalo being slaughtered for sacrifice or food. Both deaths are brutal and very real. Kurtz no longer wants to live and wills his own death because of the pain caused by his constant primitive mindset. His last words reflect the life he has been living with, “the horror…the horror”.
Willard then leaves the compound with no opposition from Kurtz’s legion. They actually throw down their weapons, welcoming him as their new leader. Willard resists this temptation, refusing to fall victim to his own primordial desire for power, and leaves with fellow survivor, Lance. He is out of the madness and into his boat, where he proceeds to shut off the radio, his only means of communication. Willard is no longer in the jungle but also he, “wasn’t in their damn army anymore”, because the army was ill equipped to deal with war based on their morals inability to accept the brutality of war. He will never be capable of going back to his civilized self because his mind will always echoes the horrors he saw.
With all the themes of Apocalypse Now it’s only appropriate that Francis Ford Coppola nearly lost his own mind during shooting. He fought with his actors, lost an unhealthy amount of weight, his marriage nearly ended, he nearly went bankrupt, and he threatened to kill himself on set. Trying to reflect the truth about war in his film nearly drove him into madness. The truth about war, or at least his version of it, was madness - a mental slip into the primitive. He accomplishes a representation of this in the film with severe consequences to himself and his crew. Many of the events in the film as well as the situations surrounding it show madness in truth. To see the truth about war, we in the audience don’t need to see representations of war or war stories; we need to see the insanity of war.


Works Cited

McInerney, Peter. "Apocalypse Then: Hollywood Looks Back at Vietnam". Film Quarterly. University of California Press, 1980.
Steier, Saul. "Make Friends with Horror and Terror: Apocalypse Now". Social Text. Duke University Press, 1980.
Woodman, Brian J. “Images of African American Soldiers in Vietnam War Comb
Films.” The War Film. Ed. Robert Eberwein. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Up, 2005.