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Films that Promote Peace & Nonviolence |
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Films that Promote Peace & Nonviolence |
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1) "Horror and moral terror...are your friends": Wav 60 KB
Reenvisioning Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's classic novella about the evils of imperialism, as a story about America's involvement in Vietnam, Francis Ford Coppola created a work of art as powerful and haunting as the original. Military agent Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is assigned the task of "terminating" the leadership of Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade American colonel who has gone insane and disappeared into the Cambodian jungle. As Willard travels by boat through Vietnam in search of the mysterious Kurtz, the panorama of the Vietnam War, in all its horror and absurdity, unfolds. The acting is uniformly remarkable, with a memorable turn by Robert Duvall as the half-mad Colonel Kilgore, who "loves the smell of napalm in the morning," and a great debut by 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne as a young soldier. Vittorio Storaro's brilliant camera work and an inspired use of the Doors' ominous anthem, "The End," capture the druggy, nightmarish atmosphere of the "psychedelic war"; the film won two Oscars, for cinematography and sound. Coppola spent five harrowing years bringing this masterpiece to the screen (see the documentary on its making, Hearts of Darkness), and it was worth it. Mythical, impressionistic, and horrifying, Apocalypse Now is a stunning achievement that ranks as the best of the many movies made about the Vietnam conflict. Kryssa Schemmerling
This film has its famous moment, some better to be kept quiet
about until they come through the screen. It doesn't require any intellectual
understanding, although the film is intellectually remarkable. The American
soldiers in the Vietnam War jumped into the land of a fresh governmental
country, aiming to protect themselves and in the end only received death and
chaos for their troops and for the majority of the country they were fighting
against. It was a war gone mad, like all other wars, without purpose or dignity.
It was a pure act of humanity: to destroy and restore their own greedy needs.
This is a film in which there is no saviour, where it is hardly possible to find
hope in the gloomiest corners and where all surroundings are plagued with the
infatuations of greed, anger, foolishness and egoism. As Coppola once said about
the film: 'This film isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam'. He was right to
the date. During the current situations of the world, where they are trying to
protect their own skin, the world should try to analyse this film as much as
possible and wonder about what it is trying to represent. It is a film which
does not ask for applause or damnation. It asks for realism.
TV Guide Review: This brilliant, bizarre, and confusing film originally brought producer-director Coppola great kudos. He was hailed as the creator of the greatest war (or antiwar) film ever made, yet subsequent viewings show considerable flaws and wide gaps in the story line that are merely filled in with Brando's incomprehensibility. Sheen, a captain high on war and suffering from battle fatigue, is ordered to take a four-man crew up the Mekong River into Cambodia where he is to exterminate Brando, a berserk American colonel who has set up a ruthless dictatorship on an island. As the gunboat proceeds upriver, Sheen and his men come under fire, which jangles the nerves of the executioner and haunts him with memories of previous battles. They stop at an American helicopter base where Sheen accompanies Duvall, a wacko colonel who "loves the smell of napalm in the morning," on a raid against a Vietcong stronghold. The copters fly in blaring Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" and then proceed to bomb and strafe everyone in sight. The gunboat continues upriver to a USO site where thousands of GIs are near frantic at the sight of Playboy Playmates on-stage; several soldiers become so aroused that they rush the stage and the girls must be taken away. Sheen resumes his journey under attack from the shore; some crew members are killed, but he finally reaches Brando's island stronghold. Signs of his dictatorship among the Montagnard tribesmen are everywhere--severed heads of dissenters impaled on poles, corpses hanging from trees. Sheen is greeted by American stragglers, fanatical followers of Brando, notably Hopper, a neurotic photographer. The executioner is granted an audience with Brando, who resides in the damp darkness of a cave meditating on life and death and tells Sheen that "moral terror" is necessary for the preservation of civilization. Despite his inner admiration for Brando (it is never made clear why diehard soldier Sheen should feel this way), Sheen carries out the execution and escapes with Bottoms as the natives close in on the retreating gunboat.
Coppola, as usual, was expansive and almost as self-indulgent in this production as was his temperamental star, Brando. The director began with a $12 million budget that surpassed $31 million before the 238-day shooting schedule ended, his costs so excessive that he had to sink his own money into the production. The film was also held up as Sheen recovered from a heart attack. Five years in the making--afflicted with indecision, huge costs, expensive technology, haphazard progress, foul weather--the creation itself of APOCALYPSE NOW can almost be interpreted as an appropriately ironic metaphor for America's involvement in Vietnam. The movie originally was a financial disaster, grossing little more than $5 million above budget. Coppola did produce an awesome film depicting the ultrainsanity of the Vietnam War. Everything here is perverted, from the commanding officers to the sleazy entertainment given American soldiers: instead of Bob Hope and wisecracks, there are talentless floozies; instead of resolute and somber militarists, there are schizophrenic and paranoid madmen. The photography and production values are faultless as Coppola reproduced the flavor of the Vietnam-Cambodian jungle--its suffocating foliage and lurking dangers--in the Philippines. But the slim story is slowed down by introspective passages, particularly the incohesive monologs mumbled by Brando that echo chillingly in his cave (reportedly inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness).
One never clearly understands the lunatic's point of view--which might be the point, yet such obfuscating tirades could have been encapsulated for the sake of the viewer suffering through selfishly produced surrealistic scenes. Here again was a message no one understood but accepted in the name of muddled art. The juxtaposition of Coppola's swift and paralyzing action and the leaden weight of Brando's rambling do not justify the fizzling finale. We are given the tremendous build-up of Technicolor battle only to be offered an end in the shadows of a cave with a madman whose philosophy and rhetoric are about as interesting as those of a drugged-out guru contemplating his navel at the top of Big Sur. The point, of course, is that war is pointless and horrible and inhuman, and in those regards APOCALYPSE NOW succeeds with devastating accuracy. Yet it lacks anything really human--love, humor (outside the display of madness), reason, understanding, and people to whom the normal viewer can relate. There is no real feeling here for the Vietnam struggle where hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and more than 50,000 died, a universal attitude that is found in THE DEER HUNTER and even THE GREEN BERETS. Coppola's intense interpretation of the war is technically impressive and shocking, but it is woefully short on humanity. The film won two Academy Awards: Best Sound and Best Cinematography, and it was nominated for six more: Best Picture (it lost to KRAMER VS. KRAMER), Best Supporting Actor (Duvall, who lost to Melvin Douglas in BEING THERE), Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Film Editing.
Apocalypse Now Book
"The movie took years to be filmed and edited. It was the
subject of endless stories, rumors, and speculation. At a screening at Cannes in
May 1979, Francis Ford Coppola said simply, "There wasn't a truthful thing
written about [the film] in four years." That year at Cannes Apocalypse Now
won the Palme d'Or, and from there it went on to worldwide acclaim, etching
itself in the memories of audiences with unforgettable sequences like the dawn
helicopter attack scored to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" or Lt.
Colonel Kilgore's chilling "I love the smell of napalm in the
morning."" "Here, illustrated with evocative stills from the film
and revealing photographs from the set, is the story behind the movie where
Vietnam met Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is the saga of Coppola and his
crew and actors - who included Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen,
Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford - battling hurricanes in the jungles of the
Philippines, the calamity of a lead actor's heart attack, crises both
psychological and financial...and in the end giving rise to a modern film
classic."--BOOK JACKET.
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New Price: $10.75 In Stock:Ships within 24 hours  Same Day Delivery in Manhattan.Format:Textbook Paperback, 2nd ed., 315pp. ISBN: 0312114915 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: February 1996 Edition Desc : 2nd ed |
In Conrad's haunting tale, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer,
recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the enigmatic
Kurtz. Traveling to the heart of the African continent, he discovers how Kurtz
has gained his position of power and influence over the local people. Marlow's
struggle to fathom his experience involves him in a radical questioning of not
only his own nature and values but the nature and values of his society.
Sound Bite: "Horror and moral terror...are your friends": Wav 60 KB
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