The colonel is Kurtz. — plucked. from Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness and transported to South-east Asia. On his way Willard witnesses example after example of the cruelty towards. their occasionally reflects, ironically, upon the disintegration that human beings suffer in the context of war.
Apocalypse Now appeal to those who feel that war is simply morally wrong. It never raises itself above this platitude and by half way I had lost any notion that it was supposed lo be about the most barbaric imperialist history: Vietnam. Instead there is a bizarre and formless scenario of violence which reaches a climax in an attack Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie is relayed from loudspeakers strapped to the underside of the helicopters.
Crisis This is the crisis of Hollywood realism: $30 million spent on the portrayal of violence, but 'no idea of analysing why all this is happening.
it is sexist in thai the frenzied male world of the army is transmitted through the eyes of Willard, the cool-guy who is unflinching and emouonless cven in sever Hollywood bull-shitting of a gruff male voice padding out clichés like 'he's got balls".
So what is this film worth? I don't think very much, except insofar as, unlike many of I! glorifies the driven-to-evil individual falsely cut loose from their society, politics, history and authority (which is presumably why we are assaulted with quotations from Eliot, Kipling. Wagner and The Golden Bough). But this is schizophrenic the army had become. it was still in Vietnam on the orders of its generals and a president operating from behind a ciassical The formal climax of the film comes when Kurtz, in a state of abject moral exhaustion -disgusted with the war, himself and the world gives himself up, as it were, to be sacriliced.
world in negalve ignorant to politics, change or why he has below But he is 'an honourable, and having read The Golden Bough and other such mythological texts he decides to die in his own 'noble' way. That is to say, he consciously refuses to confront and analyse the nature of his predicament. And thence war itself is taken out context and Vietnam distant and coherent statement except NOTTON The root of the contusion lies in Coppola's inability to make a film Darkness — and the inadequacy of Conrad's novel itself.
the novel, 'employers, a British ivory-trading company, to go up the Congo and seek out Kurtz, who has abandoned the company himself. with a mad, Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness begins its description in England in the genteel drawings; room of Marlow's mother. from Westminster.
On his way witnesses (what we now know to be Belgian) colonialism in its most brutal form, And we Americans' barbaric "enemy', and is a film that would calamity •modern yillage the wake of the most cultured man', bastardised.
exempt any 'the horror, the based on Heart of sent by his and surrounded devoted tribe. Unlike fils DOal icayes up the Congo, Marlow are reassured by Conrad's dialogue that the wiles tans business capital and subjugation. In addition to this, Conrad describes the whites' fear, due to of both the appearance of the Africans and their landscape. decaying and desperate, it is inferred that the disintegration of this European might be due to his culture and Marlow returns to England, lying to Kurtz's that he died an honourable. manly death of dignity.
Base If Coppola had adhered to this structure we might have had a more interesting film. might even have seen the base: America itself, and the directors of the war. But Coppola's film never returns home bloodstained and dizzy, steps of Kurtz's den.
would have still have made the film chauvinist Africans as passive, speechless lambs, offering themselves up the capitalistic arms of the white imperialists: the only words they utter are of Coppola, all vuleis civilisation. In the end, We leave Willard on the Hart -adherence to Conrad's form Kurtz's demise 'Mr Kurtz, he dead' This kind of deduction seems to be beyond because he does not -seem understand what form is. Interviewed on The South Bank Show, accurate description of what American foreign how he would make a film about Vietnam, he then said: 'I don't want to make a film about Vietnam, I want to create Vietnam itself.' All I can conclude is that one only has access to $30 million to make a film if one is not going to rock the imperialist boat.
THE OTHER BOOKSHOP Black Bolshevik, by Harry Haywood — Pluto Press, £2.95 Black Jamaicans Struggle y Slavery, by Richard - Community Education Trust, 95p Scarlet Woman, No 10, Newsletter of the Socialist Feminist Current, 45p 328 Upper Street, London N1 2XQ [Tel. 01-226-6571] that sticks.
destroying 'blowing into the Sex Hendrix, bizarre : Captain beyond military Save to he gave a reasonably that the possible for the willing Neither minefields takes a sadistic delight in killing Vietnamese. He is a caricature I love une smell of napalm', he says to his coterie of admirers after whole village and the ass' of a brave Vietcong woman who throws her hat helicopter with a grenade The music of Wagner, the Doors, Sound helicopter blades beating above, the Bunny girls that arrive to titillate the sex-starved GIs, all make the brutal events seem and unreal. The audience itself is invited lo participate in a hallucinogenic experience. Mari Sheen, is a ClA asassin. He Willard played is sent on a trip to kill Colone? Kurtz, a modei US soldier who has gone pale and only succumbed to brutal paganism and genocide but is doing it outside the the US, (The Americans were conducting operations whère we see him Saigon hotel room getting drunk and displaying his masochism, right up until the gruesome ending of the film. assassin, to appreciate his "sanity" in an insane, barbaric world.
shoots a Vietnamese woman because he dislikes his companions' hypocrisy when, having shot her, they want to mission to accomplish Kurtz, the man he has to kill. The becomes at the prospect of meeting a man who has come to terms with a horrible war by immersing himself in The swift killings in the earlier part of the film contrast with the particular brand of barbarism, which is based on the real forms of torture carried out by the South Vietnamese Ine scenes an nonetheless shocking for all that.
eventually looms out of the shadow! as Kurtz. He is intrigued by the fierce resistance of the Vietcong to 'cadre'-like discipline and military Western world, cannot understand Vietnamese spirit of resistance Is vased not on inscrutable Asian personality but on a commitment to fight as hard as liberation of their country. Kurtz idolises violence for own sake. The Vietcong were to fight the Americans violently because that was the only way to get rid of them.
Kurtz nor the film's director fully understand that. But it's still a film not to be missed.
Socialist Challenge 31 January 1980 Pagels
Socialist Challenge published the vast the 6 on Tory the John-Stevas, and overtly cowardly democracy of Party INFUATONS HIGHER THAM MY
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FRANCIS and VALERIE COULTAS. 'Marlon Brando's ox-like figure eventually looms out of the shadows as Kurtz'