As an homage to the passing of Robert Duvall, I busted out my old dvd copy of Apocalypse Now: Redux and managed to make it to the Col Kilgore scenes before realizing it was waaayyy past my bedtime. Anyway, after reading your piece, it got me thinking about how the colonized/colonizer tropes apply to Coppola’s film. On the surface they don’t seem to translate, that there is something more fundamental at work. What’s your take?
Oops? I'm kind of a fan of the Theatrical Cut, flaws and all—I saw it when it first came out, back when they still had the air strike blowing up Kurtz's base over the end credits! At least I THINK that's what I saw—a combination of booze, weed, and the Mandela Effect may have me imagining that scene where it doesn't exist.
The REDUX version is...longer, and IMO cheapens the hallucinatory nightmare that the movie was originally released as. Watching it, it becomes clear that Coppola (or Walter Murch, who was the main editor) just shot everything that moved, and found his film in the editing room. What he originally had was closer to the kind of "Cynical Anti-War Movie" that was prevalent in the Sixties and early Seventies (like a knockoff of THE DIRTY DOZEN, or Enzo G. Castellari's THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS so beloved of Tarantino!), with Willard initially less conflicted over hunting Kurtz down and killing him (he's more of an insubordinate clown, stealing Kilgore's surfboard and fucking PLAYBOY Playmates). The promotion to Major (only mentioned as a voiceover aside in the final version, "They were going to make me a Major for this—and I wasn't even in their fucking army any more!") is explicitly offered to him in Da Trang as a kind of bribe to go into jungle and kill Kurtz in REDUX.
Mike's right—if you didn't like the original movie, APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX will just prove to you that the version everybody praised at the time was a lucky accident.
Were we in college together? I jest, but you kinda hit a nail on its head; I think one of the main reasons the original theatrical cut was so impactful was the time I was introduced to it. I was a young adult, newly unfettered by parental constraints, and fueled by a variety of intoxicating substances. The film WAS hallucinatory, not just visually, but also with a soundtrack provided by members of the Grateful Dead, it was just a “vibe”. Forty or so years on, and it doesn’t hit the same. Your comment about Coppola not really knowing what he was trying to say resonated with me: it’s like he wanted apocalypse now to be his take on the “mythical hero journey” so bad (for that matter, maybe Conrad too) and it just didn’t land that way. I think the movie was one of those things that was way cooler back when I was stoned 24/7. Now it’s more of a reminder of less serious times, I guess.
Not sure if we were, but I suspect if we met it would be like the three Spider-Mans all pointing at each other! 😁
I think the most profound thing I took from the original APOCALYPSE NOW was that it said, "War isn't Hell—it's crazy, and it makes no sense." I still love it in the way that I love the first two GODFATHER movies, as more of a sensory experience than an intellectual one. Yes, I know the Corleone's are cold-blooded killers—now, pass me some of that delicious pasta Sonny's wife (or Clemenza) made! And yeah, I'll take some of those huge prawns Gen. Corman's passing around....
PS: I was enough of a movie nerd by the time APOCALYPSE NOW came out that when I saw "CORMAN" on the General's fatigues, I started laughing. The friend I went with looked at me strangely—then HE started laughing when he saw "LUCAS" on Harrison Ford's fatigues...!
I'm not Noah, but APOCALYPSE NOW: REDUX does use Colonized/Colonizer tropes rather heavily, allegedly to critique them while at the same time revelling in them:
● The French plantation subplot (in the Redux version only) that's still operating as a kind of an armed outpost of Western Empire, akin to an isolated Cavalry Fort in a Western under constant siege by the non-Colonized natives—where the heroes have a brief respite (and where Willard is given absolution for his killings, some primo drugs, and a good fuck by one of the younger women living there) before traveling to their final destination;
● The PLAYBOY Playmates subplot that's in the Redux version where Clean and Chef get their ashes hauled by the Playmates (and it's implied Willard does, too) in exchange for some fuel to fly their helicopter out of where they had to land—where civilized behavior is tossed out the window as the women are pimped by their promoter so he can get out of there! There a further implication in Chief Phillips refusing sex, silently letting us know that he would have just given the chopper sufficient fuel to return to "The World" when they asked, showing he's the only truly civilized person left in that encounter;
● The Col. Kilgore subplot showing up Colonialism at its most decadent—bombing an entire village just to find a good surfing beach, right down to destroying Gods know how much of the jungle with napalm, an act Kilgore celebrates;
● The whole premise of APOCALYPSE NOW, as with Conrad's THE HEART OF DARKNESS, which alleges to critique colonialism by showing us "A Good Man Driven Mad in the Jungle", but in fact celebrates it by saying "The Jungle is a Bad Place, and We Need to Civilize It, Pronto!"
Some of that is that Coppola didn't really know what he wanted to say, and more of it is John Milius's own "Zen Fascist" take on the material, which openly celebrates (White, Western) Civ-il-I-Za-tion!
As an homage to the passing of Robert Duvall, I busted out my old dvd copy of Apocalypse Now: Redux and managed to make it to the Col Kilgore scenes before realizing it was waaayyy past my bedtime. Anyway, after reading your piece, it got me thinking about how the colonized/colonizer tropes apply to Coppola’s film. On the surface they don’t seem to translate, that there is something more fundamental at work. What’s your take?
I haven’t seen that? I kind of hate apocalypse now.
Oops? I'm kind of a fan of the Theatrical Cut, flaws and all—I saw it when it first came out, back when they still had the air strike blowing up Kurtz's base over the end credits! At least I THINK that's what I saw—a combination of booze, weed, and the Mandela Effect may have me imagining that scene where it doesn't exist.
The REDUX version is...longer, and IMO cheapens the hallucinatory nightmare that the movie was originally released as. Watching it, it becomes clear that Coppola (or Walter Murch, who was the main editor) just shot everything that moved, and found his film in the editing room. What he originally had was closer to the kind of "Cynical Anti-War Movie" that was prevalent in the Sixties and early Seventies (like a knockoff of THE DIRTY DOZEN, or Enzo G. Castellari's THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS so beloved of Tarantino!), with Willard initially less conflicted over hunting Kurtz down and killing him (he's more of an insubordinate clown, stealing Kilgore's surfboard and fucking PLAYBOY Playmates). The promotion to Major (only mentioned as a voiceover aside in the final version, "They were going to make me a Major for this—and I wasn't even in their fucking army any more!") is explicitly offered to him in Da Trang as a kind of bribe to go into jungle and kill Kurtz in REDUX.
Mike's right—if you didn't like the original movie, APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX will just prove to you that the version everybody praised at the time was a lucky accident.
Were we in college together? I jest, but you kinda hit a nail on its head; I think one of the main reasons the original theatrical cut was so impactful was the time I was introduced to it. I was a young adult, newly unfettered by parental constraints, and fueled by a variety of intoxicating substances. The film WAS hallucinatory, not just visually, but also with a soundtrack provided by members of the Grateful Dead, it was just a “vibe”. Forty or so years on, and it doesn’t hit the same. Your comment about Coppola not really knowing what he was trying to say resonated with me: it’s like he wanted apocalypse now to be his take on the “mythical hero journey” so bad (for that matter, maybe Conrad too) and it just didn’t land that way. I think the movie was one of those things that was way cooler back when I was stoned 24/7. Now it’s more of a reminder of less serious times, I guess.
Not sure if we were, but I suspect if we met it would be like the three Spider-Mans all pointing at each other! 😁
I think the most profound thing I took from the original APOCALYPSE NOW was that it said, "War isn't Hell—it's crazy, and it makes no sense." I still love it in the way that I love the first two GODFATHER movies, as more of a sensory experience than an intellectual one. Yes, I know the Corleone's are cold-blooded killers—now, pass me some of that delicious pasta Sonny's wife (or Clemenza) made! And yeah, I'll take some of those huge prawns Gen. Corman's passing around....
PS: I was enough of a movie nerd by the time APOCALYPSE NOW came out that when I saw "CORMAN" on the General's fatigues, I started laughing. The friend I went with looked at me strangely—then HE started laughing when he saw "LUCAS" on Harrison Ford's fatigues...!
Eh. If you “kinda” hated apocalypse now, you’d def 100% hate an even longer and more muddled version
oh, it’s an extended cut thing. huh.
I'm not Noah, but APOCALYPSE NOW: REDUX does use Colonized/Colonizer tropes rather heavily, allegedly to critique them while at the same time revelling in them:
● The French plantation subplot (in the Redux version only) that's still operating as a kind of an armed outpost of Western Empire, akin to an isolated Cavalry Fort in a Western under constant siege by the non-Colonized natives—where the heroes have a brief respite (and where Willard is given absolution for his killings, some primo drugs, and a good fuck by one of the younger women living there) before traveling to their final destination;
● The PLAYBOY Playmates subplot that's in the Redux version where Clean and Chef get their ashes hauled by the Playmates (and it's implied Willard does, too) in exchange for some fuel to fly their helicopter out of where they had to land—where civilized behavior is tossed out the window as the women are pimped by their promoter so he can get out of there! There a further implication in Chief Phillips refusing sex, silently letting us know that he would have just given the chopper sufficient fuel to return to "The World" when they asked, showing he's the only truly civilized person left in that encounter;
● The Col. Kilgore subplot showing up Colonialism at its most decadent—bombing an entire village just to find a good surfing beach, right down to destroying Gods know how much of the jungle with napalm, an act Kilgore celebrates;
● The whole premise of APOCALYPSE NOW, as with Conrad's THE HEART OF DARKNESS, which alleges to critique colonialism by showing us "A Good Man Driven Mad in the Jungle", but in fact celebrates it by saying "The Jungle is a Bad Place, and We Need to Civilize It, Pronto!"
Some of that is that Coppola didn't really know what he wanted to say, and more of it is John Milius's own "Zen Fascist" take on the material, which openly celebrates (White, Western) Civ-il-I-Za-tion!