The communal Parallax View film criticism blog, coordinated by Sean Axmaker, has resurrected Richard T. Jameson's provocative, penetrating "Apocalypse Now" review, originally published in the Seattle Weekly (then known only as The Weekly) October 17, 1979. I think it's the most lucid thing anyone's ever written about the movie, and should be required reading after every screening as a way of ensuring substantive discussion.
Jameson's piece illuminates essential truths about "Apocalypse" (and, I think, about Coppola's body of work), with a precision few critics have been willing or able to explore. You may want to argue with it (and by all means go ahead!), but if you read it closely I think it will show you things you may already have felt, even if you never quite noticed them before. That's true for me, anyway. I've just re-read it for the first time in almost 30 years, and I feel it's been there, under my skin, the whole time:
"Apocalypse Now" is a dumb movie that could have been made only by an intelligent and talented man. It pushes its egregiousness with such conviction and technical sophistication that, upon first viewing, I immediately resolved to withhold firm judgment until I'd seen the film again: perhaps I'd missed some crucial irony, some ingenious framework that, properly understood, would convert apparent asininity to audacity. I didn't find it. It isn't there. What is there is the evidence of a reasonably talented filmmaker having spectacularly overextended himself -- Francis Ford Coppola who, having had a toney pop epic widely accepted as great cinema, felt he was ready to make "Citizen Kurtz."
[...]
It just may be that Francis Ford Coppola is not a stylist at all. He has a good eye, he composes his frames and shot sequences with intelligent purpose, and certainly he inspires a steely concentration in his actors (he needs more from them than most directors do); but he is a one-thing-at-a-time director. A given shot makes a single, clear statement. There is no resonance--although there is sometimes a built-in interpretation of the statement that is foregrounded so deliberately it can't resonate.
This is true even of his American art film "The Conversation," a movie that seems to explore the ambiguity of media (as ["Citizen Kane"] does in spades). But whatever ambiguity it possesses is a function of the screenplay, not the direction. The central set-piece -- the conversation recorded by several microphones, played back a dozen times, filtered, synthesized, and also revisualized (presumably in the mind's eye) from a multiplicity of camera angles till it yields sinister, contradictory meanings--is fine as suspense stuff, but it's ambiguity-by-the-numbers... [...]
Coppola is an excellent screenwriter (v. the achievement of polishing Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" for the screen) and he has actually received more honors for his screenplays than for his direction. But he knows that the cinema is a director's medium, that the director is superstar. Pretty clearly, he determined that "Apocalypse Now" would be taken first and foremost as a director's movie (as "Kane," for all the brilliance and detail of its script, is a director's movie). And, the miscalculations about the Marlow figure aside, it is as a director's movie that "Apocalypse Now" most resoundingly flops.
Damn that's good -- and it crystalizes more completely than I ever could my ambivalent responses (visceral, aesthetic, intellectual) to every Coppola movie I've ever seen. With the possible exception of "The Godfather, Part II," the closest I believe Coppola's ever come to epic storytelling, and the only sequel I can think of that actually improved its predecessor and may have retroactively boosted a dandy popular gangster movie to "masterpiece" status... without, of course, changing a frame of the first movie. (Then Coppola temporarily destroyed them both by stretching them out into a chronologically linear soap opera for TV in 1977.) Remember, too, that Coppola had only made a handful of films when this was written: "Dementia 13," "You're A Big Boy Now," "Finian's Rainbow," "The Rain People"... (Jameson quite liked "The Cotton Club" a few years later.)
I do think there's some brilliant stuff in "The Conversation" (including one of the all-time great plumbing scenes, and a blood-on-window shot that's more potent and shocking than the celebrated one from DePalma's "Scarface" years later), but even though it's my favorite Coppola after "Godfather II," made the same year, it does feel like a slightly formal, over-polished essay. But that kind of fits its central character. I'm still arguing with myself about how much I think it cheats at the end.
Back to Jameson and Coppola:
A lot of people who can see the problem with the film's scenario logic and characterizations nevertheless manage to come out cheering because of the "visual power." May I propose that "visual" is the most abused term in the filmcrit lexicon? It is not enough for a film to be full of moving subjects and moving camera, flaring lights and inky shadows, towering compositions and tricky dissolves. That can add up to arrant pictorialism, a miscellaneous lightshow, or meretricious folderol. It isn't "visual" unless it's informed by an organic intelligence. There is organization in Coppola's film, but organicity it's not. His motifs don't grow--they merely recur. His images, even when technically impressive, don't reverberate with possibility--they freeze up with literalness. They don't suggest--they denote.
I feel like an Isely Brother reading that. It makes me want to shout with joy because it captures the essential movieness of movies more acutely than all but the liveliest examples of the liveliest art.
One more quotation -- there's lots more where this came from -- just because this is so good I want to gobble it up:
[...] "Apocalypse Now" is nothing if not an attempt to make a serious and important work of art. One must admire Coppola's crazy courage in laying fortune, career, even his home on the line to get the film made. And if he reached beyond his range as an artist, well, that is an honorable failing. But one thing is unforgivable. Francis Coppola based his film on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"; he even went back to Conrad to restore material omitted from that first John Milius screenplay. Almost everything that is any good in the film, that has lasting power to disturb, is based on Conrad's original vision. A seaman from the Polish Ukraine, who learned to use the English language with a majesty and subtlety few have equaled, created one of the definitive works of--and on--the Western imagination. There are no credits on Coppola's film, but the programme book has columns of them. Joseph Conrad's name is never mentioned....
(Oh, and you say you haven't read Jameson's Movietone News masterpiece about Robert Altman's masterpiece, "Nashville"? Well, go on, it's right here, too. Feel free to lick your plate when you're done....)
* * * *
And now, just for the hell of it, a self-indulgent flashback about me:
I wish I could recapture for you the fevered atmosphere surrounding the release of "Apocalypse Now" in 1979, after years of horror stories from the set and the editing room, and the "work-in-progress" screening at Cannes, where Coppola proclaimed that his movie wasn't about Vietnam, it was Vietnam. (This is chronicled in Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola's "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Journey" -- a much better, richer film than Coppola's, just as Les Blank's "Burden of Dreams," about the making of Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo," turns out to be the film Herzog's should have been).
I was 21 at the time and had written my first movie review for my college newspaper, The University of Washington Daily, less than two years before. (It was of "Annie Hall.") I wanted this movie to be great -- everything I imagined it could be. As we were leaving the exclusive, event-style press screening, a friend asked me if I thought it would be considered one of the great movies ever. I said I didn't know. But I wrote about it as if I did. (I wasn't as judicious as Jameson.) I wrote about the first part of the movie (I've always thought it deflates completely once Brando appears), about the excitement I felt, about the "importance" I felt (this experience came to mind when I saw the responses to "The Dark Knight" this summer), and I think I talked myself into believing against belief that it was some kind of masterpiece. I remember somebody seeking me out to talk about the movie, and we discussed it in reverent, impassioned tones... and then it sunk in that he hadn't seen the movie. Of course, he couldn't have -- it hadn't come out yet. He just wanted me to help pump him up for the experience, and I was more than willing to field his eager, awestruck questions.
I know, I was a total doofus.
Later, I ate my printed words. In print, too. I went back to see "Apocalypse Now" again and saw not the movie I had wanted to see, but the movie I already knew I'd seen the first time but hadn't wanted to admit it. So I came clean and wrote about that one. Every few years I still think I must have been wrong because, you know, everybody thinks it's great and all, so I watch it again and I'm always disappointed again. (I've had the same recurring letdown with "Blade Runner" in its endless incarnations. At some point I think it got somewhat better, but I'm no longer sure when or how or how much.)
Well, you're wrong. Having said that...
If nothing else, I admire the fact that you remain true to your feelings in regards to the movie. It's not always easy.
I remember seeing a midnight showing of "The Phantom Menace" with friends. Afterwards, we gathered around to see what we all thought.
Friend 1: "I liked it. You?"
Friend 2: "Same here. How about you?"
Friend 3: "Good film."
[Awkward silence, as we look at each other, not believing the words that just came out of our mouths and not believing each other.]
Friend 1: "Well, it's getting late..."
I've always felt that Apocalypse Now was more about spectacle than anything else. It's as much about things looking cool and lots of explosion as any summer tentpole movie. And I respond to Apocalypse Now as such. Honestly, when I saw the Redux in theaters a few years ago, my main motivcation was to see the helicopter attack on a big screen. Because there are lots of explosion and Ride of of the Valkeries would play in digital surround sound. Whatever thematic significance this movie has takes a back seat to all the shininess and explosions.
Jameson is right. The images of Apocalypse now are literal. They denote. But he misses the point. They had to be in order to in any way encapsulate Vietnam. There was enough ambiguity and confusion in the war that a film trying to show the inanity of it, by necessity, had to adopt a visual style that maintained a certain literalness. He also misses the operatic tone that the film adopts which also requires clarity and hyper-reality in the visual style in order to hold up. Coppola may very well be a one-thing-at-a-time director, but, in the case of Apocalypse Now, the picaresque nature of the film benefits from his style which helps to drive things forward.
I have nothing to comment about Apocalypse Now...I [i]thought[/i] it was a great movie. Not a favorite...but I always thought it was great. If nothing else, this post and Mr. Jameson's article did make me come to terms with the fact that I don't really have my own opinion on it- just that I bought the public opinion whole-sale. Must revisit it one of these days. I just would like to express my gratitude for your last comment....while I was reading the post, it sounded exactly like my feelings towards Blade Runner, and you last comment just perfectly expresses my relationship to that movie. Just glad to know that I'm not alone.
And it's always encouraging to know that there is intellectual discussion about films supposedly frozen in time as "CLASSICS". I've always felt pressured by the reputations of the many masterpieces that exist...it's nice to know that there's still some room for open debate.
Thanks for the wonderfully thought-provoking post! (And the Nashville link...I look forward to reading it on my next break)
Apocalypse Now is not a favorite movie of mine but certainly a great movie experience.I didn't respond to it as strongly as I did to "The Godfather" films(which were the first film and the second one).Partly because it took me awhile to realize the greatness of it and it wasn't until the third or fourth viewing(same thing happened to me with "Taxi Driver")that I realized that it was capturing the war in vietnam in a vivid and abstract way.
One critic observed that "The Phantom Menace" was not only hyped but the hype was the movie.It seems to me that some people might be feeling that way about "Apocalypse Now".I didn't think the hype was the movie because the movie came out long before I was born.So I didn't see it with great expectations when I rented which was a good thing and it helped me like it more.
Yet the expectations I had for "The Dark Knight" were really frustrating because two of my favorite film critics,Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin,saw the film and had different opinions because when I went on Ebert's site I found that he loved it and gave it four stars but when I went on Maltin's site I found out that he said that he didn't enjoy it because of how dark it was and therefore it was hard for me to decide who's word I should believe.Ultimately,the film was a mixed bag for me being both impressive and oppressive.So I think technically,both of what they said about the film was correct because I was blown away by it but I can't say I found the film enjoyable.
As for Francis Ford Coppola,I think he was a filmaker who very quickly went downhill and never really got back on top.It seems like the films after "Apocalypse Now" were never able to be at the level of what he did before.Most those films I thought ranged from either good(if forgettable)to mediocre.I think that his film career for the most part has been spotty.I think it was only the during 1970's that he at his pinnacle.I think he was a great director only during that period of time.
P.S.:Speaking of abstract ideas and feelings.There has been alot of talk on this site about Paul Haggis's Crash and the backlash against it because it was not realistic and more like a fantasy.Now I'm not going to defend "Crash" since I didn't watch all of it and what I saw of the film was relentlessly grim but I wonder if it was trying to be abstract just like "Apocalypse Now".This means that it may have not been intended to give a realistic depiction of racial tension but to capture the moods and feelings of racial animosity through imagery and performances.As I said before I'm not defending the movie but just making a suggestion.
Jim--did you time this to coincide with Roger's "Great Movies" review of "The Godfather, Part II," where he expresses an opposite view of the Godfathers? Roger: I elevates II; Jim: II elevates I. Roger & Jim: the two are better because of the existence of both.
I identify with what John Porath said about "Apocalypse Now"--I've seen it twice (at ages roughly 13 and 17, I'm thinking--I'm 21 now), liked it, and figured that, yes, this probably is a great movie. I don't really have an opinion of it beyond that--although, unlike you, Jim, I did like the Brando scenes.
The film is a big one in scope and ambition (and length, although that's not as critical) that it felt, both times, a little too much for me; I read "Heart of Darkness" when I was around 15 and it, too, felt a little out of my reach. My experience with a lot of so-called classic films that I watched in my early teens has been similar; a great deal struck a chord with me immediately, a small few rubbed me the wrong way, and the rest I largely enjoyed but was a little too overwhelmed by the films' reputations and obvious strengths to probe deeper and consider whether it has weaknesses. I hope that next time I see "Apocalypse Now" (and some of the other ones I haven't rewatched since I was much younger and greener--not that I'm not still so now) I might be able to take a bite out of them and identify what aspects I love and hate.
I did watch "Blade Runner" again recently, though, and enjoyed it tremendously, although I think the film is hurt a little bit by its own reputation. I read a quick analysis in a wonderful book about "2001"--sorry, can't remember the author--that demonstrated the connections between "BR" to "Casablanca", which helped me understand the way the exotic locale, melodramatic love story, and thriller aspects played off each other--even if I can't quite yet put into words why I feel it's so damned effective, in either film.
Anyway, the movies I accepted in the past as masterpieces in an impersonal manner don't bother me all that much; the ones that I accepted as favourites while knowing, on some level, that something didn't compute, do. Accepting that something one loves is not perfect is hard enough: there are some movies which I loved immediately, and which I still count as favourites, even if they don't seem as flawless as they once did ("Casablanca" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," for example). For these, realizing that they might not be perfect, and that there could be legitimate arguments launched against them, was actually hard to accept. But the worst case are things like "American Beauty" (and to a lesser extent maybe "Million Dollar Baby," which I still like albeit with reservations) in which I had convinced myself very strongly that the film I had watched was a masterpiece, in great part because I wanted to feel a part of something--the critical community, I suppose? My friends who all heralded it as the brilliant movie of our age? Because of its new-ness, its "risqué" subject matter, its central monologue about beauty in the world, I was seduced. But then I read some reviews from the dissenting critics, gave the film a second and third viewing and with some sadness and even a little desperation conceded that the movie was a shallow, hypocritical indictment of shallowness--at least to me, personally.
As far as "The Dark Knight": I got very excited, saw it opening night, had a blast, but immediately felt I had seen an 8-out-of-10 movie, whereas my friends were out crying "best movie ever"; my opinions went up and down with subsequent viewings (with different friends), but I didn't really feel that the hype hurt or helped my opinion of the movie, in this case. (Oh, my opinion in brief: "TDK" should have been made much shorter by excising a plotline, or much longer so that it was visually and thematically coherent. I liked almost everything that was there, but it didn't fit together well. Off-topic.)
William B: I hadn't anticipated that, but I do believe Parallax View asked several writers for Coppola pieces (you'll find Bob Cumbow's piece on Altman and Coppola in the 1970s there and on House Next Door, too) to coincide with the DVD restoration/release of the "Godfather" movies. I remember from Roger's original reviews that he preferred "One" (Sopranos shorthand) to "Two," but I'd started thinking about this post (originally to be about my experience with "Apocalypse" vis-a-vis others' with "Dark Knight") long before Roger filed his Great Movie review of "Godfather II." Now that he has, I think it's a terrific opportunity: The two pieces should spark even more thoughtful discussion when read back-to-back.
Is he talking about the original, or the extended version?
This is like hating on the Beatles because Rubber Soul wasn't emo enough. Or The Stones because they were more into ripping off Chuck Berry instead of writing good songs.
Jim,
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!
I just curious on why you thought The Conversation cheated in the end.I thought the final scene didn't make any sense because it ends where Gene Hackman's character is tearing apart his apartment looking for the wire then it cuts to him playing the saxaphone with closing credits while it is happening.I wasn't sure if he had found the wire or not? It seemed somewhat inconclusive.
Sam: I'm talking about the recording of the key conversation around which the whole movie revolves. It's recorded differently at the end than it is at the beginning. I've always struggled with whether that was necessary to convey Harry Caul's changed understanding of what he heard.
All of what we sense in our daily lives is lost after the moment, and it can be argued how subjective our own interpretations of reality are at the moments they occur. Harry always had the incident in New York years earlier hanging over him. As another Coppola character might of warned him of keeping business and personal matters separate. Harry was a paranoid person the movie I believe is very much subjective and in his state of mind I don't believe it would be a stretch or "cheating" for him to hear the recording in it's "true" context for the first time only after all the dominoes have fallen. Haven't you ever had your' emotions allow you to get worked up over a real life incident that was later revealed to be trivial a day later once you can view things more objectively since you have not only your' own interpretation but everyone else's reactions to the past situation to help in giving you a better grounding and fuller understanding of a series of events.
I had some similar feelings and wonder how prevalent the "classic" status affects how people view films today. I remember watching "Apocalypse Now" in high school after hearing from my best movie bud about how great it was. I was just getting into film seriously at the time, so I felt, with everything I had heard/read/been told to think about the film, that it had to be good. That if I said I didn't like it then I must not understand what this Great Artist was trying to tell me about a war that I knew nothing about. So I watched "Apocalypse Now" and didn't really like it. I didn't really understand why at the time. I was convinced I must have been wrong so when my friend asked me about it I say "Yeah, yeah...it was great. Awesome. Yeah." I even went so far as to buy the damn DVD which I have had no inspiration/desire to watch since I saw the film for the first time. I had similarly frustrating feelings towards "The Godfather" (both of which I have only seen once or twice...is that bad for an MA candidate in Film Studies?)... Hearing these Coppola arguments (somehow I haven't read them before) are bringing all of this back and, somehow, I feel more inspired than ever to revisit these now. Funny how that works.
"Apocolypse Now" has always seemed sort of compartmentalized to me. There's no doubt that on a visual level there's loads of fascinating things going on, but the structure of the story seems broken and episodic. Maybe this is why, in Jameson's words, "His motifs don't grow--they merely recur. His images, even when technically impressive, don't reverberate with possibility--they freeze up with literalness. They don't suggest--they denote." The opening battle scenes seem to be their own thing (and impressive), the journey down the river is it's own thing (and always the most compelling part of the movie for me), and the ending with Brando is it's own thing. I've never had such a huge problem with the ending as some have, and maybe because I've never sensed that the movie truly flowed to begin with.
Jim, when you say about "The Conversation" that, "it does feel like a slightly formal, over-polished essay. But that kind of fits its central character.", I think your dead-on. And that is exactly why it's my favorite Coppola movie. The essence of the film is it's character. Few films seem to be able to distill the essence of a single person ("Taxi Driver" and "Five Easy Pieces" come to my mind off hand).
Recently I took a look at the first two Godfather films, and can't help but feel that the second film, though very good, is a mere extension of the first. By the end of the first film it is apparent that Michael's transformation is complete. The second movie seems to expand beautifully on the ramifications of that transformation, but holds little of the same explosiveness. It seems like Jameson's above quote about "Apocolypse Now" applies to the Godfather films for me. Coppola seems to be repeating motifs and themes rather than truly expanding on them. Which is why I would have loved to see more of the film devoted to young Vito. It's a shame that the third film was botched, because structurally I think it brought things full circle.
Harvey: Yes, that subjectivity argument is the one I've been having with myself for years. I know what the movie is trying to convey, but I from the very first time I saw it I felt Coppola was too obvious in the way he handled it.
Harvey: Yes, that portrayal of subjectivity is the one I've been debating with myself for years. I know what the movie is trying to convey, but I from the very first time I saw it I felt Coppola was too obvious in the way he handled it. Many movies have dealt with such questions of what we witness and what we think we witness. See "The Fallen Idol" -- or "Atonement," for that matter.
Apocalypse Now is pure spectacle. Faulting it for its treatment of its themes, or for being episodic, or for not being particularly profound and sometimes verging on laughable (particularly in the Brando scenes, if the spell is broken- which for many viewers it isn't), is missing the point. It's just a big light and sound show. As that, and as a collection of individual scenes (but brilliant, again, mostly as spectacle, or as material that seemed to know it would become iconic even as it was being filmed), it's brilliant.
I also liked this: "toney pop epic widely accepted as great cinema", bashing the Godfather films. It's like returning to the contemporary (or near-contemporary) negative reviews of any classic. As those films were still settling into classic status at that time, Jameson was obviously just going out of his way to be provocative, which is always silly.
Apocalypse Now may be simply 'a big light and sound show' as Paul puts it but it seems pretty obvious to me that it tries to be more than that and fails miserably. Something like Empire Strikes Back could probably also be aptly described as 'a big light and sound show' but I'm much more willing to embrace it as such. I really don't think Coppola was going for 'Empire Strikes Back' when he made 'Apocalypse Now'. All along I feel like the director is prodding the audience, trying to convice us that this preposterous overblown mess of a film is actually supposed to mean something.
I'm also on the same page about the Godfather. Godfather Part II is the less tighly wound of the two but it atones for the superficiality of the first one and does indeed make it better.
"They say you had gone…completely…insane, that your methods…had become…unsound."
"Have my methods become unsound, Willard?"
"I don’t see…any…method…at all."
In the quest to find and erase the discovery of the senselessness at the heart of the world, Willard has devolved into the hidden animal that he dutifully obliterates, rendering the deed pointless. Kurtz is the sacrificial lamb, slaughtered on the altar of existence for a frightening lucidity that must be labeled madness in order to maintain civilization. But all of the invisible constructs and man-made barriers must be sacrificed by Willard in order to access the capricious wilderness, to target the revelation of the Unclaimed Bastard and murder the truth; an eyeless organism, abandoned yet perfect, self-destructs as inexorably as clockwork, in a vacuum, and the blind snake swallows its own tail. From the dawn of man ad infinitum without purpose or reason, the void that every human being runs from and denies, the cruel necessity of his existence.
For if Kurtz’s madness is, in actuality, pure, unadorned sanity, than that man must be destroyed before his discovery poisons the earth like a virus.
I was surprised by the obtuseness buried beneath Jameson’s assured prose, and it is this assuredness that conceals the nescience of his criticism. What makes it offensive is the certainty that he is correct or his analysis is comprehensive, let alone sufficient. He reduces the symbolism of Kane's sled to generic dichotomies: “but if you believe that the true Rosebud is not a sled, not a snowglobe, but the whole intricate up/down, in/out, past/present, light/dark, living/dead construct” and then continues to apply his shallow sensibility to the abstractions in Coppola’s film, sequences that express nebulous things that Coppola himself may not have been consciously calculating when shooting them. Also conspicuous is Jameson’s inability to level little but superficial criticisms. But the few times he does get specific as here:
To take a central image in both Conrad’s novella and Welles’s film, “darkness” becomes infinitely suggestive: of corruption, and the sacred privacy of the soul; the terror of the unknown, and the bliss of unconsciousness; unanswerable Nothingness, and uncreated worlds waiting to be intuited by an artist-god. To Coppola, it means that when you get to Kurtz’s compound you turn out the lights and let Marlon Brando mumble in the dark.
…only the tip of the iceberg registers, demonstrating a mind unfit to wrangle the perimeters of the film. The scenes with Brando’s bald head peeping in and out of the darkness accompanied by mad esoteric musings convey exactly the “unanswerable Nothingness” as it did to me when I typed a paragraph on it immediately after my most recent viewing of the film about a month ago. I supplied that paragraph in the previous post. The scenes with Kurtz in the darkness are the best and most significant moments in the entire film – chaos, absurdity – and it is no wonder that after a long purposeful voyage down the river, when the destination proves to be otiose barbarism, viewers hoping for epiphanies feel cheated. There is no method. That is the heart of darkness discovered by Kurtz, the purposelessness at the foundation of existence: the way that civilization disguises the crude and capricious wilderness that humanity so obliviously thinks it has tamed. The way that religion was contrived by man to provide comfort and order. Why was there such hysteria from believers to silence the pagans? Willard is told by an anonymous man (the character with the most sinister countenance in the entire film) to “exterminate” Kurtz “with extreme prejudice.”
Jameson says “A given shot makes a single, clear statement. There is no resonance—although there is sometimes a built-in interpretation of the statement that is foregrounded so deliberately it can’t resonate” and then moves on without explaining what the oh-so-easily apprehended interpretation is according to him. If he wants to convince me that the film is "dumb" or that each shot makes a "single, clear" statement, then he needs to demonstrate that he knows what it means. He should clarify the film first, explaining why it is banal, pedestrian, etc. Instead we get this:
A phantasmagoric U.S.O. show in a Vietnam lagoon is a zapper for about as long as it takes Willard’s river patrol boat to round the bend and afford a good look at it; after that, it’s endless fascination with a Hugh Hefner Playmate rubbing an M-16 between her thighs, which seems to have something to do with sex and violence.
My, what powers of reductionism Jameson has. “Well, it’s got something to do with sex or violence. What precisely, I don’t know, but whatever it is, and I don’t know, it’s dumb.”
Offering “it’s ambiguity-by-the-numbers” in explaining the inadequacy of the titular audio piece in The Conversation is not helpful, as Jameson is the only one who knows what “ambiguity-by-the-numbers” is. And, in the fashion prevalent throughout a good deal of the rest of the review, he neglects to elaborate on this vague attack.
Pick a new idol, Jim. Jameson is using algebra to pigeonhole an abstract painting.
Re: Apocolypse Now
I saw Apocolypse Now at the 11:30 PM showing on December 31st, 1979, with my suddenly ex-girlfriend who had recently dumped me like a load of hot rocks. The opening sequence with the napalm explosions, and the distorted sound, was like nothing I had seen before. Watching the film now on television doesn't compare. From the first minute, I knew I would have to like the movie--pretty much no matter what.
I have to agree, though, that the film's appeal is exclusively visual--because the story is both contrary to history and moronic. Anyone who thinks the US 'lost' the war because the Coronel Kurtzes were 'handcuffed' and the Vietcong/Vietminh/NVA (three distinct groups--but we digress) 'won' because they had the 'moral strength' to chop off children's arms after they were vaccinated, those people need to watch less television. In the library of books on this specific subject, the best I've read is Mr. Ronald H. Spector's 'After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam.' Mr. Spector tries to reconcile the view that IF the Vietnam war was 'lost' during the 1968 Tet Offensive, then why was 1969 by far the bloodiest year of the war? He suggests that the Tet Offensive did not decide the war. Instead, America's constant drive for 'body counts' ground down our own forces--and not the North Vietnamese Army.
But I also feel a need to defend Mr. Coppola, just a little. In the companion documentary 'Hearts of Darkness,' Coppola goes into GREAT detail how he signed Mr. Brando, pretty much sight unseen. Mr. Brando assured Coppola that Mr. Brando would carefully read 'Heart of Darkness' (he never did) and would be in good physical shape. Hardy har har. I laughed out loud (and I was NOT the only one) when Martin Sheen mutters in a voice over about how Marlon Brando completed a Green Beret 'obsticle course' at age 30--the same course that 'damn near killed' an 18 year old Sheen. Uh huh.
Given the weather, civil unrest, and actor playing the central character turning out to be a big fat slob (and an uncooperative big fat slob to boot), that would pose a challenge to any director.
One final note about 'Hearts of Darkenss.' I was stunned seeing that Mr. Dennis Hopper's portrayal of a wacked photo journalist was a fraction of the degree Dennis Hopper was wacked in real life. As they say where I come from: D'OH!