SPOILERS AHEAD i saw the original some time back and i just rewatched the redux version.. while i didnt notice any differences(supposedly 45 extra minutes of footage) i did start to understand more about it. how the progression of insanity increases as they further up the river. Once youve reached that full insanity at the end, youre enlightened and rewarded into this colony of "freedom". Makes me think of how ancient civilization rulers/gods that we've read about actually BECAME gods. that fuckin movie scares me more than any horror movie ive seen. its like a bad fever dream. - what inspired the film makers and writers to come up with this? - any real events besides jonestown that mightve had influence on this movie? - in kurtz' book at the end, it said "drop the bomb exterminate them all" whats that mean? - was this in any way a government exercise or "experiment", because kurtz had all his documents and knew he was coming.. i didnt understand any of that. i havent watched any behind the scenes about this movie, but im interesting to seeing, if theres any at all.
I just watched an epic Nam movie as well the other day, Deer Hunter. That movie was nuts. (sorry, I don't have much to say about Apocalypse Now, but it was a great movie)
good lookout DJ fiddy, yes deer hunter is a great movie. very serene and tranquil in the most creepy ways. and its more true to nam than apocalypse now.
- in kurtz' book at the end, it said "drop the bomb exterminate them all" whats that mean? He means nuke vietnam and be over with the war. - was this in any way a government exercise or "experiment", because kurtz had all his documents and knew he was coming.. i didnt understand any of that. He knew he was coming because he was an officer of some sort and just knew they'd send someone.
Deer hunter: "one shot, one kill". That was a strange movie. Apocolyps now was almost too strange for me. Eating acid in combat......now there's a waste of good acid right there.
CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!! The original is my 2nd favorite movie of all time. IIRC, the added scenes in the [spoiler alert] redux are where they come along the Playmates after the Playmates' helicopters get stranded or busted or shot or whatever, and then later when they come upon the French chateau. This movie is based on the Joseph Conrad novel, the Heart of Darkness, where the crew goes up a river in Africa (I think also looking for a Kurtz) during the height of British Colonialism. If you think this is a horror movie, you're missing the point. This movie is first and foremost a morality play. It is about the relativity of morality and sanity. It is left to the viewer to decide whether Kurtz is the most moral and sane person in Vietnam, or the most evil and craziest. Remember that Kurtz has broken from a "mainstream" that is itself quite insane, and has begun to have a great deal of success operationally. For that the brass decides he must be terminated, with prejudice. "Charging people over there with murder was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." The most telling point is when Kurtz explains to Sheen's character the epiphany he has when he goes back to a village after having innoculated the children against polio, only to find the Vietnamese had cut off all the innoculated little arms, piled them up and burned them. The significance of that gives Kurtz a clarity like a bullet between the eyes, when he understands why this had been done and that the people who did it were not monsters. "Give me a division of such men . . . " His is then a morality forever stood upon its head. Don't forget also that the movie is an explication. Willard is allowed to live in the end so he can go back to the U.S. and explain it all to Kurtz's kids, and that's the form the movie takes-- it's a past tense narrative to that purpose, even though you don't realize until the very end that's what's been going on.
He meant merely that his own army corp be bombed and destroyed after his own death because after he was gone it couldn't be allowed to further exist. It would have been a headless monster. IIRC, an airstrike had been planned by Willard's superiors all along to take out Kurtz's entire army corp as a back-up in case Willard failed in terminating Kurtz individually. It wasn't a govt. exercise, but yes, Kurtz surmised correctly that the mainstream brass would send an "errand boy" for him. I don't think he obtains Willard's particulars though until after Chef, left back at the boat, has been killed, and Kurtz's men get the documents Willard has been reviewing while coming up the river. For reasons stated above, Kurtz has his own reasons for letting Willard live. Why he allows Willard to kill him is a tougher nut to crack. I think it's because Kurtz knows the whole thing has to end and that there's no way he can ever go back home to the US again. He's already sacrificed his soul so it's not much of a stretch that he sacrifice his life.
