Apocalypse Now

Kamala: Uh

Emily: This is one of my all-time favorite movies. Kamala had never seen it before though, and she's still in shock. She generally avoids movies about the Vietnam war. In case you are a loser and you've never seen Apocalypse Now, it's a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, loosely based on the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness. It stars Martin Sheen as a Captain sent on a mission to terminate the command of one Colonel Kurtz, who has gone insane and retreated into the jungle of Cambodia with a small army of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and Green Berets who worship him as a god.

Kamala: The entire film was visually striking. I can only imagine what their budget was like. Between the napalm attacks, helicopters, other random stuff that got blown up, and large amount of extras the entire production was of epic proportions. We read on IMDB trivia that the movie was shot over 16 months, mostly in 1976, but not released until 1979 because of the amount of time it took to sort through and edit the over 200 hours of footage that Coppola shot. The editing team's efforts show in the flawless cinematography. There are some films where you are taken out of the story by some weird cut or something that makes you remember you are watching a movie. The only thing that made me remember I was watching a movie was that my Grandma called in the middle.

Emily: Something I hadn't noticed before is that there are no starting credits-no title appears onscreen at the beginning, it just goes straight in with the footage of Martin Sheen's face and jungle burning to The Doors' "The End." At Kurtz's compound, however, the words "Our motto: Apocalypse Now" are seen on a wall. This was put there so the movie could be copyrighted.

Kamala: In terms of cultural importance, this is one of the films (similar to 1941) that made studios want to take some control away from the dirrectors. Coppola took some men into the jungle, subjected them to shooting an emotionally and physically devastating film and came out of the jungle 16 months later with no footage they could use for three years. The actors were genuinely feeling the emotions of their characters. Lawrence Fishburne was actually younger than he should have been during filming, just as he was on the navy boat in the backwoods of Vietnam. Martin Sheen has a scene at the beginning of the movie where he gets drunk, punches a mirror and trashes his room naked was, in actuality, REAL. And there was a real cow sacrificed.

Emily: The dialogue is also something that stays with you long after the movie ends. The voice of Marlon Brando at the beginning of the film ("I saw a snail crawl across the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream. This is my nightmare") haunts the viewer as much as it haunts Sheen's character. Pretty much any scene with Robert Duvall as Captain Killgore is funny in a terrible way- the contrast of the conversation (about surfing, mostly) and the surroundings is absurd. But the movie gets progressively more horrific the farther they get into the jungle. This movie is incredible, and is undeniably the best war movie ever filmed. Nothing even comes close. At the end Kamala and I were silent for about five minutes because honestly what can you say after you've just watched something like that?

Kamala: Oh the horror, the horror.

or schadenfreude, whichever you prefer.