With the capital of the great success of "The Godfather" (1972) and its sequel, Conrad's iron fan Coppola went bankrupt and made a desperate move. In 1979, his long-cherished wish was paid and he put "Heart of Darkness" on the big screen and named it " Apocalypse Now. Time magazine believes that this Vietnam War film “captures the crazy state of the minds of the lost generation of Americans guided by wrong motives and foreign policy”. The evaluation is very high, but still seriously underestimated the format and significance of the film.
What exactly is revealing in "Apocalypse Now"?
The title captain is drunk and very strange, and looks infiltrating. The way to interpret the legend is also full of legends: the actor Martin Xin is drunk as the captain, estimated the wrong distance, smashed the mirror with a punch, and splashed blood on the spot. The nightmare of war is about to emerge.
Searching along the Mekong River to assassinate the mad Colonel Kurz, dangers and climaxes along the way:
the most terrifying thing about war is not bloody, but the unscrupulous indulgence and vent that may make you fall in love with it. In the majestic music of Wagner's Valkyrie, the surf-loving Lieutenant Colonel Bill’s airstrike, the sexy, gamified, and audio-visual rage of war exudes a satanic evil charm.
On the one hand, the lieutenant colonel regarded war as a child’s play. He did not know what fear was, and his subordinates always stood proudly when avoiding gunfire. On the other hand, he sympathized with prisoners of war and used his own helicopter to rescue injured children, symbolizing the rationality and irrationality of modern civilization, as well as killing. Contradiction with salvation.
Kurz laughed at the army's hypocrisy: "We train young people to throw bombs, but we don't allow them to write'fuck' on the plane because it's nasty."
Worker girls, fierce tigers, French nobles assimilated by the jungle, stone statues are full of metaphors. The scenes of slaying oxen and slaying Colonel Kurz are intertwined. Kurz’s last words are as all-encompassing and shocking as the original. . Marlon Brando has a strong aura and perfectly interprets a tragic character who is loyal to the country and ultimately crazy and rebellious.
You cannot simply classify "Dark Heart" as marine novels, jungle novels, or political novels. Conrad, who is arrogant in his writing, shows the development of civilization, the tragic cultural conflicts, and the erosion of human nature by the environment, wealth, and power.
"Apocalypse Now" is not a Vietnam War film or an anti-war film in the general sense. Coppola is a giant standing on the shoulders of giants. Kurz’s tragedy is Nietzsche’s "gazing at the abyss for too long, and the abyss will stare back". Visualization inspires people to reflect on the limits of civilization and rationality, the difficulty of salvation, unruly but implicit, compassionate, calm and strong, and tall forever.
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