Apocalypse Now

I bet you’d be surprised as to what people know, or rather what they don’t know, about the Vietnam War. I think that a lot of Americans don’t know why we fought the war. I’d say that Americans now, thirty years later, don’t know why we fought the war. I’m willing to say that a lot of Americans don’t even know that we didn’t win the war and that, on the contrary, after 58,000 U.S. troops were killed, we were forced to withdraw our forces from the conflict.

             
            It’s likely that so many people are misinformed about the Vietnam War because, unlike World War II, there have been so few movies about the incident, particularly, successful ones. Easily the most telling film about the Vietnam War is Apocalypse Now. There are no other films that expose the Vietnam War and capture the sense of madness and paranoia of the conflict like this film does.

            

           Surrealism is by far the standout element of this movie. In so many scenes there are factors of nonsense and ridiculousness. For example, one of Willard’s crew, Lance B. Johnson can be seen water skiing in the scene in which he is first introduced. A little later, when Lance comes to his senses, a commanding officer, Colonel Kilgore, forces his own to men to surf the choppy waters in the middle of an all out battle. Kilgore then calls in an airstrike on his enemies, not to carry out a mission seemingly, but to allow him and his men to surf in safety. Perhaps the most removed sequence of the entire film is that that takes place at the Do Lung Bridge. Eerie circus music and wild flashing lights surround Willard and his men as they try to survive through the affair. Lance drops acid and paints his face before going ashore with his captain. It seems that, had Lance not been completely inebriated and Willard nothing else to lose, neither of these men would have ever left the “safety” of their boat, just as Chef wouldn’t, especially after having a run in with a tiger and discovering a new mantra, “never get off the boat, never get off the boat”.  Willard and Lance, with puppy in hand, witness men fighting in the darkness, though no enemy is ever seen. None of the men seem to know who they are fighting, or to what cause. When confronted by Willard, the men simply sit stare into the darkness. One of the men state that every night they rebuild the bridge every night only to have Charlie blow it up again in the morning. While many of these scenes are exaggerated, all of these moments represent the madness and pointlessness of the Vietnam War.

          

           The horrors of the Vietnam War and the ways that it has affected those involved are apparent even in the very first scene of the movie. Captain Willard is seen in the very first moments of the film lying on his bed, remembering. Even the ceiling fan reminds him of fighter helicopters. He reduces himself to his lowest form because of his terrible memories, drinking and drugging himself into oblivion. When Willard looks into the mirror by his bedside he destroys it, as seeing himself is a constant reminder of what happened to him during the war. The captain talks about his family and how, because of his time serving in the war and because of the drastic influences it had on him, they abandoned him. He has no home or family to return to. All he has left is the war. This idea can be seen during the debriefing segment of the film. Willard accepts the assignment despite it being obviously clear that it is a suicide mission. Only a crazy person would accept a suicide mission to kill another crazy person. However, lucky for the U.S. Army, because of the war, Captain Benjamin Willard has lost his mind.

             
          Like his enemy, Colonel Kurtz, Willard has gone insane because of his time fighting in the war.  This similarity between the two characters is just one of many parallels that can be seen throughout the film. Both Willard and Kurtz are distinguished American soldiers and, eventually, both of them abandon their country for their own personal reasons. In one of the last scenes of the movie, both Willard and Kurtz have a sort of unspoken epiphany; they both realize that they have to do something that they don’t want to do, something that utilizes “the horror” that Kurtz references. In Willard case, he realizes that he must take Kurtz’s place as a symbol for rebellion and revolution, and Kurtz recognizes that he must allow Willard to kill him and take his place. Cinematographically as well, the two characters can be compared. For example, in the interrogation scene, where Willard and the audience first get a glimpse at Colonel Kurtz, both the protagonist and the antagonist are lighted similarly. But where Kurtz is mostly shrouded in darkness and only comes into the light a few times, Willard is mostly visible and only is masked by shadows every once in a while. This use of lighting by the filmmakers symbolizes the conflicting good and evil in both of the characters and shows how they both have potential to become either alignment.  

         
          Though there are many metaphors and allusions that can be taken from Apocalypse Now, the reading touched on a few references that I think are a bit farfetched. Like the idea that Kilgore represents a kind of pseudo Fascist monster of war only because he’s always on the right side of the screen? That’s just looking for something that’s not there. While Nazis also might have appreciated Wagner, just because Kilgore and his men utilize Flight of the Valkyries as a stimulus and a scare tactic doesn’t mean that they necessarily represent Nazism.

          
          It is films like this that lend to the way we view The Vietnam War. Thankfully, Apocalypse Now is a complex, wondrous masterpiece that tells of the atrocities and horrors of the Vietnam War.

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby is an honest horror movie. Though it may not have any jump-out-at you moments unlike other scary movies, this film will certainly keep you up at night. While you won’t be hiding under the protection of your blankets from images of red demon eyes or Mia Farrow’s supposedly stylish new do, a truer threat will haunt your dreams: oppression and the inability to escape it. Oppression from your husband, from your neighbor, from your doctor, from everyone it seems.

Upon first viewing, the message of Rosemary’s Baby was clear to me. Even if Rosemary’s baby didn’t turn out to be the son of Satan, she was still overtly controlled by her husband, Guy (even his name simplifies him) is among the most detestable characters I can recall in any recent movie I’ve seen. He epitomizes a man, at least in the stereotypical “misandristic feminist” point of view, and provides good reason to side with feminists and those that call for a change in the way women are treated circa 1960.

The most appaling scene in the movie takes place immediately after the rape of Rosemary by the Devil. Guy and Rosemary awake and Rosemary says that she feels strange. We, as the omnipresent viewers, know this is because of the terrible events that took place the night before. Guy then admits to raping Rosemary in her sleep. He does not feel regret about the act, but merely apathy. He claims that “he didn’t want to miss baby night”. Rosemary, who has been conditioned to accept everything that Guy says and does to her, only shrugs off Guy’s words and goes on her day. This short scene can be taken to be perfect evidence toward any feminist ideas about the movie.

The other prominent male figure in the film, Dr Sapistein, like Guy, is very controlling. Though most in the 1960’s would consider Sapirstein to be a man of respect and power because of his social status as a doctor, his high placement in society still does not give him the right to treat Rosemary the way he does. When Rosemary is in severe pain because of the literal demon inside her, Sapirstein addresses Rosemary like a child. He talks down to her and ignored her words. Regardless of whether Sapirstein is a member of a satanic cult, he feels that he is superior to Rosemary. Later in the movie, Sapirstein goes as far as to grab Rosemary’s upper arm, like a father would a child, and forcibly walk her back home.

 

The few women in the film come nowhere close to the loathsome men in the film in terms of mistreatment of Rosemary, again lending to the idea of a feminist undertone in the film. All of Rosemary’s friends stick up for her, give her advice about her baby, and physically shut Guy out and away from Rosemary. Though the Satanist Laura-Louise seems like she may pose a serious menace to Rosemary, at the end of the film, she sticks out her tongue. Because of this, the old woman diminishes her threat to both Rosemary and the audience. The neighbor, Minnie, isn’t nearly as physically or emotionally offensive to Rosemary as the male characters are, she’s more just annoying and intrusive. Where Guy or Sapirstein would insult or physically impose their will on Rosemary, Minnie only suggests her will and is never too direct with what she says or does.

While Rosemary’s Baby might not seem to have an ostensible underlying message upon first glance, after thinking about it, it’s obvious that the film has a feminist agenda. If you had asked me before watching the film whether I had agreed with feminists ideas, or at least, what I thought were feminists ideas, I probably would have said no. After watching Rosemary’s Baby, however, I know absolutely agree with the theme of the film, and hopefully, you do too.

Godzilla

Everybody knows about Godzilla. Hell, Microsoft Word doesn’t bother trying to auto-correct the name as I type it. Even little kids know about the big green guy. I guess he’s like Ronald McDonald in that way. I was no exception to this rule as I’ve known about Godzilla (and Ronald McDonald for that matter) for as long as I can remember, though I only just saw the movie from which he originated a few short days ago. Godzilla has become part of our culture, unlike the ideas that lent to creating him. That is to say, though the world is still quite paranoid when it comes to others having absolute power, unlike when Godzilla was made, an all out nuclear apocalypse isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the end of human civilization – terrorism, obesity, and Justin Beiber have won that title for now.

Because I had never seen Godzilla, I suppose you can’t really blame me for not making the connection between the film and the Cold War. I guess, deep down, I’ve always known that Godzilla came about because of something to do with nuclear testing, but as a kid, the only time I might have ever thought about the green meanie extensively, I had other things on my mind than the Cold War. Things like Ronald McDonald, as I hinted at before.

When I finally got to sit down and see Godzilla in class a few days ago, you can probably imagine my excitement. Perhaps saying that the past twenty years that I had been around to see were merely there to lead me to this moment is a bit of an overstatement, but I can’t say that I wasn’t looking forward to it. With all that being said, I thought the movie was garbage.

That’s the ironic thing about hype: you can always count on it to let you down. I would say that I could give the movie a pass because of the “primitive” time in which it was made, but that’s obviously no excuse. Vertigo, The Bridge on the River Kwai, On the Waterfront: all movies that were made during the fifties and didn’t feature awfully apparent plot holes, lack of characterization, and laughable editing. Even for a B-movie, Godzilla is deficient. So, I presume that a good question to ask is this: what made Godzilla such a big hit for it to still be popular, and possibly still relevant today?

The only thing that really seems like a plausible answer to this question is cultural significance. I mean, what else does this movie have going for it? The film came out within a year of the U.S. tested its hydrogen bomb near Bikini Atoll in 1954 and, of course, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still on every Japanese mind, even nine years later. Godzilla represented the atom bomb. It’s as simple as that. Even in the first scene of the film, where we are shown a devastated Tokyo, it’s completely ambiguous as to what caused the damage. If you had never heard of Godzilla, as impossible as that is, upon seeing the beginning of the film you would have assumed the travesty had come from a nuclear source. This idea of Godzilla being the most obvious metaphor for an atom bomb is given further evidence when, in the next scene, a group of Japanese fishermen are shown. A flash of bright light over takes the fishing boat, much like the bright light that supposedly appears during a nuclear attack. Then, when the fishermen are later shown, all their injuries match up with injuries that are caused by exposure to radiation. There’s no denying the many metaphors in Godzilla.

Other comparisons between Godzilla and the possibility of nuclear destruction are seen over and over throughout the film. In what I think is the most powerful moment of the film, Godzilla approaches the outskirts of Tokyo which is surrounded by highly electric power lines. The citizens on the city, the military of Japan, and what seems like the world, can do nothing but wait in anticipation of the inevitable. This brief scene captures the true essence of the Cold War better than any other part of the film. Much like the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the Japanese military could do nothing but point their guns at the unavoidable threat and try to last as long as they could without provoking the omnipresent danger any more than they had to, for doing so meant guaranteed death. Pretty deep for an outdated movie starring a guy who stomps around in a rubber suit, huh.

Like the movie, the reading also touched on several interesting analogies that I didn’t pick up on my own. In particular, the ironic idea that the only way to kill the creature created by a bomb is with another bomb. It kind of implies that evil can only be killed by a greater evil, which is a scary thought. If this thought were true, does that mean the only way to win a war is with more wars? I’m sure if you asked anyone who lived during the Cold War, they might say this is true. Another really interesting idea that came from the reading that I think could very well hold true is a bit more meta than the previous analogies mentioned. Much like terrible Godzilla movies are guaranteed to come back until the end of time, so is the threat of a nuclear war. Maybe this idea is a bit farfetched and unintentional, but it certainly has some merit.

Just because Godzilla is a terrible movie doesn’t mean it can’t hold a strong message. We must be careful of nuclear warfare, not only because it is a terrible thing in and of itself, but because, if we aren’t careful, a rubber dinosaur will come out of the ocean and eat us all.

In the words of Raymond Burr, “I’m saying a prayer. A prayer for the whole world.”

The Atomic Cafe

            It’s amazing how different America was just fifty years ago. I mean, sure, the sixties and seventies were obviously pretty far away from where we are as a society now, but the fifties, for some reason, seem especially alien to me. Maybe it was the complete censorship of the media. Or the negative way we viewed and treated people from different countries, different races, and different religions. It could also be the idea of gender roles and lack of equality between men and women. All of these drastic changes between then and now are seen in The Atomic Café and the film stands out from other documentaries because of it.

            The Atomic Café appeals to viewers’ emotions using all of the standard film techniques that have become quite common practice, though that’s not to say that the film employs them poorly. In fact, because the movie appeals to its viewers so well, the film completely relies on this method of winning over the audience. There are no other means of acquiring the spectator’s emotions, such as presenting hard data or an authoritative narrator. Which is fine. There isn’t any other need of lobbying to the viewers.

Juxtaposition is the primary procedure by which the film entices viewers. This can be seen in many instances. The first use of this is at the beginning of the film where an American soldiers’ voice discussing how routine the process of dropping the atomic bomb over Hiroshima was for him and his men. This audio is overdubbed over scenes of Japanese citizens going throughout their day, unfortunately ignorant of their impending deaths. The next use of juxtaposition comes soon after the previous example, when Americans are seen celebrating across the nation. In complete contrast, the next scene depicts Hiroshima and Nagasaki utterly devastated.  Among the fire and the rubble, dead and mortally wounded bodies are scattered. The last major use of this kind of comparison is shown when an American G-man’s audio describing the minimal effects and non-dangers is, again, overdubbed ironically over images of mutated, disfigured citizens of South Eastern Asia who were affected by the fallout caused by U.S. nuclear testing.

I have a hard time believing that, had the footage shown in The Atomic Café been shown to the people of the fifties, the people who were rejoicing and celebrating their victory, that is, the death and devastation of another country, the people would not be exulting with quite as much enthusiasm. I just don’t believe people are that cruel. That just goes to show the overruling power of the machine that was 1950’s propaganda.  It conditioned people to believe everything it sputtered out, something that people today are not accustomed to at all. Whether it was believing that diving to the ground and covering ones’ head with your arms or believing that the fallout of a nuclear device wasn’t seriously harmful, the people of America drank it up with open arms. But were people so completely trusting because they knew no other way, or because they wanted to believe whatever they could that would hide the truth. Ignorance is bliss after all. Surely not every single American believed the fodder being fed to them? Surely some free thinking person with some ability to speak out to their fellow nationals did, in fact, speak out? The Atomic Café would have you, the viewer, believe that the government of the United States brainwashed its people just like they brainwashed, deceived, and mistreated the people of Bikini Atoll.

Not only were the people of Bikini Atoll treated poorly, but really, even non-white, lower-class citizens of America were, across the board, abused as well. Just look at the city plans that were developed for the new “Nuclear Age”. The downtown area was abandoned. Everyone who could afford it packed up and moved out to the suburbs and satellites, where they would be less of a target to the omnipresent possibility of an all out nuclear attack. But what about those who couldn’t afford leaving the city? What about those who didn’t have someone in the government looking out for them especially, just because of their race or nation of origin? They, like the victims of Bikini, were left behind and covered up by the machine.

Yet again, though not in the same way as the lower-class, the government was mistreating its citizens, though this time, not towards those of a different race or belief system, but with women. It may not seem it, but we as a society have come a long way away from the ideals that were common stance only fifty years ago. Unlike in the fifties, the government today isn’t describing how a woman should act and behave as a mother and a wife. The government isn’t oppressing women by telling the public that women are like atom bombs in and of themselves, that they are to be respected yet carefully controlled because of their “massive” power, much like that of a nuclear warhead.

The Atomic Café was, as any good documentary should be, informative and eye-opening. I felt it was a good starting place for the class as its messages and overall tone were easy to decipher. It made me thankful for the government we have today, even with all of its problems, something I did not think I would readily admit any time soon.