{"id":539,"date":"2016-01-18T12:21:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T19:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/?p=539"},"modified":"2016-01-18T12:21:04","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T19:21:04","slug":"apocalypse-now-and-half-lit-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/2016\/01\/18\/apocalypse-now-and-half-lit-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"Apocalypse Now and Half-lit Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coppola opens the film with a bang by dropping us right in the jungle. There are no opening credits; only darkness with the faint sound of helicopters approaching from the distance. The first image we see is that of a jungle tree line, which stands alone until one of the helicopters crosses the screen in front of the trees, a similar technique as John Boorman used with his cars in the opening of Deliverance (1972) to express mankind\u2019s rape of nature. As psychedelic smoke rises to the music of The Doors singing \u201cThe End,\u201d we realize the genius paradox of opening a movie with the words, \u201cThis is the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

As soon as these words arrive, the helicopters light up the jungle with napalm, superimposed over shots of Willard in his Saigon hotel room watching a ceiling fan. As his POV of the fan blades matches the sound of \u2018Nam choppers in his head, it\u2019s a reminder that veterans never truly leave the battlefield; fragments of swirling smoke, screaming comrades and chopper blades always remain.<\/p>\n

This battle against one\u2019s self, against our own dark side, is expressed visually throughout the film in a series of half-lit faces, from Willard (the light side) to Colonel Kurtz (the dark side), or as later articulated, \u201cthe kind who loves\u201d and \u201cthe kind who kills.\u201d<\/p>\n

This duality of lightness and darkness hangs over the entire film, as Coppola offers paradox after paradox, most notably Brando\u2019s line, \u201cWe teach the boys to drop fire on people, and yet we won\u2019t let them write the word \u2018fuck\u2019 on their airplanes.\u201d When you understand Coppola\u2019s artistic sensibilities, you come to understand that the half-lit faces of lightness and darkness represent our internal choice as people \u2014 and as a nation \u2014 between the \u201chawk\u201d and the \u201cdove,\u201d an eternal battle of gungho military adventurism versus anti-war peacemaking.<\/p>\n

\"Screen-Shot-2014-03-08-at-11.36.32-AM\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Screen-Shot-2014-03-08-at-11.36.49-AM\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These half-lit faces always from the side and looking in parallel a technique used in early film noir movies to convey mystery and tragedy. To loose sight of ones own face is to give into the darkness and let it consume oneself.<\/p>\n

\"Apocalypse_Now-02\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coppola opens the film with a bang by dropping us right in the jungle. There are no opening credits; only darkness with the faint sound of helicopters approaching from the distance. The first image we see is that of a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34522,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34522"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}