I know I said I wasn’t going to blog this week, but I thought it would be valuable for me (if not for anyone else) to just do a last summing-up post before the real end.

Firstly, Apocalypse Now. As I’ve said before, not a huge fan of war movies. This one definitely makes an interesting anti-war point, though. In most movies, and particularly in war movies, there’s a ‘good guy’ (the hero) and a ‘bad guy’ (the villain). In this movie, there are no good guys, and I think this is the point Coppola is trying to make. War is ugly. Everyone involved is the villain.

But then in lecture Jon went over the whole “this movie is not about Vietnam … this movie is Vietnam” thing. Cue disappointed sounds from Charlotte and I (drink). Oh Coppola. I think this kind of discredits the great point he’s making with the film.

I like the contrast between this and Heart of Darkness. Kurtz’s character is not as revered in the film as in the book, and he’s referred to in a different way. Also, Willard isn’t as likeable a character as Marlow. (Not that Marlow is strictly likeable, but I think there’s something about a film character that is more straightforward than a novel character – there’s less room for personal interpretation.)

Looking forward to our last seminar tomorrow – hopefully we’ll shed some more light on these texts before our in-class essay on Friday!