1979 color movie (widescreen) 153 minutes
Produced by Zotrop Film Company, USA.
Producer and Director: francis ford coppola Screenwriter: john milius francis ford coppola (based on Joseph Conrad's novel black heart) Photography: vittorio Storrow Main Actor: Marlon Brando (as Walter Coates) Ramon Estevez (as Benjamin Willard) Robert Duval (as Kilgo).
This film won the Palme d 'Or Award at Cannes International Film Festival from 65438 to 0979, two Oscars for Best Photography and Best Sound, two Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at hollywood foreign press association, and the Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at BAFTA.
abstract
During the Vietnam War, Willard, a brave and loyal captain of American special forces, returned from vacation and was distraught waiting for a new task in Saigon. The only gain of his coming home this time is that his wife divorced him. Soon he was called to the intelligence department of Nha Trang Command, where he was ordered to carry out a secret mission: to go to the jungle of Cambodia, find Colonel Kotz, the former commander of the Fifth Special Forces, and kill him. A general told him that Kotz was a brave and successful officer, but after entering Vietnam, his spirit became very unhealthy. After killing four South Vietnamese agents (two of whom were colonels), he refused to accept orders and hid in the jungle of Cambodia. Now he is completely crazy, leading a tribal armed forces to kill people at random. He acted as their god and became the king of the jungle. While playing the recording of the prison, Willard heard Coates' voice: "They said I was the murderer, and they lied. These damn bureaucrats are the real murderers! "
A naval patrol boat was ordered to escort him upstream along the thick river to Cambodia to find the trace of Kotz. There are four people on board. Chief engineer Philip is a sergeant who only knows how to carry out orders to the letter. Cai Fu, the mechanic nicknamed "Cook", is as timid as a mouse. Black gunman Colin likes to play swing dance music, and white sailor Lance used to be a famous surfer. Nonghekou was controlled by the Viet Cong, so the boss transferred the 9 1 unit of the Air Cavalry Division to open the way for it. Commander Kilgore is a professional soldier who likes to play war games. After the cavalry division was changed from a war horse to a helicopter, his interest became even greater. On his way to Nong Hekou, he attacked a village without authorization and killed many Vietnamese. A dying Vietnamese lost a lot of blood and wanted to drink water. He grabbed a kettle and fell on the man. However, when he heard that Lance was in front of him, he quickly threw it away and ran to Lance. It turns out that he is an avid surfer. He didn't want to go to Nong Hekou at first, but he heard that the waves there were six feet high, so he decided to raze the Viet Cong stronghold to the ground and go surfing. He led a dozen helicopters to bomb and strafe schools and houses, and was strongly countered by the Viet Cong. He also called bombers to throw napalm bombs into the dense forest to "clean up" the surfing area ... The helicopter hoisted the patrol boat into the Nong River, and five people boarded the boat and went upstream. Danger lurks in the jungle on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. They sail in fear and shoot at any time. In order to dispel the emptiness and fear in their hearts, the three soldiers took drugs, drank alcohol and talked about women from time to time. They refueled at a base just in time for the old gentleman's performance. At night, thousands of soldiers gathered in the square. The helicopter was carrying three people from * * * magazine. Dressed in three-point costumes, they twisted their waist and hips with the accompaniment of swing dance music and waved pistols to make various provocative actions. The soldiers on the battlefield shouted wildly, and the impulse was almost crazy. Several soldiers jumped on the field and kissed the half-naked girl, which triggered a riot ... The patrol boat continued to sail, and Willard looked at Coates' file from time to time, and the more he looked at it, the more he admired it, and gradually understood the reason for his execution. Coates' resume is perfect: he graduated from the West Point Military Academy for three generations, insisted on joining the special forces, and did not hesitate to give up his promotion to the general. He fought bravely and won good news frequently, but he always made his own decisions and contradicted his boss. Later, he killed the South Vietnamese agent, and his boss said that as long as he obeyed from now on, the old scores would not count. But he insisted that they were Vietcong, so killing them would make peace. The boss wanted to arrest him because he refused to admit his mistake. He disobeyed orders and led his troops back to Cambodia. Since then, there has been no killing, which has made the Viet Cong feel frightened. A fishing boat passed by, and Philip ignored Willard's objection and searched for Viet Cong arms according to the regulations. There was movement in a box during the search, which immediately caused the American army to shoot wildly and all the people on board were killed. Only afterwards did I find a puppy in the box. Willard shot a female fisherman before his death and accused Philip of making trouble. The patrol boat arrived at Dulong Bridge, the last stronghold of the US military on the Nong River at night, where the night battle between the two sides was in full swing. A lieutenant sent a package, and his boss informed Willard that Captain Kobe, who had performed the same task two months ago, had now joined Courths.
The patrol boat sailed into Cambodia, and Kling was listening to the tape that his mother had just received. Suddenly, there were dense bullets on the shore, and he died immediately. On the tape recorder, his mother said, "We will wait for you to come back ..." The jungles on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are becoming more and more terrible, with strange sights, smoke and strange atmosphere. The ship was attacked by bows and arrows and darts. Despite Willard's opposition, Philip ordered the shooting. Suddenly, a dart pierced his chest and he fell to the ground and died. The patrol boat approached the stone steps of an Angkor style temple. The river in front of the stone steps is crowded with boats, and the boats and stone steps are full of almost * * * aborigines, with strange colors on their faces. Armed with weapons, they stared at the visitors warily. An American on the shore asked them to blow their whistle. The whistle blew and the natives dispersed. Willard walked up the steps. This man is a photographer. He introduced that all the people here are Kotz's children. They thought you took him away, but now he is leading his troops into the jungle. The photographer also said that he was a soldier, a poet, moody and heartless. He fought for justice and was a great man. Willard decided to go back to the boat and wait. He was surrounded by dead bodies, and it was a terrible sight. In the crowd, he also recognized the deadpan captain Kobe Bryant. For a long time, Willard decided to take Lance ashore to find Coates. Before he left, he handed the radio station to the cook who stayed behind, saying that if they didn't return after the deadline, they would report to the boss and blow up the radio station. Willard was captured by local people not far ahead. In the dark temple, the bald Kotz met Willard and called him, saying, "I expected someone to come, and you came to collect debts." In the next few days, Willard was sometimes locked up and sometimes allowed to move freely. Coates sometimes throws his head at him and sometimes confides in him. The photographer said to him, "He likes you to keep you alive. He needs you. Something is going to happen here. He has a clear mind and a crazy soul. He probably won't live long, and he will die as soon as his career is over. You want to kill a genius! " Coates recites philosophical aphorisms from time to time. He said to Willard, "You have the right to kill me, but you have no right to call me a murderer. If I die, I hope you can tell my son what you saw. You must understand me and you will go for me. " Willard went through all this, and his thoughts became trance: "They want me to be a major for this, and now I don't want to go back to the fucking army at all." Everyone is waiting for me to relieve his pain. He expects to die like a soldier and never desert. "Willard walked to coates with a machete in his hand. Kotz turned around and let him cut and kill without resistance. Before he died, he muttered, "Horrible! Terrible! "At the same time, the aborigines were also holding a sacrificial ceremony, and a bull was hacked to death with a knife. Willard walked out of the temple in cold blood, and thousands of aborigines gathered in the open space knelt down to him. He walked slowly through the crowd, pulling Lance, who was mixed in the crowd, down the stone steps and boarded the patrol boat. The patrol boat turned around and flew away, but American planes began to bomb the jungle, and napalm turned the lush forest into a sea of fire. ...
Distinguish and appreciate
This movie is one of the most influential American movies in 1970s, and also one of the most representative "Vietnam War movies" in America. With its sharp and profound theme and unique and shocking visual modeling, the film has attracted wide attention from film critics all over the world.
Coppola expounded his views on the Vietnam War with expressive film language. This film can be said to be a rare concept film in America. Through the protagonist Willard's tracing back to the experience of searching for Coates who was driven crazy by the war along the river, the audience is guided to trace back to the source and explore the philosophical problem of how the Vietnam War alienated people and made them morally bankrupt. The Vietnam War was a war of aggression based on lies. Anyone with a conscience will experience a "war" in his heart. The three main characters in the film represent three types of American soldiers involved in the Vietnam War. Coates is the central figure in the film, but he never appeared in the first three quarters of the film, but sketched his image through other people's dialogues and narratives. Because of in-depth psychological analysis, language means are more expressive and concise than visual images here. At the beginning of the film, Coppola treats his current situation and shows the military's opinion of him through the general of the intelligence department, while his own recording accuses the military of being the real murderer, which leads to a suspense: Is he really crazy? Later, Willard read Coates' files from time to time during his voyage. Through his inner monologue, we can further understand Coates' past and his mental journey towards "insanity". Coates was born in a military family, and I was once a model soldier who was upright and brave, did not strive for progress, and only fought for his ideals. No wonder Willard is in awe of him. However, once he came to Vietnam, his ideal was shattered by reality. There is no justice here, and "defending human rights" is also a complete lie. Life is worthless here. Everyone here is killing people like crazy, and those generals are behind it. He saw through their hypocrisy, so he went his own way and disobeyed orders, which angered the generals. He was forced to retreat to the jungle and broke with the generals completely, so the generals decided to kill him. For the generals, his madness lies not in killing people, but in disobedience. Coates' brutal killing provided them with an excuse to prove his innocence. But why did he kill people in cold blood? Willard solved the mystery further when he found Coates. Here, Coppola is still using the mouth of others (photographers) to introduce the recent situation of Coates from the side, strengthen its mystery, then let him appear, and finally solve the mystery he set. After the mysterious smoke hanging over Coates' head finally cleared, the audience saw that he was not a madman who was shouting and full of slanders. On the contrary, he was very calm, and his speeches quoted poems from the English poet Eliot's Empty Man and epigrams from Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness from time to time. His thoughts are clear and his words are philosophical, but his behavior is grotesque and sometimes cruel. Willard spent a few days with him and talked with him many times, and finally realized that he was very painful and contradictory. He knew that he killed people without blinking an eye because of disillusionment and despair of life. Why are ideals and reality so opposed? What is the value of life? He thought hard and read a lot of books, but he couldn't figure out what he was looking for inside and outside, so he killed people to vent his disillusionment and resentment. His mind is in a desperate situation and can't get rid of it. He needs someone who really understands him to help him get rid of this pain and explain it to his beloved son correctly. When he realized that Willard was such an ideal candidate, he waited and even hinted that the latter would take action.
Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore is another figure deliberately created by Coppola. He is the kind of person that Kotz hates. Kilgore is a professional soldier. He regards war as a game. Coppola described him as an American soldier with traditional colors. Wearing a cowboy hat and a yellow scarf around his neck, he looks like a cavalry in the western United States during the pioneer period. His troops used to be cavalry, but later his horses were replaced by helicopters. He slaughtered Vietnamese just as American troops slaughtered Indians. In front of his black cowboy hat, there are two crossed guns embroidered with white lines. In the strong contrast between black and white, at first glance it looks like a skeleton symbolizing death. He fights like a card and attacks peaceful villages at will. He didn't want to go to Nonghekou, but in order to indulge in surfing, he decided to attack on a large scale. While directing the helicopter group to attack schools and houses, he also played Wagner's song "Horse of God of War" with a megaphone. The bomber he recruited blew the jungle into a sea of fire, but he said happily, "napalm smells better than anything."
Willard, as the protagonist, is actually Coates' "He and I" (two aspects of a person), and to some extent, he is Coppola's spokesperson. His role is to interpret Coates' thoughts and actions and guide the audience to understand the great destructiveness of the Vietnam War. He and Coates have something in common, but he is always calmer and more rational than Coates. Movies often look at everything around them from his perspective, and he often observes and thinks about what he sees and hears as a bystander during the whole voyage. Coppola always uses close-ups to shoot his eyes and facial expressions, and uses his inner monologue to analyze Coates and the Vietnam War. He often opposes absurd events that happen in front of him, but he is powerless to stop them. Through what he saw and heard during the voyage, he became more and more able to understand why Coates would kill people crazily. Later, he himself fell into a semi-crazy state: Willard shot and killed a woman when he found her on a fishing boat. Afterwards, he defended himself and said, "This is what we are doing here, beating them half to death and dressing them up. This is hypocrisy. This kind of thing is getting more and more annoying. I seem to know more about Coates that is not written in the file. " Later, Willard spent some time with Coates and got to know him better. He seems to have experienced Coates' journey, and he is more sympathetic to him and more hateful to those who started this war. Finally, there seems to be a transcendental telepathy that blends them into one. He felt that he was telling him to relieve his pain. He couldn't resist his inner call and finally raised his knife. Coppola's handling of Coates-Willard complex in this way has aroused many film critics' incomprehension and dissatisfaction, which actually reflects Coppola's own philosophy and religious thought. The New York Times published an article entitled "The Literary Source of Apocalypse Now", and gave a clear answer to the end of the film: "In the last part of the film, there are several books scattered on Coates' bedside table, one of which is" Golden Branch ". The appearance of this scene is by no means accidental, and its meaning is very profound. "
The basic plot and character prototype of this film come from Conrad's novel "Dark Mind" (Kotz is Conrad's nickname), but its conception comes from Fraser's "Golden Branch". Jin Zhi's subtitle "A Study of Magic and Religion" can best illustrate the idea of this book. It talks about the murder of a sacred God-like figure, which can be the best footnote at the end of the film. Fraser said: "Modern people with primitive ideas think that their safety depends on the survival of a god-like figure, but he will eventually age according to the laws of nature until he dies. If he is allowed to die naturally, his ability will weaken with his age, so that disaster may happen at any time. The only way to avoid this danger is to kill him when he shows symptoms of illness, so that his ruling spirit can be passed on to another powerful successor ... Cambodian water gods and fire gods will not allow them to die naturally. Once they are seriously ill, they will kill them with a knife. " Coppola chose Cambodia, and Koz was hacked to death, obviously influenced by the book. He cross-edited the scene where Kotz was hacked and the aborigines killed cattle with knives at the sacrificial ceremony, which was undoubtedly to express this meaning. Coppola also admitted that his film has an ideological connection with this book. When filming, he would intensively read the books he read when he was young. He said that after he wrote that Willard killed Kotz, he was not resisted by the tribesmen, but bowed to his knees, because Kotz was mentally ill and he was an ideal successor to Kotz. Coppola also said: "I let Coates die and let him become a victim of the invasion. I hope that the United States can see its own image from this horrible image. Only in this way can the United States move towards a new era. "
Coppola not only described the above three main characters in detail, but also slightly described the four soldiers on board. They are actually the epitome of the whole American soldiers. Except for Philip, who faithfully carries out orders like a robot, the other three are all American youths with flesh and blood. Everyone has their own life pursuit before joining the army. But the chain of war ruthlessly brought them to Vietnam, where they were killed and killed at the same time. These young people, with one foot in the grave, have gradually changed from fear to madness in this voyage that drives human nature to * * *, and this madness is most vividly manifested in the scene of shooting fishermen for no reason. Finally, two black people died, and two white people were insane (Lance painted his face strangely, and then automatically joined the ranks of tribal armed forces; After reporting the location of Kotz headquarters to Nha Trang, the chef was also stunned by the surrounding scene.
Coppola shot three different endings in this film. This paper introduces the ending of the film when it was officially released. There are two explanations for this: ① Willard really wants to tell his son and all Americans the truth about the Vietnam War, as Kotz said. Although dissatisfied with the Vietnam War, he will still return to the army. When he left, he took lance. Coppola said, "We have made our children crazy. We should bring them back and cure them. " As for the bombing of the jungle by American planes, it can be understood that Willard could not contact the headquarters to take decisive measures (the film describes that he ignored the call of the headquarters twice and left the jungle by boat for the last time). Coppola was not satisfied with the ending. The ending of his Cannes Film Festival exhibition is: Willard hacked Coates, then hobbled out of the temple and watched thousands of tribal members meditate ... This ending left more room for the audience's imagination. It is most likely that he became another Coates, which is most in line with Frazier's thoughts, and Coppola also thinks this is the most real. But this ending was unacceptable to the audience, so the film was released with the above ending. The third ending of the film is that Willard didn't cut down Coates, but killed him when American planes bombed him. This ending was finally abandoned.
As a concept film, this film is not a realistic work. Coppola said that making a realistic film about the Vietnam War would be unforgettable, so he adopted surrealism to gain more creative freedom and deepen the theme. The surrealism of the film is mainly manifested in the last film, that is, after the patrol boat enters Cambodia. The color application, sound configuration, atmosphere creation and scene scheduling in this part all give people a strange and mysterious feeling. For example, the jungle should have highlighted green, but the main color of this part is orange. With orange smoke, flesh-colored human body, blood-red sun and orange flame, Coppola intentionally turned the picture into red and yellow when he made it, and he slowly flashed through the glare backlight from time to time. This kind of treatment of color often gives people a feeling of mystery, brutality, heat and bloodthirsty. For example, this part of the picture is full of corpses, headless, headless, hanging from branches and tied to trunks, coupled with scary music. The atmosphere is extremely horrible, just like hell on earth. This surreal atmosphere makes the audience and the audience's identification object, Willard, tremble deeply, which plays a good role in setting off Willard's ultimate relief of Coates' pain in an unusual way.
Coppola's use of photography to express the plot in this film is also highly respected. For example, at the beginning of the film, helicopters bombed the jungle, and then Willard's face was superimposed on the screen. In the constant motor sound, the rotation of ceiling fan blades in the hotel room is superimposed into the rotation of helicopter propeller. This set of shots, together with Willard's inner monologue, not only plays the role of opening the story, but also vividly expresses Willard's psychological state while waiting for the task. This is a kind of psychological editing, and the basis of editing is not the plot but the emotion. It is with this kind of pain, frustration, contradiction and confusion that Willard embarked on his voyage. The images of the three main characters in this film can be said to be shaped by light to some extent. The use of Kilgore is always single and bright, with few shadows. Because his mental state is single: only war, only games. For Coates, low-key photography is adopted, and at the same time, side light is used to make his face half bright and half dark. His head is half a moon, and the whole shape gives people a feeling of depression and mystery, which shows that he is in extreme pain and despair and has become a man alienated by war. As for Willard, at the beginning of the film, the shadow of the shutters is reflected on his face, which shows that he is always in an inner contradiction in the film. Later, when talking with Courths, his light consumption was similar to that of Courths, indicating that he was influenced by Courths. There are many details like this, and it is through these carefully designed shots and paragraphs that Coppola expresses his creative intention brilliantly.
A commentary published by Newsweek in the United States can be said to be the best portrayal of this film: "This is Coppola's highest war epic and a thorough and profound exploration of moral issues in the Vietnam War. Moreover, in some respects, it transcends the realm that philosophy and literature can reach, and only the real film art can be expressed most effectively. Violence, terror, madness, satire, humor, joy, anger, despair and hope make the film full of * * *, which has been well controlled by the master of film art. "