Chris dahmen's blog 8
In the film Apocolyse Now, Francis Ford Coppola uses very interesting and good quality features of film with contrast of images and sounds and voiceover to create a picture that despite our arcane technology and idealistic ambitions, we ultimately at least have a course, and corporeal side like any other culture.
The technique of the voiceover is very ideological. If the spectator can't see the person speaking, the effect it has on the spectator is impressionable. He thinks subconsciously, this must be god talking, or some higher authority who has the power to make their voice heard but remain invisible. Martin Sheen's voiceover is what unfolds the narrative. The voiceover or voice also acts in interesting contrast to images on the screen. Sometimes making us think about what is reality and what is fiction in a diegetic sense. For example, Willard is looking at some photos and papers of Kurtz as he is listening with some other officers to a recording of Kurtz voice, acting in a literal sense here as a voiceover. But it’s a fragmented one, because we see only photos of the man talking. So there is a kind of ideology within the ideology of the film itself. Fiction begetting reality? Also, there is a scene where a battalion is storming the beach and a photographer is yelling at them to just keep going and make it look natural. This is interesting because it breaks the ideology of the spectator and makes them think about if what they are watching is fictional or reality just as it would for the on screen characters. Should we believe the voice or the images, or maybe both? This is I think a deliberate awkwardness created by technology and how it works on us exposed.
There is another great example of this contrast that is meant to expose ideology and contradiction and the brutal yet beautiful nature of humans especially our culture with its infatuation with technology. In the scene of the air invasion of the beach village with helicopters flying overhead there is the “voiceover� of what is I believe the “1812 Overture� Opera. The sound is an operatic achievement and is a part of what we might call high culture. It is playing over the images and scenes of mass death by technology of complicated bombs and machine guns etc. In such a contrast it is not clear to the viewer which they should identify with, so they have to choose or identify with the contrast and contradiction of the sound and images. Ironically, I believe the 1812 Overture was written as a testimony to the enduring infallibility of humans who survive through war or something.
Another example is when the boat is getting shot at after a failed use of technology (flare). There existence is exposed and the ideology of successfully hiding is thwarted. Miller is shot dead and the voice recording of his mother talking about family life and plans for the future rolls on as she says “stay out of the way of the bullets and come home in one piece.� The voice is in contrast with the image of the dead body. So again, the images of the brutality of technology, mass death and killing and the alienation that it causes is exposed and stands in contrast to the sound of the beautiful and graceful.