American Politics & Pop Culture

The film Apocalypse Now can be viewed both as an anti-war and pro-war film depending on how you look at it. Tomasulo discusses the myth that this films structure doesn't require a consistent message because of the way it is perceived. According to Levi-Strauss, "the human mind would automatically categorize the film as either pro or anti-war and not allow us to comprehend it as both for and against the war." I found this film to be more an anti-war film because of all of the unnecessary casualties that took place. On the anti-war point of view, Tomasulo argued and suggested that the film was made “to put Vietnam behind them” (page 2). The soldiers in the film were dresses up like civilians and in turn many of them were killed for no reason. One thing that the film does though is it plays with the viewers mind by throwing out pro-war and anti-war tactics. As Cawley has stated in his article, "it is not even clear that any recent example of a 100 percent antimilitary, anti-imperialist film exists." In the past, people saw the wars as a positive thing because there was a main reason that we were going into battle. However, with the Vietnam War, this was not the case. Most Americans viewed the War as a very negative thing and thought it was completely unnecessary. The main reason why I found this movie to depict anti-war tactics was because of how they portrayed the American military men to kill innocent bystanders just because they were there. I did not exactly like this film but I definitely think that it was an anti-war film because of all of the tactics of the soldiers.