Pro-War? NO. Amanda Ruffalo
When I finished watching this film, I was awe struck at how this film could ever be considered a pro-war film. Needless to say, I disagree with Tomasulo’s article, suggesting that it is a pro-war and an anti-war film. There were points in the movie when I just got extremely upset and pissed off to say the least. One of these points is when Willard and his crew came across the Vietnamese boat filled with innocent civilians and his crew member opened up fire and shot them all. Tomasulo quotes the filmmaker saying, “Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now “to assist Americans in ‘putting Vietnam behind them� (2). How could this scene possibly help Americans in putting the war behind them!? This would only infuriate them and carve horrible images in their minds of the brutalities that made up the Vietnam War! It made me ashamed of my own country to watch a film that showed Americans killing people so casually, like it was an everyday occurrence. An example is the horrifying scene when the American troops opened fire on a peaceful village that only seconds before showed children laughing and playing without a care in the world. The Americans were casually talking and joking around with each other while they were brutally killing these people. Tomasulo mentions, “During the battle scene at “Charlie’s Point,� a peaceful Vietnamese village is destroyed, photographed so as to excite viewer viscerally and to glorify war and its godlike heroes� (5). I find this very far fetched. How is the massive killing of innocent children able to “glorify war and its godlike heroes�? I thought the so called “godlike heroes� were portrayed as dim-witted and dense, especially because they were destroying the village so that the soldiers could surf? Are you kidding me? I find Tomasulo’s arguments for why this film is pro-war very difficult to swallow and am not convinced at all that this is a pro-war and anti-war film.