To explain why Apocalypse Now is my favorite movie, I need to tell you about the first time I saw it. I was around 14. I had heard a lot about the movie and Francis Ford Coppola. The documentary about the making of the film had been on TV or something. I distinctly remember watching the move in my aunt's living room while the rest of the family played cards. I was so engrossed in the movie that when they took a break from cards for snacks, my mother had to shout at me several times to get my attention. This movie is the first movie that made me realize that movies are "made." I began to recognize that sound and picture were working together to tell the story. Ever since then, I've been hooked.
When I watch it now, I am still amazed at how beautiful and terrible it is. No other scene embodies this more clearly than the scene in which Clean is killed. All of the violence of the exchange stops suddenly and everyone tries to recover. Chief sees Clean lying in the boat. When he realizes what has happened, there is a shot of him looking right at the camera. The audio from the tape Clean's mother sent plays as Chief stares, reaches out and pulls back his hand covered in blood. Clean's mother tells him to "stay out of the way of the bullets" and bring his "heinie home all in one piece," but she is too late. The look on Chief's face and Clean's dead body are even more horrible to look at as you listen to her message. But the scene is also beautifully put together. All three elements in combination remind you of the true horror of war.
Obviously, if you have been reading the blog, or, when you read further in the blog, you will realize that my favorite movies are the ones that move me. They make me feel something, whether it is happy or sad. That's what a good movie should do. I think no other movie does it better than this one. Even the Redux version with all of its extraneous material.
To leave you with one other example of how powerful this movie is, I'll tell you a little story about when my friend Cathie and I went to see Redux in the theater. There is a scene in which shots of the boat cruising along the river are cut together with point-of-view shots of the river bank covered in trees. There is no sound other than the boat engine. Suddenly, rockets come bursting through the trees at the boat. Everyone in the audience, including Cathie and I, ducked. For a brief moment, we were right there in the scene, avoiding the bombs coming our way. Amazing or ridiculous, you decide.
Next time you see a movie, ask yourself why you laugh or cry or get angry as you sit there and watch. Was it the dialogue, the way the shots are edited together, the music, or is it the close-up of that one tear trickling down the heroine's face? All of these elements work together to tell you the story. Find out how they do it and you will start to see that movies are not always just entertainment, they can also be art.
P.S. The music in the movie, in a word, awesome.
at September 22, 2005 10:52 PM