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Page 10A Aiken Standard, Aiken, S.C., Friday, October 19,1979ocalypseEssenThere are two groups of people who might find ‘Apocalypse Now” interesting.One group is made up of people who were there. They will be curious to know whether director Francis Ford Coppola has shown the reality of the war. He does; at least, he does for about half of the movie.The other group is made up of people who have read Joseph Conrad s ‘Heart of Darkness,” from which the film borrows,ly. They will look for Conrad that the novel expresses so i lifted from the text, iasive sense•ite of the river trip, thenatives and Col. Kurtz’ unsound methods, they won’t find it. The shell only was borrowed; the evil essense of the novel is missing.The film tries instead to get the essence of Vietnam and the war in all its ambiguity and complexity. What it gets, instead, is a mishmash of exciting action and abstract psychological probing.Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has a mission: to find and kill the demented Col Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has abandoned his Green Beret command to form a renegade band of Montagnard natives in Cambodia. Willard is also the narrator.upriverNavy patrol boatobserveVietnamhim. Along the way, they experience 01concrete, realistic, ironic, atrocious exam These elements, which culminate in ifascinating eavalry-helicopter attack on a Viet Cong village, make upthe real statement about Vietnam.As such, Apocalypse Now” would have done better to end here.Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) leads the attack, blasting guns and blaring Wagnerian opera His reason for attacking? The surfing on the village beach is supposed to be really good. Both as entertaining action and as a comment on the craziness of that jungle war, this episode could hardly be beat.From then on, the film becomes more surrealistic and chaotic. Motivation - that of either Kurtz or Willard - blurs. By the time Wil-VietnamThe FlicksBy LYNNE VOITlard finds his man — surrounded by armed natives, mangled bodies, flickering flames, bodiless heads — action has ground to a halt in ritualistic movements and intonations. The ending is no climax; it is simply the acting out of a dance — and not a very good one at that.Despite all this cinematic confusion, Apocalypse Now” is interesting, first for its portrayal of the war and second for its use of Heart of Darkness.” The first half certainly is realistic. Scenes may be bloody, but they are not gory. There are atrocities, but they come from both sides. The second half leaves realism behind.Until the helicopter attack, the film presents the events; judgment is left up to the audience. That technique is effective. The problem is that the film tries to go past that point to make its own judgmentand fails.41Apocalypse Now” is playing at Masters 4 and is rated RNorth Dallas Forty - This serious comic version of the novel follows Nick Nolte in his adventures as a maverick pro football player. Rated R, it is at the Cinema in Aiken.Killer Fish — An underwater thriller rated PG and starring Lee Majors. It’s playing at the Mark I in Aiken.
Newspaper Details
Aiken Standard
Aiken, South Carolina, US
Fri, Oct 19, 1979
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 13 Jan 2020
Other Publications Near Aiken, South Carolina
Aiken Daily Mail
Aiken County Rambler
Aiken County Register
Aiken County Journal
Aiken Standard
