Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
USA, 1979
Considered to be one of the best war films created, Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is perhaps one of the more interesting and thought provoking films focused on the Vietnam war.
While most films about the Vietnam war portray it with criticism and an almost heavy handed opinion led bias, "Apocalypse Now" truly puts you in the war zone. Compared to Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" and other films that use the war experience to drive home their point: young men singing the Mickey Mouse theme song after an attack, or the training period where their identities are shaved from their bodies, "Apocalypse Now" gives you the first person immersion, story, and experience that the other films do not.
The story focuses on a young Martin Sheen reeled back into war for "one last assignment", to find Colonel Kurtz, Marlon Brando, who has gone AWOL and has started his own war with his own agenda. Based off of Jospeh Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", Sheen's character travels through Vietnam by river with a group of men from all different backgrounds. The battles and crumbling morale surrounding them affects them in different ways as they make their way to their destination. All the while, Sheen's character debates the true reason behind his orders and Kurtz's background.
The reason I suggest that this film immerses you more in the Vietnam war compared to other similar films is because of one particular attribute this film employs that the others don't, the use of sound. The Vietnam War was one of the first televised wars in American History. Rather than the public seeing the heroics and despair in snapshots like in previous wars, Vietnam brought the live action, fear, youth and danger into people's homes. It wasn't just an image you could out out of your mind but rather a series of actions miles away. While other films do portray this visual notion of Vietnam, they lack the forceful immersion that can only be found in sound. Experiencing a war zone is so much more than just the gruesome images, it's the deafening bombs and action as well as the nerve wracking silence that the soldiers experience. Even soldiers who suffer from PTSD have stated that it's the loud noises and lack of noises that gets them rather than the images themselves. "Apocalypse Now" makes brilliant use of the aurality of war. Scenes go from deafening loud to too quiet to hear. The moments of absolute silence are more frightening than the ones with bombs jogging off. The film is truly a visual and auditory experience. It can even be seen in the use of the only non-diegetic song in the whole film (a song that is played over the action and has no origin in the film itself) is This is the End by The Doors. That song is used as a bookend to the entire action of the film creating an ongoing and cyclical nature to the meaning of "the end".
Overall, "Apocalypse Now" is a classic that deserves to be recognized for its auditory techniques, story telling, and use of music in a diegetic and non-diegetic format. Definitely a must-see for any film buffs to be.