Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness (1902) tells the story of a captain who goes deep into the heart of Africa in search of Kurtz, an ivory merchant who spreads European civilization but is eventually swallowed up by the darkness of the wilderness and humanity. The plot is so simple, but the connotation is obscure and rich.
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When I was a child, I felt that all kinds of comments and analysis were scratching the itch of the boots, and I couldn't say why. This peculiar reading experience is similar to Camus's The Outsider.
For more than a hundred years, "Dark Heart" has occupied the storm eye of cultural criticism, psychology, deconstructionism, postcolonialism, new historicism, and neo-Marxism have flocked to the scene, and saliva and misunderstanding have poured in; feminist critics have insisted that "Dark Heart" advocates male hegemony, and the barbaric conquest of the unknown symbolizes the conquest of the female body and will.
The Godfather (1972) and the sequel were a huge success, winning 8 Oscars, and Coppola became rich overnight: In terms of gangster epics, "The Godfather" is very great, but Coppola is not here, what he really wants to make is the human epic, the Vietnam War film "Apocalypse Modern", based on "Dark Heart".
In 1973, the anti-war wave swept the world, and the United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam. Hollywood is not a public good, and when you hear about Conrad and the Vietnam War, you will not shy away.
As a die-hard fan of Conrad, Coppola went bankrupt and desperate, set up his own film company, and entered the Philippines in February 1976 to start filming. How hard is it to make a classic, or how hard is it to rebel against Hollywood?
Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) recreates the birth of Apocalypse Now (1979):
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War, floods, starring in heart attacks, movie emperors playing big names, astronomical production costs, schadenfreude media...
Coppola, on the verge of bankruptcy, has tried to commit suicide more than once:
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Sometimes, clapping, the helicopter suddenly receives an order to go to war, and Coppola cries without tears:
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The actors are all a one-time choice, not to mention Marlon Brando:
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What is the value of daring to play a big name with Coppola? Shoot for three weeks, one million dollars a week (then it was a sky-high price), and a deposit of one million.
Coppola's only request is that you look at the original first. It is impossible to see, and it is never possible to see. Big actors need to eat through the original and deeply understand the characters... Genius does not need, itself is charged, give a little color on the storm:
The distribution company lent Coppola three million on the condition that the box office must reach forty million, otherwise Coppola would have to pay it back.
Anyway, Lao Tzu is going bankrupt, call it so much! In order to complete the shooting, in addition to panties and wife, Coppola mortgaged all the real estate and reputation. The film eventually cost more than 30 million yuan, but it won the Cannes Palme d'Or at the box office of 150 million; in addition, Coppola's wine business flourished, avoiding the doom of wandering the streets :)
Time magazine argued that Apocalypse Now "captures the madness in the hearts of a lost generation of Americans guided by false motives and foreign policy." The ratings are high, but still grossly underestimate the format and significance of the film.
What exactly does Revelation Now reveal?
The captain at the beginning of the film is very drunk and very weird, looking at the infiltrators -
The way of interpreting the legend is also full of legends: the actor who plays the captain, Martin Simmer, is drunk, estimates the wrong distance, smashes the mirror with one punch, and spills blood on the spot. The nightmare of war is about to come out:
Along the Mekong River, the search for and assassination of the mad Colonel Kurz is fraught with dangers and climaxes:
The most terrible thing about war is not bloody and cruel, but its "charm" makes you probably fall in love with its unscrupulous indulgence and venting.
In the majestic music of Wagner's "Valkyrie", the air raids of lieutenant colonel Bill, who loves surfing, the sensualization, gamification and audiovisual fury of war exude the charm of Satanic evil:
On the one hand, the lieutenant colonel regarded war as a child's play, did not know what fear was, and always stood proudly when his subordinates avoided artillery fire; on the other hand, he was full of sympathy for prisoners of war, using his helicopter to rescue wounded children, symbolizing the rationality and irrationality of modern civilization, and the contradiction between killing and saving.
Kurz ridiculed the hypocrisy of the army: "We train young people to throw bombs, but they are not allowed to write 'fuck' on airplanes because it is very vulgar." ”
Laborer girls, tigers, French nobles assimilated by the jungle, stone statues are full of metaphors, the cow slaughter sacrifice and the slashing of Colonel Kurz are intertwined, and Kurz's last words are "terrible" like the original, shocking the past and the present.
Marlon Brando's powerful aura perfectly illustrates a tragic figure who is loyal to the country and ultimately crazy and rebellious:
"Heart of Darkness" cannot simply be classified as a marine novel, jungle novel or political novel, and the unbridled Conrad, who wrote a lot of words, exhausted the development of civilization, the tragic environment of cultural conflicts, the corrosion of human nature by wealth and power.
"Apocalypse Now" is not a Vietnam War film or an anti-war film in the general sense, Kurtz's tragedy is Nietzsche's "staring into the abyss for too long, and the abyss is also staring back", inspiring people to reflect on the limits of civilization and reason, the difficulty of salvation, unruly and implicit, compassionate, calm and majestic, high and high.