In brief Seven Samurai is a better film.
desertion
Didn’t Kurtz fuck off to form a fascist death cult and wage his own war against the VC (only to instead just die of malaria on his own)? He’s basically a piss-take on the whole “America was too soft in Vietnam!” narrative, like he goes full-fash and devotes himself to just doing war crimes 24/7 to such an extent that even the US military is like “woah slow down there buddy that’s a bit much don’t you think?”, he goes rogue so he can do it even more, and then dies of fucking malaria before the special forces death squad sent to deal with him can even kill him.
(only to instead just die of malaria on his own)?
No, I think that’s what happens in Heart of Darkness, but in Apocalypse Now he is murdered by the guy sent to kill him.
Oh, that’s right, Martin Sheen cuts his head off doesn’t he? He is dying of malaria, but he lets Martin Sheen kill him instead because he has the whole fascist “wanting a warrior’s death” thing going on.
As much as a lot of it is “poor American soldiers losing their mind in the jungle”, I feel like of the major Vietnam anti-war movies it comes closest to actually asking “are we the baddies?” rather than just “golly gee isn’t war hell”
Like yeah Kurtz is doing the orientalist power trip thing (and in the book too) but he’s definitely not supposed to be any sort of good guy, just a different and more end-stage flavour of imperialist arsehole
“American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to your country and kill all your people, but what’s worse, I think, is that they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”
Similarly, the most popular Australian song ever made is about a guy who got so sad killing Vietnamese people that now he has to go and sleep with lots of Hong Kong prostitutes to feel better
Side note: Heart of Darkness is super racist.
It’s just the movie version of heart of darkness it being in vietnam was only so it would feel “more relatable” to westerners rather than deep along the Congo
Also the Ride of the Valkyries scene is shameless masturbation about the unstoppable might of the American military
that’s supposed to be basically a parody right? the cowboy hat commander who orders it is fucking crazy. I’m sure most Americans missed the point (wow rockets go boooom) but i don’t think it’s pro-imperialism, it’s at least antiwar.
It is 100% satire. They’re playing Nazi music while massacring civilians wholesale so the colonel can go surfing with a guy that he’s forcing to go surfing with him at gunpoint. IIRC it was that character and scene that made the US military refuse to do their usual thing of providing soldiers and equipment as extras and props for the movie, leaving them to instead rent the helicopters from the Philippines.
I thought it was supposed to be a kind of prelude to Kurtz, like these american military arseholes high on their own superiority and freed from normal restraints will act out as the psychopathic monsters they actually are. Like coming in and blowing up a village full of civilians while playing fucking Wagner just so you can go surfing is kinda the same pathology as starting a crazy jungle murder cult worshipping you as some sort of god
It’s like poetry, it rhymes, is what I’m saying
Ah, okay. I only saw the scene out of context and chuds cheering over it, so I imagine that colored my view of it.
I think the US Army literally showed this scene (and others) to troops to “fire them up” before they invaded Iraq so it’s understandable that it often gets stripped if it’s context.
