Serge Daney on Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) | Hacker News Reader

Serge Daney on Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)

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What a great article! I'll need a couple rereadings to understand it better, but I did appreciate the section about spectacle and about how cinema is tied to war. Another film that exemplifies that line of thought is Beau Travail. The characters prepare for war in a ritualistic frenzy, throwing themselves into each other in lavish choreography, dancing in the water and in the club. Michel Subor says it well when he notes that a good soldier is taught elegance in and under their uniforms. And the ending, well let's just say the ending demonstrates this spectacle well.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention though the crucial failure of Apocalypse Now, which is the crucial failure of many American war films. It reduces the enemy to this faceless, incoherent savage. The Vietnamese are never given a say in this story. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen goes over this point. Yes, yes, Coppola is a fantastic director (The Conversation is an especially good masterpiece), but he nonetheless cannot seem to stray away from the genre of American soldiers feeling guilty about murdering savages. Contrast this to a war film like La Grande Illusion, where Renoir explicitly notes that the French nobility have more in common with the German nobility, their enemies, than with the French common folk, their comrades. But of course, the German nobility are the German nobility, and not the "savages" of Vietnam.

>The Vietnamese are never given a say in this story.

That's because it's not a movie about the Vietnam war. It's a story about violence and about human savagery that happens to be set within the context to the Vietnam war. The obvious parallels with Conrad's Heart of Darkness have been discussed elsewhere. One could take the story and put it in any other time or context if they wanted, akin to West Side Story being a modern rendition of Romeo and Juliet.

Well I'd then say that it's a failure of the source text, or at least Coppola's interpretation of the source text, that Apocalypse Now fails to give a voice to the native people. Which, in fairness, is a sin that many commit. John Le Carre, Graham Greene, and many others have failed as well.

That's the whole point of the original book: up the river, there is a natural civilization that simple cannot be understood by western people, it is unknownable and ineffable.

"I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations."

Heart of Darkness specifically not giving much of any voice to the native people is clearly a deliberate literary device, and Coppola carried it over to Apocalypse Now.

>It's a story about violence and about human savagery that happens to be set within the context to the Vietnam war.

Your points are valid, almost entirely. But it cannot be stated strongly enough - not human savagery, male savagery.

What percentage of human savagery, would you esitmate, is exacted by men? There is no Juliet. There is no Maria.

She's got a grenade! She's got a grenade!

That's even worse because it implies that the Vietnamese problem mattered so little, that they were backdrop details.

Are you attempting to be provocative or are you not understanding my comment? Apocalypse Now was a retelling of a novel set in Africa - it isn't "about" the Vietnam war, that just happens to be the context for this particular telling of the story. It comprises a journey, a narrator, a "madman," and various other fictional characters. Heck, I bet you could retell it using hobbits and elves or really fictional characters if you really wanted. The actual setting in this case is secondary to the message of the story, which is why it isn't brought forward more - I would posit that's probably why the scenes with the French colonists were left out in the original theater release.

Every story consists of the decisions that an author executes. Sure, there are the intentions of the author, but that comprises only a small selection of factors that goes into a reading of any work.

Within the Jazz community, there is a saying; > It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

Likewise, within narratives, both fictional and non-fiction, a story is not composed only of the intentional and emphasized aspects of a narrative. But likewise, the subtle details, and the details left unsaid that lead one towards a conclusion; that craft a message unconsciously.

To use a more simplistic narrative to illustrate this. Take a look at the original Star Wars. The overt message created in the actions of Luke, Han, and Leia is a tale of good overcoming evil. But in the small details of the setting, there is a subtle narrative about living under an authoritarian regime. The unpleasant but overly clean hallways and rooms within the Empire's bases and vehicles; contrasting with the impoverished, lived-in, locales of Tattooine. The identical uniforms and looks of the Empire's soldiers and commanders; contrasting with the infinite variability of those who live outside (and opposed to) their armies.

But another subtle detail that becomes deafening in its silence is; why does the camera only display complex emotions with the human characters? C-3PO and R2D2 are flat comedic relief characters. The only alien we have extended time with as an audience is Chewbacca. Meanwhile, Luke, Han, and Leia all get to experience anguish, wonder, frustration, relief, and elation in varying degrees throughout the narrative. The fact that the narrative is human-centric is an implicit message that only humans within the Star Wars setting have interesting, exciting, and relatable inner lives. Since we are not given a proper chance to relate to a significant non-human character.

Likewise with Francis Coppola and John Milius both have made an implicit message to place the narrative within a particular real-life setting; yet significantly downplay the humanity of those who actually inhabit that setting in real-life. It may not be a particularly intentional decision by those two men, or it may actually well be. But the implication of it in either case is that American Men are implied to be those who wield autonomy in foreign lands that they visit, at the cost of those who are native to those lands. It can be read as an implicit view of how the American characters view the Vietnamese people they fight for/against; or a missed opportunity to enhance the horror of war. Or in the most uncharitable light, it is implicitly saying that only American lives are worth depicting and that the loss of an American is a tragedy while the loss of a Vietnamese life is a statistic.

Stories are written for people, and people don’t like their main heroes winning over similar humans who have the same concerns and life depth. It just doesn’t make a good saga or a good background for the key idea, unless it’s related. Dark parodies often literally add humanness to an enemy, both in shows and games (scenes like a trooper talking to his mom about a dinner and then gets stealth killed because hero is too lazy to loop around his post). The idea of showing both (all) sides only makes sense when a plot revolves around that exact idea, and doesn’t otherwise. You have to contrast an idea enough for it to stay primary, and adding a real-world drama does the opposite, because, well, your auditory is not a soulless bunch.

> crucial failure of Apocalypse Now

I think cramming that in there just to tick a box would have hurt the film rather than do any good.

Why do you assume it would be to tick a box? A movie that reckons with war should reckon with the people it leaves behind. I don't see how that's "ticking a box".

You completely and fundamentally misunderstand the point of the book and the movie.

Okay...please elaborate? I don't believe this is a productive comment unless you explain.

You may think it's an unproductive comment, but some may think that you yourself have not put the leg-work into understanding the movie, either.

The war itself and suffering depicted in that movie are tools that are used to explore the different levels and depths of human consciousness and insanity depicted by the varying characters that must endure such conditions.

In the context of this journey any suffering conditions could have been used as such a tool. Vietnam was a powerful choice for the media released at that time as it had a large impact on the audiences interested and the people at the time.

Now, it can be said that the same suffering from the opposite side could have been used just as easily -- that's true -- but it's at that point that we must explore the fact that Western film-makers are interested in making Western successes.

Perhaps 'Apocalypse Now' produced by an SE-Asian crew would have looked a lot different -- but I wouldn't have faulted them for not exploring my Western perspective in that movie, either. When a movie tries to be all things for all people it usually 1) ends up with a 4 hour run-time and 2) satisfies no-one.

It’s not a war film. The social commentary you crave is actually implicit.

For most of the American soldiers who were deployed, the Vietnamese were a barbarous and exotic other that were trying to kill them.

It would do a disservice to all of the sides of the conflict to insist that each of the films exploring it deliver a full representative survey of the perspectives.

While Apocalypse Now is the target for Viet Thanh's Nguyen's criticism, I think his point is about Hollywood and the whole genre of Vietnam War films as a whole. America lost the war but won it in memory. Most Americans when thinking of Vietnam only remember the war that was fought (a simple mistake in the American narrative), but it's a beautiful country with thousands of years of history.

If anyone has not had the pleasure of seeing the ending to Beau Travail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rop2r0PASlM

It's the thing that made me want to need to see the movie, and I had no regrets.

Is there a Vietnamese movie about that war that doesn’t portray American soldiers as bloodthirsty goons?

I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if there isn't. Though I've heard from Americans living in Vietnam that the Vietnamese are pretty forgiving and not at all bitter against them. They are understandably proud of having defeated their invaders, of course.

I think this doesn't matter though. This is a critique of American cinema and their ambivalence towards the war even for a supposedly anti-war piece. It is relevant regardless of what the Vietnamese do with their cinema.

One could argue, myself included, that Apocalypse Now is neither a war or anti-war movie.

I think it's a movie about the developing psyche in humans under extreme duress, with the backdrop of a war that happens to be the US/Vietnam conflict.

That's exactly why I think ambivalence should be allowed in this case; the war is merely the backdrop which influences the psyche problems that we explore within.

Rambo?

Something that differentiates the audience of 1979 from the audience of 2022, I think. Or even the audience of 2010, probably.

> the audience ... come at ﬁrst for the war scenes, but they ﬁnd accepting this “at ﬁrst” difﬁcult: they need an ending, a dénouement, of intelligibility that will retrospectively justify those scenes.

The Marvel Films are the offender that I'm thinking of, but I'm sure other films are just as bad. There just isn't much substance; Maybe 10 minutes of story and then it's mostly explosions and "cool fights" or whatever, and the average viewer is there for exactly that.

A little meta, but just wanted to say that as a long-time reader of the Cahiers I had never expected to see a Serge Daney article on the HN front-page.

Later edit: This June's issue #788 has some nice couple of articles on Daney [1].

[1] https://www.cahiersducinema.com/boutique/produit/juin-2022-n...

Terrible article. Daney is reading all sorts of his own fixations into the movie, and I pretty much tuned out after he started on about homosexuality and Oedipus complexes (he's starting to sound as batty as Freud).

The thing to understand about Apocalypse Now is the environment it was released in. The Vietnam war (and all accompanying photos and footage) was still VERY fresh in the minds of Americans (the audience this movie was intended for), and so it was the perfect setting for a modern adaptation of Heart of Darkness: Far enough away to be exotic, yet familiar enough to show the barbarism and the depths of man's hubris and madness.

Exactly. E.g. he criticize the strongest part, the ending, without even knowing the source material. Which also has the strongest part in the ending, "the horror, the horror", and the aftermath, realizing the horrors are us, not them. The typical Vietnam veteran conflict.

All the parts he is criticizing are from the source material, and he doesn't even acknowledges where the film adaption surpasses the master novel.

The curious homosexual Oedipus part might come from the fact that Brando was half-known as homosexual, at least to the insiders, and from his fixation that all warriors are homosexual. Well, not really. Esp. not our hero. Maybe historical materialists, such as Daney, invested too much into their Spartanian trauma.

I loved "Apocalypse Now" as a statement of the idiocy of politics and war, which forces humans to shed the thin layer of culture and humanity.

Sone interesting tidbits I learned after watching the movie (many years ago):

The movie's is based on Conrad's book "Heart of Darkness" (nothing new), which was regarded as a critique of the Belgian exploitation of (and atrocities in) the Congo region at the end of the 19th century, cf. these Wikipedia articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness

And, btw, the last chapter of Barbara Tuchman's excellent book "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam" contains an interesting reminiscense of how and why the US intervened in Vietnam.

There are so many great scenes in the movie, the surfing off the coast of Vietnam while blasting Ride of the Valkyries from helicopters, the french lady who lives in the jungle (rubber plantation) in a world that has long since changed although she hasn't. And of course the acting, Brando, Sheen and Hopped all putting in amazing performances. The trick is to find the right version, original, redux and final cut all have different scenes, and wildly different lengths.

> which was regarded as a critique of the Belgian exploitation of (and atrocities in) the Congo region at the end of the 19th century

>> Apocalypse Now’ is an exceptional film. It is also an average American film of the post-Vietnam era.

>>> We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.

>>>> It's judgement that defeats us.

I think Serge Daney, and whomever those regarders were, are missing the point and being somewhat contradictory. There are a number of Viet Nam era Viet Nam war films (from the 1970's alone: The Losers, Limbo, Forced Entry, Coming Home, Tracks, Search and Destroy, The Visitors, etc.), and Apocalypse Now is atypical to all of them. The film is a retelling of Hearts of Darkness. The War in Viet Nam is just the setting, the backdrop or stage for Apocalypse Now, but the film is not about that war.

What is central to both Coppola and Conrad, what they are saying, quite simply and even cynically, is that there is no difference between the savages and the civilized. We can segue that into theses on racism, but the ultimate message (of both the novel and the film) is that civilization is an illusion; there are only savages.

Maybe something was lost in translation but it reads like gibberish to me:

Sound — a particularly manipulative use of the Dolby effect — plays a prominent role, not by anchoring the image, making it more intelligible, but on the contrary, by tearing it open from the inside, by keeping it from becoming a refuge for the audience, by inspiring fear. In other words, no more offscreen. The effect is completely breathtaking.

I've read that several times and I don't know what it means. The closest I can think of is: "The scene opens with a cow chewing grass in a pastoral setting that lulls the viewer into a sense of nostalgic safety. Suddenly, the cow farts and the Dolby surround sound takes over, blowing the listener back in their seat. The fart echo's in a menacing way, destroying the listeners sense of safety"

I liked : "And yet, the double bind that Coppola has not been able to escape is this: the audience (and millions are needed to make the ﬁlm proﬁtable) come at ﬁrst for the war scenes, but they ﬁnd accepting this “at ﬁrst” difﬁcult: they need an ending, a dénouement, of intelligibility that will retrospectively justify those scenes. Ultimate meaning as cover for the jouissance of non-meaning. "

The idea that a film critic can be "legendary" seems hyperbolic. Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing. Directors can be "legendary". Writers can be "legendary". Artists can be "legendary". All of these roles risk the reputations of the creators. But film critics never put anything on the line.

> Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing

I think that's terribly dismissive. I mean, take Ebert's reviews of the Mummy series for example. There's something touching and wise in there that actually makes the films themselves better because they give us pause to reflect on these things.

Or in a completely different ballpark, the Red Letter Media "review" of Star Wars Ep. 1 that manages to be not only a valid critique of the film, but is longer than the film and arguably a better film in its own right!

(Edit: Another good example that just occurred to me is one that I heard in a recent episode of the Rest Is History podcast. They were discussing Tolkien and one of the hosts pointed out that even if he hadn't written any of his Middle Earth fiction, he'd still be well-known in literary circles for his critical examination of Beowulf that changed how we see it today.)

Like any other "content" there's a spectrum from prolefeed and seo spam on one end, and actual art and literature on the other. Pull that rabbit out of a hat enough times and there's definitely a niche to carve out a legend there.

The parent would agree that Roger Ebert is notable. But s/he is arguing that legendary should have a higher bar. Shakespeare, for example, died 400 years ago, but is commonly known today. There are many other examples. But it's hard to imagine that Roger Ebert will be well known in 100 years from now.

> The parent would agree that Roger Ebert is notable. But s/he is arguing that legendary should have a higher bar.

I think that's a reasonable view, but that's not what I took issue with. I take issue with the claim that critics produce nothing and have nothing in the line. And with the notion that legendary stature would be impossible for a critic to attain.

Ebert was a script writer. He knew more about the inside baseball than any run of the mill J-school grad who got assigned to work on the entertainment section.

The article you're reading was written in 1979 by a guy who died in 1992. So "they created nothing" is wrong (as evidenced by the writings we're discussing) and "will be quickly forgotten" is wrong (we're discussing it four decades later).

Sorry, but I disagree. Good critics can put into words your feelings about certain art works, that maybe oneself can only awkwardly describe as “good”; they can enhance your enjoyment by bringing to your eyes something that you missed; and of course perform a curation labor.

While I don’t think you should blindly follow the critics, I think is lazy to just dismiss the job of a good critic.

> Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing.

Critizising something is an art, and requires vasts amounts of background knowledge. It is trivial to make a useless and unfair critique.

> But film critics never put anything on the line.

I disagree. Their reputation is on the line.

Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, Pauline Kael, Richard Roeper, Gene Siskel, Mark Kermode.

Criticism may not be seen as a valid form, but there are more than a few very respected film critics. I wouldn't use the word legendary though.

To me Roger Ebert fills the role of legendary but I'm not sure I could think of anyone else. Like all movie critics, Ebert would sometimes express opinions that would surprise or vex me, but - more or less uniquely to him - by the end of his reviews I would usually come to respect and somewhat understand his opinion despite the fact that I did not share it.

I think Leonard takes himself way too seriously and comes across as preachy. Ebert is the right guy.

I highly suggest you look into the history of movies, academic movie critics pretty much defined what cinema is in the first place, critics are much more than YouTubers giving their opinion on the latest Marvel flick, it's a whole field with filmmakers being critics such as during the Nouvelle Vague.

This is tangential to the point that you are making, but it never fails to irk me whenever I see the term legendary used to describe anyone who lived in the last 100 years.

I accept that the term now has a secondary meaning for someone who is highly regarded or significant in their field, but I can’t help but see this as an artifact of marketing speak that’s ingrained itself in our culture.

I think what’s lost is the sense of weight or gravitas that is implicit in the original meaning. The idea of a myth that is larger than any individual and now represents some manner of archetypal story that endures across the ages because it resonates deeply with our human nature.

The modern usage cheapens the special significance implicit in the original meaning. It piggybacks on the original’s import and drains it’s luster for it’s own short-term gain.

There's at least one legendary literature critic, Belinsky [1], in the old Russian Empire, who played a prominent role in "Westernizing" movement.

Even for reading his critique letter [2], one could get sentenced to death (e.g. Dostoevsky, although, after mock execution, his sentence was reduced to 4 years of forced labor in a remote settlement).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vissarion_Belinsky

[2] https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky...

Reading this on a somewhat long-in-the-tooth Android and for some reason the fi ligature is huge compared to the rest of the text. Noted in Chrome and Firefox, and when requesting desktop site. It's very unusual!

I've only seen the part with The End in it because it's my favorite Doors song. Good reminder that I really need to get around to watching the whole thing.

> for some reason the fi ligature is huge compared to the rest of the text

They're using the Unicode "presentation-forms" ligature character "ﬁ" in the text (which is not recommended: just spell the text normally with "fi", and leave it to fonts to generate a ligature glyph if appropriate); but then they've specified a webfont resource (Crimson Text) that doesn't support it. So the browser falls back to the next available font for that character, which may be a poor visual match.

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