lets analyze this apocalypse now movie!

In my last film blog I talked about Apocalypse Now and my opinions on the movie. This time I want to talk about the film more from a cinematographically point of view rather than just resting on my personal opinion alone. As far as cinematography goes, I think Apocalypse Now did a pretty fine job. The use of color was fantastic because
it wasn’t random but the lighting used was symbolic and had meaning to it. Another good job done was with the framing of the characters in the movie.

One of the best parts of the movie that appealed to me was one of the first scenes. The scene shows a ravaged battle field in a moving frame but it had a faded in
background of Willard all in the same frame and I thought that was cool because the
cinematographer and director probably wanted to show us what he had been through and that his mind was kind of like that battle field. At least that is what I felt. The depth of field there was tight considering the closed room that Willard was in.

Another thing of similarity was when the boat they were in was near Kurtz’ domain and we see a faded in shot of two heads and we can see the boat entering the two heads signifying how near they were. In the end they do the same thing with the boat leaving the same way with the faded in shots of the two heads and I thought that was cool.

Another good use of different filming angles was the battle scene when the helicopters fought the villagers. There is a good use of high angle and also low angle shots. On the way there, there are some good overhead shots looking down at the village from the point of view of the helicopters and it was cool because it was an overhead shot but also a moving frame so we get to have the full point of view experience. We can also see the villager’s point of view as the choppers attack. Another cool thing I thought about this scene was the range of colors from the green smoke when the choppers land vs. the yellowy background of the battle.

Again ill reiterate the importance of color in this movie. The whole frame had specific colors in some parts of the movie for example when they go to look for mangoes, the whole screen seems blue and also after the death of one of the crew members, it’s all blue again. When Lance the surfer opens up the purple flare and calls it purple haze I believe it shows that their experiences are just feeding into their insanity like purple haze feeds ones addiction. Another part was when Willard finally confesses his destination to the crew, the sky and water become grey just like the feelings of the crew. They knew it was going to be darkness ahead so it was perfect the way it was visually portrayed.

Now that we are talking about color let’s move on to the use of shadows vs. light. I thought they did an excellent job with this because it was used to represent good vs. evil and sanity vs. insanity. Kurtz face is drowned in shadow when we first meet him signifying the insanity that has surrounded him. Come to think of this, in the earlier scene with the craziness that was going on where the soldiers didn’t have a commanding officer, their faces were smothered in darkness too showing their insanity and it was dark out, but a darker than usual dark showing insanity. Anyways after Kurtz gets killed, Willard is drowned in shadow as well showing how he becomes just like Kurtz except he leaves this behind when he exits the island in the end of the movie.

Wow Marlon Brando is so fat in this movie. Way to use the darkness to hide this fact. Good job because I would be embarrassed as well.

I liked the use of proximity in this movie. In one of the scenes they just killed a bunch of Vietnamese people and took a puppy and the puppy is showed out of focus in the next scene showing that the dog wasn’t the most important thing in the scene but was still pretty important because we wonder if they kept it. The bridge was also a good example because they used a long shot there so we could see what was going on and then the close up shots of the soldiers and the looks on their faces.

Overall I thought the cinematographer and the director did a pretty good job and I would not have changed much if it were me. Oh and by the way one thing I forgot to say is now that I think about it; I didn’t think the ending was all that spectacular apart from the colors used. Kurtz wanted to die like a soldier but he died like an ox, an animal. Or maybe there was more to that. What do you guys think?