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Comparison of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket Writing his Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad could not have envisioned that Francis Ford Coppola would transform initial story of a man sent to Africa into epic picture of the Vietnam War. From the critical point of view, Coppola managed to maintain the spirit of Conrad's work extending the ideas of Apocalypse Now beyond the battlefield putting them in paths, paths everywhere; a stamped in network of paths spreading over empty land (Conrad, 39). Having incorporated numerous ideas between paths in the film, Coppola maintained the core of moral dilemma both of individual and the country put in the constraints of a war, while Stanley Kubrick pictured the war as the logical outlet or mens inherent brutishness. Francis Ford Coppola places introductory stage of Apocalypse Now in a sleazy, sepia-toned Saigon hotel room, where solitary, alienated, sweat-bathed Willard lies. Coppola utilizes symbolic imagery of wallet, opened letter and envelope, cigarettes, bottle of liquor and a gun to oppose existing reality with memories of the chopper blade sounds and flaming sights of war. Simultaneously, Stanley Kubrick opens his picture without the usual credits.
He starts with a 45 -minute boot-camp sequence to end all boot-camp sequences. His drill instructor is so vulgar, so out-of-touch with non-Marine Corps morality; he can admiringly refer to Lee Harvey Oswald as an example of what a well-trained Marine and his rifle can do. Kubrick has shot the movie coldly and without emotion; the recruits, with their shaved heads, look inhuman, like protean beings from another world. At least Kubrick does not accept the relentless, anti-female (the worst insult hurled at recruits, and it is hurled again and again, is ladies) rituals of military indoctrination as redemptive, the way most film makers do. When a tired recruit finds himself in possession of a full metal jacket (a ready-to-fire rifle cartridge), he explodes - literally and figuratively. During agonized, fatigued, half-nude dance Coppola's assassin self-destructively blows and breaks the mirror (symbolically destroying his own image), bloodies his right fist, face and entire body.
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one was going to the worst place in the world. Narrators primary mission is to assassinate Kurtz, the most thoroughly developed character in Apocalypse Now. From practical point of view, all the visual imagery of the film is designed to reveal the evil nature of Kurtz's compound. However, Coppola again deflects from Conrad's story by portraying Kurtz as a mystical monster rather than the man beyond good and evil. Pvt.
Joker (other characters have such meaningful names as Payback and Pilgrim) goes on to Vietnam. Assigned to the service newspaper Stars and Stripes, where his editor equates journalism with propaganda, Joker easily keeps his distance from the war. When he learns of the Tet offensive, Joker asks his editor: Does this mean Ann-Margret isnt coming? Kubrick has us see the war through Jokers eyes, a point of view that offers a certain amount of heavy-footed black humor if not much of a moral vision. Joker wears a helmet that says Born to Kill and a peace symbol. An officer asks him to explain: I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, says Joker.
The Jungian thing. As Joker moves through the various sets Kubrick has had built to represent Vietnam, the picture becomes more and more abstract. Thus, soldiers and officers say suitably cynical things such as, in side of every gook is an American trying to get out. However, the words float in an atmosphere of unreality. There is not a sign of human feeling anywhere, certainly not from the impenetrable Joker.
According to Hagen Coppola's Kurtz is indefinable in terms of huge presence of evil around him (Hagen 300). During the first meeting of Willard and Kurtz, the lightning and long shots as well as slow editing of the scene are used in order to promote the domination of Kurtz (Wilmington 285). Kurtz is portrayed as a mythical monster, which does not have clearly defined personal purpose, thus he is exercising ultimate will for no clear intent (Labrasca, 291). Having no defined reason for his ruthlessness, Kurtz's character is used to deliver Coppola's political message regarding the war in Vietnam, in particular its futility and invalidity. Simultaneously, Kubrick is not able to examine the war through the character of Joker, as multi lattice of Kurtz makes such opportunities available for Coppola.
On the other hand, there is something loathsome about the cerebral cool of Kubrick's movie, about the delight he seems to take in painting men as either suicidal misfits or soulless unrepentant's (women appear briefly either as machine-gun-toting sirens or as whores). Stanley Kubrick has said he would like to explode the narrative structure of movies and he has gone a long way toward accomplishing his goal (Falsetto, 41). By most standards of conventional film narrative Full Metal Jacket constitutes a mess. And yet, like almost all Kubrick's work, something in the film - perhaps the sheer force of its intellectualized belligerence - stays with audience, even if the latter prefers it did not. Simultaneously, except for its generalized anti-war theme, Kubrick's movie has little in common with Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which bleeds and sweats and shudders with surrealism and contrasts. Because theres a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil.
And good does not always triumph. Kubrick does not question the dilemma of right or wrong in the war. When asked whether he thought America should be in Vietnam, a recruit grins slyly and answers: I dont know about America but I know I belong in Vietnam. However, Kubrick's visual compositions can knock audience out, and so can the way he superimposes American pop on the nastiest imagery. Kubrick first introduces his audience to Vietnam with a shot of a street, a billboard and a prostitute sashaying over toward a couple of American soldiers. They barter: $ 10 for the two of them.
The sound track blares These Boots Are Made for Walkin. From this critical point of view, the pictures climactic scene is undeniably forceful, a powerful allegory for the trap Vietnam became. An unseen sniper drags in the soldiers of a unit, one by one, wounding them terribly but letting them live - bloody and screaming - so their comrades will be drawn in to save them. Yet even this horrible scene feels hollow. After all, audience has no idea who is doing the screaming, who is doing the sniping.
Bibliography Wilmington M. Worth the Wait: Apocalypse Now. Boston Books, 1997 Labrasca R. Two Visions of The horror! New York: Frederick Ungar, 1999 Hagen W. Heart of Darkness and the Process of Apocalypse Now.
Cleveland, OH Publishing, 2001 Falsetto, M. ed. Perspectives on Stanley Kubrick. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996 Conrad, Joseph.
Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 1999
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Research essay sample on Comparison Of Apocalypse Now And Full Metal Jacket
