Micro analysis of Apocalyspe Now (1979) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Micro analysis of Apocalyspe Now (1979) - Essay Example Inspired by the 1902 novel of Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now presents a story of a U.S. Army assassin, Captain Benjamin Willard in his final mission in Vietnam. Willard is tasked to take a voyage up the Nung River into Cambodia, for purposes of finding and killing a renegade Green Beret officer, Colonel Walter Kurtz. Kurtz, who is believed to have gone insane, leads a native Montagnard army in the commission of derange killings. The native army regards Kurtz as their ‘god’. Willard joins the troop of a Navy river patrol boat in order to reach Kurtz. As the journey of Willard continues, his crew comes across Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, chief of a U.S. Army helicopter cavalry group, who led the elimination of a Viet Cong colony to afford an entry point for the Patrol Boat River into the mouth of the Nung River. After several notable episodes of the journey, Willard finally reached the outpost of Kurtz, completing his mission and thereby gaining an acknowledgment of the natives as their new ‘god’. The chosen sequence depicts a part of the journey of battle-weary Captain Benjamin Willard to the ferocious profundity of war. The film sequence focuses on Willard’s mission to attack a Vietnamese village suspected of being an enemy stronghold, with the indispensable participation of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who takes Willard on an airborne foray utilizing several U.S. army gunships. The sequence begins on the sound of a trumpet signalling the commencement of the mission as depicted by the movement of the first helicopter gunship elevating from the ground, followed consecutively by the rest of the gunships. As the helicopters soar the sky, Wagner’s â€Å"Ride of the Valkyries† plays in the background. Here, the viewer is being initiated into the spectacle and awesome sight of war. As each of the helicopters ascends in the orange sky, showing overlapping shots of helicopters in tight formation