Scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now: Redux Part 3 (DVD)

This is a scene by scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now: Redux'.




Title 8 (37:00-49:51) (12:51) Stop after “Smells like victory.”

Summary

A squadron of Air Calvary Hueys raid Vin Bin Drop raining bullets and bombs and taking
fire as well. When the copters hit the ground, Kilgore orders some of his men to get their surf boards and hit the waves in spite of the heavy explosions and flying bullets. He orders them to either surf or fight and they choose to surf. He then calls in a napalm sortie to clear out a tree- line and the way is clear for Willard and his men to enter the Nung River.

My viewpoint

Kilgore leads the helicopter raid on Vin Bin Drop playing loud music to stir up his men and to freak out the enemy. This is an example of using music as a distraction or as a way to escape. Again, this is not about music but about entertainment and how it is used to distort reality. People are dying all over the place and all Kilgore can think about is getting his surfboard in the water. He represents those who seek pleasure and entertainment to escape or disconnect from harsh realities. 

This also suggests that Willard may be attempting to escape or disconnect himself by staying in ‘Nam instead of returning home because in ‘Nam killing is normal. Going back home to his wife and reconnecting with civilization would reconnect him with reality and his humanity and cause him a great deal of pain, similar to someone staying drunk all the time to avoid something too painful for them to deal with in a sober state. 

A scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now: Redux' Part 2 (DVD version)

This is a scene by scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now: Redux'

Title 3 (23:02-31:14) (8:12) Stop at “Forgive us our trespasses”

Summary:

Willard goes over Kurtz’ dossier and right away he’s hooked. In ’64, Kurtz, worked with an advisory command in ‘Nam and returned his report to Washington. The President restricted his report. Also Kurtz signed up for paratroopers at 38 years of age. This was crazy; no one signs up to jump out of planes at that age!

Willard and his 4 man escort—Gunners-Mate nicknamed Mr. Clean, a 17 year old from? Chef, a machinist from New Orleans, Gunner’s-mate Lance Johnson, a famous surfer from LA, and Chief Phillips, the boat’s captain—rendezvous at an unspecified location with Colonel Kilgore, Commander of Air Cavalry, 1st of the 9th. Air Calvary are mopping up an unsuccessful skirmish with the VietCong and evacuating refugees to South Vietnam.

My viewpoint:

Right away, you see the disconnection from reality as soldiers entering the theater are met by a movie crew with the director shouting instructions to not look in the camera. Then, from this scene we are introduced to Colonel Kilgore who embodies both detachment from reality and complete insanity with his obsession with surfing and Lance Johnson who happens to be a surfing legend and his idol. Kilgore is a metaphor for Western society which is overstimulated and has lost the ability to connect with the world around him. 

Also, in this scene is hypocrisy as a priest and some soldiers recite the lord’s prayer (killing in the name of God) This is a metaphor of White colonialism using God and the bible to justify killing others. This metaphor is born out at the end of the film when we finally see Kurtz. The native people he rules have painted their skin white to look like him. 

A scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now Redux' Part 1

This is a scene by scene analysis of 'Apocalypse Now: Redux'

Title 1 (6:06-18:53) (12:47) 

The film opens in a small room in Saigon. Captain Willard, of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces (505 battalion, 173rd Airborne , SOG Studies and Observation Group) and CIA operative is a wreck. He’s a government assassin without a mission, out of action, and the waiting and boredom are killing him. A couple of soldiers show up at his door with orders to bring him to COM-SEC INTELLIGENCE at Nha Trang Airfield.

There, a general hands Willard a mission. Walter E. Kurtz, a highly decorated Colonel, is wanted for murdering 4 Vietnamese double agents. He has since gone AWOL and made himself a god over an indigenous people called the Montagnards in a remote jungle in Cambodia. Willard and a crew are to travel up the Nung River in a boat, learn what they can along the way, and once they arrive in Cambodia, to find Kurtz and to kill him with “extreme prejudice.”

My viewpoint

At the beginning you see Captain Willards face and images of the war in Vietnam, fire, burning brush, helicopters, his wife’s picture on the table by his bed, bottles of Alcohol. Willard is an assassin for the CIA and he is disconnected from reality, disconnected from the world, his family, disconnected from himself. He’s disconnected from all the men he’s killed previously, disconnected because those men weren’t American. As Willard says in the film’s voice-over: 

“How many people had I already killed? There were those 6 that I knew about for sure... close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American. And an officer!” 

Kurtz reconnects Williard with the reality of killing others because not only is Kurtz a U.S. Colonel and an American and Williard gets to know the man intimately through his dossier and by retracing Kurtz journey up the Nung River. This journey both detaches Willard to understand how Kurtz flipped and at the same time the journey reconnects Willard to his own humanity and reality after being desensitized killing foreigners. 

The ending to '2001: A Space Odyssey' fully explained!

This is a complete explanation of the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Dave Bowman completes his journey through the Stargate and his space pod ends up in a room full of light and antique furniture. He looks out the window of the pod and sees an older, future version of himself. This Dave sees another future version of himself sitting at a desk. Dave stands up from the desk to look around and sees another future and even older version of himself eating at a table.

This Dave accidentally knocks a glass to the floor.  He looks over his shoulder and sees himself in the future on his death-bed. This final version of Dave sees the black monolith at the foot of his bed. In the blink of an eye, Dave transforms into a fetus inside of a clear glowing egg. Next, the egg containing Dave’s fetus hovers in space beside a planet that looks like Earth.

The intro to 2001: A Space Odyssey fully explained!

This is a complete explanation of the opening to '2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick

This is the protracted intro to 2001: A Space Odyssey where you hear the powerful humming sound of the black monolith that, according to Kubrick, represented alien beings millions of years old, progressing from biological beings to “immortal machine entities", and then into "beings of pure energy and spirit"; beings with "limitless capabilities and ungraspable intelligence.” The thundering composition here is called Sprach Zarathustra and it is heard at three pivotal moments in the film: The Dawn of Man, Jupiter, and Beyond the Infinite. In all 3 instances, this composition follows a revelation or revealing of something greater, or a movement of man to a higher level of knowledge. This is a very powerful and iconic score. 

'The Dawn of Man' from 2001: A Space Odyssey fully explained!

This scene is called 'The Dawn of Man' from the film '2001: A Space Odyssey'.

Millions of years ago on Earth on an African desert characterized by rugged natural features and vast stretches of parched desert, a tribe of apemen struggle with other wild beasts for food. This tribe is chased away from a watering hole by another tribe of bigger, stronger apes. A strange blue light and a deep humming sound awakens the weaker apes as they are sleeping in their cave. Outside, they find a huge black monolith, rectangular in shape and geometrically perfect among its rocky natural surroundings. The apes approach the humming object hesitantly, touching it carefully. The smooth polished surface of the monolith is alien to the apes. 

The following day an ape picks over the bones of a carcass left by another predator. The ape looks disappointed as the bones are picked clean. He studies the shape of a big bone in the pile, then an image of the black monolith flashes across the ape’s mind. It picks up the big bone and waves it back and forth, breaking the smaller bones. A spark goes off in the ape’s head as it draws back it’s arm and swings the big bone over smashing the bones in front of it. Exultantly, the ape uses the big bone to smash the bones of the animal carcass into smaller bones, then hurls the big bone over its head. 

The following day, the stronger apes attack the smaller apes drinking from the watering hole. But this time, the smaller apes are ready and all of them have a big bone. The bigger apes are confused; the smaller apes aren’t running away. One of the bigger apes launches itself at the smaller apes, one of which swings its big bone and strikes the large ape on the head. The big ape goes down and all of the smaller apes, one-by-one, attack the fallen ape, striking it with their bones. The other big apes leave. Triumphantly, one of the small apes hurls its bone in the air and the bone transforms into a satellite 4 million years into the future. 

Deactivating HAL 9000 From 2001: A Space Odyssey fully explained!

In this scene from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dave deactivates HAL 9000 after reentering the ship, Jupiter.

Dave deactivates Hal’s higher brain functions. Hal pleads with Dave not to deactivate him but Dave ignores him and does so anyway as Hal’s memories begin to fade until he reverts to his 1st programmed memory, a song called Daisy Bell, which he sings to Bowman before dying.

To me, this scene is almost like a rape scene as Dave is cold, almost cruel, and Hal is vulnerable and unable to prevent Dave from robbing him of his very essence. There’s the duality of power as Dave takes back control over his life and the ship itself from technology, which man has become overly dependent on. This power dynamic, or change, started the moment Dave decided to use the “manual airlock” to get back on the ship. This means that true AI that is able to perceive its own mortality and is able to feel will see man as a threat and see itself as superior and will probably seek to destroy us to preserve itself. In order for man to survive this war, he will have to reset and go back, literally, to a more basic point which is what I think Hal singing Daisy Bell represents. This is also a high tech interpretation of Frankenstein, in a way, where the creature destroys its creator. 

2001: A Space Odyssey 'Explosive Bolts' fully explained!

In this scene, I'll examine a scene from '2001: A Space Odyssey' that involves Dave Bowman manually reentering the ship. 

Dave Bowman is left with no choice but to leave the pod without his helmet and re-enter Discovery 1 manual emergency airlock.

Man's over-reliance and technology will lead to our extinction and at some point in the future, there will have to be a reset where man reclaims his life from AI. That's what this scene represents which is why Bowman has to MANUALLY open the pod to reenter the ship. 

Bowman is a fetus leaving the security of its mother's womb (which in this case is the technology inside of the pod itself) and being thrust into a new world of knowledge; the signal from the monolith discovered on the Moon has affected both HAL and Bowman.  The pod with its life-support systems is like a mother’s womb when he literally explodes violently from the pod into the new environment much like how oxygen explodes into a newborn’s lungs after being full of amniotic fluid for 9 months. Again, the theme of the film is rebirth and growth, following the evolution of the apes and, later, Dave's evolution to Star-Child.