Apocalypse Now: Redux

Alright, there have been a good handful of reviews so far in this grandiose lineup of films, just waiting for a B movie to mess everything up. But now, my friends, we have hit the next goldmine. A goldmine so vast, so huge, so incredibly and impossibly beautiful and terrifying that just thinking about writing about it makes one think that so many things can go so very wrong.

As you know, Apocalypse Now is a film directed by the great Francis For Coppola, starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Laurence Fishburne and quite a few cameos here and there. It shouldn't be a surprise to you that this film is set during the Vietnam War/Conflict, but it may be a surprise to find out that the film isn't at all about its surroundings. It's more about the people in the film, how they act, how they reason, how they conflict and resolve.

Now I should mention here that this film is not an original concept. It is in fact based on a short work of fiction by author Joseph Conrad entitled Heart of Darkness, published in 1902. The original story followed a Charles Marlow, on a steamboat with his crew, employed to transport ivory downriver in the Congo, but was given an assignment to return Kurtz, another trader, back to 'civilisation' in a cover-up.

When you think of the film as a journey to the heart of darkness, more and more of the movie starts to make sense.

Captain Willard is definitely established as the main character (I wouldn't say protagonist), and unmistakably so, since he is the prime focus of the film. Every single character in this movie, in one way or another, interacts with Captain Willard. There are a few highlights of characters that converse, argue and fight with Willard, most notably General Corman near the beginning of the film as Willard receives his assignment, his boat crew, Lt. Kilgore, the photojournalist, and of course Col. Kurtz in the final act of the film. 

Cpt. Willard sits on the boat, enveloped in fog.

One can argue that as Willard meets more and more people throughout the film, they get more and more insane. Most people would probably disagree with this idea, I think mainly because Lt. Kilgore can be argued as the craziest character in the entire film. However, I believe insanity goes further than that. Much, much further (ever read a Batman graphic novel?). Especially since the entire point of Willard's mission is to find Kurtz and take him out, he would need to be the most insane character in the entire film. Well, when Willard finally meets Kurtz face to face, he seems to be 'all there,' but something just seems...off. Which is what I meant about insanity reaching depths further than the obvious. In his conversations with Willard, he tells him about a mission he once had when he was still working for the military:

Kurtz: You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us. 

This is the point of the film that is best left to personal interpretation. It is my interpretation that Kurtz's insanity is so deep that it can be argued that he is not insane at all. However, the fact that it can be argued that he is not insane at all raises the possibility that Willard is just as insane as Kurtz is, only more hesitant. In a way, Willard has undergone the same transformation as Kurtz. It is at the end of the film that Willard realises that whatever he does next, if he kills Kurtz or leaves him in peace, he will just take Kurtz's place.

If you care about numerical rating systems:

 10 napalm bombs out of 10.

As a side note, if you have never seen this film before, I suggest watching the original theatrical release first, then the redux, as it makes more sense the second time around, plus there's more scenes to supplement the story.

Anvil!

Very much like A Cross the Universe, this is a legitimate documentary about an existing band. In this case, the band is Anvil, a group that started in the early 1980s, alongside Whitesnake, Scorpions, Anthrax, and Metallica, just to name a few. 

They seemed quite promising when they debuted, and continued to succeed after recording a few albums of their own. However, their 15 days of fame came to a close quickly, as their management and production team (not to mention the record label they were on) collapsed due to financial troubles.

As the film starts out, it reveals that the singer of Anvil, who prefers using his stage name, Lips, works for a catering company in Toronto where both he and the original drummer, his best and closest friend, Robb Reiner, lives.

I know what you're thinking: Rob Reiner? Believe me, there's no resemblance or relation between the two. Plus, none of them own a shirt with a green x-ray of their skeletal structure. However, in their early days they were criticised on the content of their lyrics, which actually did suggest a sort of Spinal Tap quality to them, only more clandestine and clever.

I just want to make clear here that these recent two documentaries having to do with bands have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Where A Cross the Universe showed only the travel life of Justice, Anvil shows both the travel life with Anvil and their troubles at home, work, and their dreams to get a record label to accept them as artists and start recording again. 

Robb Reiner (Left) and Lips (Right) just hanging out in a bar.

What this documentary does best is to show both sides of everyone's point of view: Lips' universal optimism to his pent-up rage towards the music industry, Robb's calm personality and clear decisiveness to his almost leaving the band during a recording session, and their touring manager's open and caring personality to her incredibly scary and loud argumentative side. 

What this documentary is for is not only to tell he story of Anvil, but to tell other aspiring artists out there, rock band or no, that if you have a dream pursuing music and you have the means, go. Don't wait for anyone's approval, don't let cold feet stop you, don't look back from the path you have set before yourself. Both Lips and Reiner are both in their 50s in the film and are still trying to make things work. 

There's more to this film than meets the eye. Of course, it's a "rockumentary," but it's so much more than that. It's more or less a documented journey of a band, well in their 50s, to finally get the recognition they deserve. I believe this film accomplishes just that, as I plan to listen to Anvil's albums with fresh ears, with the knowledge of the struggles they went through just to record 13 songs, because I know they damn well deserve it.

Any musicians reading this review, I tell you now: 

Take what you have and use it for your future, if you have recordings, pieces written, even if you just have an idea and you've never written music before, save it. Do it. 

You'll learn all you need along the way.

If you care about numerical rating systems:

Ten anvils out of ten.

A Cross the Universe

Don't get the title confused, this isn't the Beatles musical film. This is the documentary of the electronic duo known as Justice. If you haven't heard of them, they're more like a hardcore sounding version of Daft Punk. If you haven't heard of them, then you wouldn't be reading this blog.

Onto the film, or rather documentary: it can be said (and it probably has) that this film doesn't function as a documentary in its traditional sense, but more like a journal that accompanies the band's journey across America. Perhaps it's important to mention here that Justice, or the members, rather, are very, very French. 

The two members names are Gaspard and Xavier and are (or were) touring across North America, starting at the east coast, driving through Canada, and down the west coast for the ending of their tour. These two, beside having almost no knowledge of the English language, are completely and totally awkward. A lot of the film is quite humorous, since in the beginning, Gaspard and Xavier are new to the US and Canada and do a lot of weird and funny things that we (and/or citizens) don't usually do in our own country, such as waiting for the driver to fix a blown tire by laying in the grass across the highway.

Gaspard from Justice (Center) relaxes after a show.

As the film progresses, the events become both harder and harder to believe, and also easier and easier to believe, but nonetheless progressively intensely crazier. Some of the events hinge on Gaspard and Xavier's bodyguard being obsessed with guns, acquiring one through the mail and carrying it with him wherever they go (which got him into trouble once). 

At one point he commented that, much like the way people wear bracelets, he decides to 'wear' his gun, which generally means him holding it in his hand at all times, just in case that when it comes down to it, it's right there and easy to use in a tricky situation.

Since the band is touring, some footage shows their performances in certain venues, but not for whole songs or concerts. Rather, footage of concerts only really exist in the film to both remind us that Gaspard and Xavier are musicians, and show us any interesting things that happen before, during or after performances. Normally for musicians (or how we think it is normally for them), it's the performances and concerts that contain the meat of their experiences, but as this film outlines, and possibly argues, it is the travelling itself that artists love to experience, whereas the performances are more or less monotonous to them. 

By focusing on the travelling aspect, we get to know the artist a lot better than just hearing them play. 

And in this case, in the case of Justice, you might not like what you find.

If you care about numerical rating systems:

Nine crosses out of ten.

2001: A Space Odyssey

So this was a great first film to watch in my pursuit of maintaining this blog.

As most of a lot of people may have heard, or know, or even agree (or even disagree!) with this, that 2001: A Space Odyssey has been called one of the finest, if not greatest, film ever made.

Now let's take a step back for a bit. If it's been called the greatest film ever, then why is it so enigmatic and vague on basically every concept the film puts forth? Well, the film has a very dramatic quality to it, no one can disagree here, which makes the themes so much more prominent in the foreground. In the beginning, for example, take The Dawn of Man.

The mysterious monolith appears.

The lack of dialogue makes us pay attention (which is very important for the rest of the film that we do so)to the actions of the apes and how they react to the Monolith. The very first theme is quite clear: the knowledge of using tools, as the use of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra helps to identify the importance of this theme, especially since the piece is used only when a greatly important event takes place, i.e., the aligning of the planets and the birth of the Star Child (no, not from KISS, but we'll get there later).

The reason why the knowledge of the use of tools is so important is because, well, think about it. When have you not needed a tool to do something every day in your life? I can't write this blog without a computing device of some sort, and you can't read it without one either.

This is how we evolved from using bones as weapons to computers as communicative devices/tools. The film even illustrates this point by showing a working astrophysicist calling his daughter from a space station (mind you, his daughter is on Earth) to wish her a happy birthday. And if you think about it, it's not too impossible for this to actually happen, what with the rise of video calling from great distances, and an International Space Station already in place.

Moving on, it seems like the themes for this film get harder and harder to identify, as it should, because all that we do as societies, as human beings, is use tools to survive. We have organisations that are set up to grow, pick and create food that we need to stay alive, technology that has allowed us to create homes, houses and apartment complexes, so that we can live comfortably. All that 2001 clearly illustrates.

So far, this film isn't even about space or extraterrestrial life. It's about us, human beings, and how we live. Do we live in fear of a greater, higher power? Or in optimism that there are beings out there that can understand our dilemmas and help ease our pain? Or even in complete denial that there is any help, that we're all in Hell, with nothing to do but work all day for the Devil and keep to yourself? All these thoughts and fears lie dormant or actively in everyone's minds, and is outlined in the film.

As we meet the crew of the Jupiter Mission, we see a new set of tools: a spaceship, of course, but what else? A HAL 9000 series CPU operator. He is essentially responsible for both piloting the ship and making sure everyone stays alive on their journey. HAL seems quite smug in his ability to do all this, that he starts to take advantage of his skills, as he is programmed to seem more human. He tells the crew that the satellite dish will fail in 72 hours if it is not fixed. So they fix it before it fails and take a look at the circuitry. They find nothing has gone wrong.

The HAL 9000 series is supposed to be completely and totally infallible and correct 100% of the time. The crew talk it over and decide to put the tool back in the satellite dish and see if it fails. If it doesn't, they will disconnect HAL. HAL finds out and plots to murder whoever goes out to change the part, prompting David, the only remaining awake crew member, to leave the ship to save his crew member hurtling in space without oxygen.

This is the first real, dangerous use of tools that humankind might be heading towards: the use of tools that can think for themselves. Everyone who knows the story fears it: the moment machines become sentient and self-aware, is the moment that we have a potential common enemy on our hands as human beings. If this doesn't sound familiar to you, look around, it's everywhere. James Cameron mentions it a lot in Terminator (and some of the installments), if you've seen I, Robot, its in there too (as well as the original Isaac Asimov novel, he wrote the Three Laws of Robotics, stating what robots can and cannot do.

But when a robot, or mechanical device of some sort, achieves sentience, these rules in and of themselves do not apply. Once there is independent thought, there is genuine life.

Moving on from that perspective, it is clear that HAL has indeed become sentient since he refuses David entry into the ship after he retrieves his dead crew member. As a side, HAL has already killed those crew members in hibernation while Dave left the ship. David finds a way into the ship and proceeds to shut HAL down, while HAL attempts to persuade David to stop, as a human would plead for his life at the hands of death.

David Bowman staring into the eye of HAL-9000.

HAL is successfully shut down, and David reaches Jupiter space immediately after. A video is played to tell the crew exactly why they were brought to Jupiter in the first place: there is indeed other intelligent life out there, and they have left clues in the form of monoliths buried in the Earth's moon and the Earth itself. Nonetheless, David is intrigued. He takes a pod out to investigate and sees a monolith floating in space. Is this the life form that mankind has been pursuing, or merely a vessel, another tool?

The monolith seems to beckon David to follow it to Jupiter, as David experiences a lot of strange feelings, as the psychedelic portion of the film takes over. Is David travelling through a wormhole, or through time? Both? Either way, David is extremely disoriented as he arrives where the monolith takes him: to a place that looks oddly like a home made especially for David. He sees himself out side of the pod, in his space suit, looking a bit older. The pod then disappears and the David staring at the pod becomes the present David, as he now sees a future version of himself, eating dinner in the next room. The same thing happens: David sees himself in the future, the future David sees him, and they transfer into each other. 

The only explanation for this happening is that David is experiencing his timeline all at once, instead of how we perceive it to be a straight line of gradual change. David then sees himself in bed, much, much older, and dying.

From the standpoint of the final stage of David's life, he sees the monolith that lead him here from the Jupiter mission space ship. Then, suddenly David is replaced with a floating embryo. This shouldn't be too shocking, since the design of the Jupiter ship, as it has quite a bit of screen time, is modeled after a sperm cell. This is the underlying theme of life in its simplest form. Thus the monolith has helped David to be reborn, as he, the Star Child, as he is called in the novel, floats in space across from Earth, gazing at it as he lives again.

With both these themes circulating the film (the use of tools and the importance of life, the belief of rebirth and intelligent life), it is about the evolution of the human race, and where we're going, not just with technology, but with how we live our lives.

As enigmatic as the ending is, it's also a point for the audience to take over where the film left off, with ideas about the future: what do we want to become real in the future? How do we want to communicate? Do we want to choose for ourselves, or just leave everything to the 'higher power?' It's a film that embodies some of the greatest questions that the human race has thought about: why are we here, is there any other life out there, and how can we be better? 

2001: A Space Odyssey outlines some very excellent points of where to start answering these questions. And as for the future, it is extremely ambiguous, mysterious and unitelligible, much like the ending for the film itself.

I very much agree that this is one of the finest films ever made.

If you care about numerical rating systems:

Ten monoliths out of ten.