Apocolypse Now essays

Apocolypse Now essays Many film critics and movie goers alike say that Apocalypse Now is one of the best movies ever made due to its originality and trend-setting approach to cinema. The viewer, in the very first scene of this Francis Ford Coppola sensation, can see this. As most movies begin, the viewer is generally introduced to the cast and the production team that was involved in the film by way of credits or a title screen of some form. In Apocalypse Now however, The title of the film appears as graffiti toward the end of the film in the complex presided over by Kurtz. Instead of an orthodox opening scene, Ford Coppola provides a lyrical, slow moving opening sequence that is a combination of cinematography, music and hallucinatory images from the brutal war in Vietnam. As the movie begins, the scene fades in from black to a darkened daylight or dusk period in a green-canopied jungle of palm trees that are swaying in the wind tranquil wind. There is a sound bridge, which starts as the screen is black and continues through the fading transition to place the impending helicopter sounds now in the middle of this Vietnam jungle. The (chuk-chuk-chuk) sounds of the helicopter are the only diegetic sounds that the viewer encounters in this scene however the most prominent sound is in fact non-diegetic and comes in the form of The Doors song The End. The first cymbal of this song is played as soon as a darkly painted helicopter flies low to the ground from the left hand side of the screen to the right and in between the viewer and the jungle. This creates the effect that a long shot is happening during the time the helicopter is passing. The passing of the helicopter signals the playing of the song and a yellowish haze is cast around the area, presumably napalm that had just been dropped. Ford Coppola begins his movie with this apocalyptic song, only to make the viewer wonder if what is in store lies after the end as the song sugg...