Two War Movies: DVD reviews
I feel like I need to apologize for it, but I just didn't like "Apocalypse Now Redux". I know I've seen "Apocalypse Now" before because I recognized scenes, and I don't remember thinking the film was bad, and I still don't think the film was bad, but something bothers me about it now, redux or otherwise.

I think it was the use of the Vietnam War as a foil to tell this tale, this journey into the heart of man's darkness. One review headline considers the movie the greatest Vietnam War movie of all time. That bothers me because it's not a Vietnam War movie, it's decidedly not about the Vietnam war. In fact, the source book, The Heart of Darkness, is apparently set in Africa.

The Vietnam War is still so explosive and fresh in memory, that its use in this movie merely as a foil feels cheap. It's important for Vietnam War movies to say something about the actual war - what happened, what was it like, what were we doing there, or why it was such a controversial, heart-wrenching conflict. Arguing that the story's thesis of man's inhumanity makes the Vietnam War the perfect backdrop for the film is wasted on me, because the connections are just in principle. Nothing in the film makes the connection between the meaning of the story and the Vietnam War.

And the end sequence was just offensive - neither Vietnamese or Cambodians are savages in the jungle, wearing loincloths and using spears and arrows as weapons (a holdover from the book?). I don't care if the intent was to remove all vestiges of the Vietnam War for that sequence, which plays out almost as a fantasy through a mythic haze. There are apparently reviewers thinking that it is still set in the Vietnam War.

I can go on, I can even mention a lot of good things about the movie, but I'd rather rave about "Das Boot". If someone called it the greatest World War II movie of all time, I would probably agree (not being a connesiuer connesseur connesewer an expert on war movies). It's also one of the greatest anti-war movies of all time.

It's almost three and a half hours long and occupies two sides of the DVD. I thought I'd watch side one first, and then watch side two later, but at the end of side one, I flipped it over and watched the rest of it. The movie creates such a tension and momentum that there was no good place to turn it off (unless war dramas bore you).

It must have been intentional that not a single Nazi swastika is shown in the movie (there's a flag on the submarine when it's sailing out and into port, but it's furled so you never see the swastika). I haven't read anywhere that it was intentional, but it could be that it's just obvious, as well as the intent, which would be to focus the film on the human dimension, and to separate the subjects from the Nazi party.