“He could have gone for general, but he went for himself instead” – Captain Willard on Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW
Few movies were made about the Vietnam War as it was happening. If one’s impression of American History relied solely on movies between 1965 and 1973, one would hardly realize that the US was involved in a war in Southeast Asia. The big exception was, of course, THE GREEN BERETS, but its box office success was actually a sign of its indifference to the reality abroad and at home. (The Oscar winner HEARTS AND MINDS was a documentary and came out in 1974 after America’s official disengagement.) With no end in sight to the war, a certain segment of the American public flocked to theaters for old-fashioned assurances that Americans are the perennial good guys, welcomed by the grateful Vietnamese fearful of communist tyranny, and unbeatable as warriors led by none other than John Wayne himself(who wouldn’t even have to die like in THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA). In other words, it was a throwback to a ‘simpler’ time when the great majority of Americans was sold on the myth of the Good War.
Surely, no one went to see Wayne’s movie as any kind of reflection of reality; if anything, the audience willfully engaged in the escapism of outdated patriotic glory, the redoubt of those hard-pressed in coming to terms with shifting realities not only abroad but at home. Despite the box office rally, the movie was so bad that it soon became an embarrassment. Even gung ho and Boy Scout types it drew to the theaters could barely convince themselves that the Duke presented anything resembling the situation in the jungles of Vietnam or any viable strategy for victory. There was an obligatory air about it, the kind of emotions usually associated with propaganda and/or ‘narratives’. (There is, of course, the good of its kind, such as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA.) Had the US prevailed in Vietnam, John Wayne’s movie might have retained, at a bare minimum, historic value as effective propaganda that contributed to the victory, but the US withdrawal has rendered it a political as well as artistic dud.
Not that John Wayne was culturally irrelevant during the Vietnam era. In a paradoxical way, his growing anachronism made him even more appreciated in certain circles, i.e. with so much changing so fast, many people(even young ones) looked to John Wayne as a steadfast icon of the American Essence.
Even if THE GREEN BERETS has been thoroughly forgotten, a good number of John Wayne movies from the era are remembered with fondness, not least TRUE GRIT for which he was awarded the Oscar for ‘Best Actor’.
Furthermore, the emerging generation of cineastes, as film-makers and/or film critics, found themselves somewhat at odds with the Counterculture saturated in radical politics, hippie values, and sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll. Having grown up on a steady diet of John Ford and Howard Hawks reruns on TV, they didn’t necessarily view figures like John Wayne as outmoded has-beens but as reiterations of timeless heroic tropes.
The sensibility owed something to the French critical school of Cahier du Cinema, one that argued that the great Hollywood directors were no less personal artists than the giants of European cinema in which the imprimatur of Art was more obvious. Look past the crowd-pleasing conventions of Hollywood in the works of the best American directors(as ‘auteurs’) and one could discern styles as subtle and sophisticated, the mastery of medium as original and ingenious, and meanings as deep and multi-layered as anything by the best of the European(and Japanese) masters. John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS(along with Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO) was perhaps the biggest beneficiary of this sensibility. Not only could the boomer Movie Brats indulge in the favorites of their childhood but validate them via the intellectual pedigree of French theory.
Oddly, the war films that resonated the most during the Vietnam War Era were set in other wars. Perhaps, a certain historical distance lent wider latitude in addressing/discussing the themes of war(applicable to the ongoing conflict in Vietnam) without stirring up controversy. For pro-war types, nothing could beat PATTON, which opens with the general boasting that Americans never lost a war and hate the very idea of losing. (It was reportedly Richard Nixon’s favorite movie.) For anti-war types, there was Robert Altman and Ring Lardner’s M*A*S*H, set in the Korean War but ostensibly a commentary(with Counterculture overtones) on America’s foibles in Vietnam. Less successful but still potent was Mike Nichol’s eagerly awaited follow-up to THE GRADUATE, the adaptation of Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22, a film made with a budget bigger than PATTON’s but with a sensibility closer to Altman’s film(and Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE). Whether set during World War II or the Korean War, the audience sensed that the movies, inadvertently or intentionally, had something to say about the Vietnam experience. (Closer to our time, Zach Snyder’s 300 was clearly mounted as a piece of Neocon war porn to inspire young white lads to sign up for the Marine Corp. to fight them ‘Muzzies’, despite the historical setting being nearly a millennium prior to Islam.)
By and large, American Cinema began to address the Vietnam War in a forthright manner only several years after the US withdrawal, especially with the 1978 releases of THE BOYS OF COMPANY C, GO TELL THE SPARTANS, WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN, COMING HOME, and THE DEER HUNTER, followed by APOCALYPSE NOW the next year. It was as if the dam burst, with the once problematic(if not taboo) subject finally out in the open, winning at the box office, garnering the Oscars(especially for COMING HOME and THE DEER HUNTER), and dominating the cultural discourse.
Earlier, Paul Schrader wrote two screenplays with Vietnam veterans as lead characters, TAXI DRIVER and ROLLING THUNDER, but neither directly dealt with the war. In the case of Travis Bickle(TAXI DRIVER), the war experience is probably incidental as his mental issues seem more biographical(or psychological) than traumatic(or medically related to combat); he likely had issues from childhood.
In contrast, the actions of the brooding (anti)hero in ROLLING THUNDER can’t be understood apart from his Vietnam trauma(as a P.O.W. who underwent torture); indeed, his personal battle back home against a band of outlaws(who mangled his hand and murdered his ex-wife and son) seems emotionally a continuation of the unfinished business in the jungles of Asia, with the irony that the enemies at home seem worse than those abroad who, like the hero, were fighting for a sense of ‘home’ against outside marauders(which would be the US military in the case of Vietnam).
Still, it’s instructive that, of the five notable Vietnam-themed films of 1978, only GO TELL THE SPARTANS was primarily focused on the issues of combat(though, actually shot in the US on a shoe-string budget, it comes off as stagy). Weak on production values, it was nevertheless notable as a morality tale of America’s conundrum of growing distrust between the Americans and the locals and among the Americans themselves with rifts forming over idealism and cynicism, honor and pragmatism. Ultimately, it isn’t about whether the war was justified or not but about the nobility of living up to one’s word even in the face of doom, and as such a tribute to the soldiers who did in contravention of their country that didn’t.
THE DEER HUNTER, shot in Southeast Asia(Thailand-as-Vietnam) with impressive production values, looks authentic enough, but its centerpiece with the Viet Cong playing Russian roulette with American P.O.W’s is about as fantastical as it gets(about on the level of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE), though, so visceral in impact that it had critics and audience alike suspending disbelief as to its historical veracity — maybe the Israel government should have made a mock-documentary about the ‘forty beheaded babies'(and maybe it did for Joe Biden who claimed to have seen the footage). Still, the bulk of the movie is less about Vietnam than its imprint on ethnic working class pals in a Pennsylvania steel town.
As for THE BOYS OF COMPANY C, it’s essentially a disaffected-with-authority youth movie, more about young guys who happen to find themselves in a war than about war itself. As such, its spirit is closer to THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH or THE WANDERERS(directed by Philip Kaufman) than to a typical war movie. Its idea of ‘survival’ is less about making out alive in one piece than about coping with The Man who be robbin’ you of your freedom and shit(in the manner of THE LONGEST YARD with Burt Reynolds).
WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN, like COMING HOME and ROLLING THUNDER, is about how the degradations of war spilled over into the home front(and vice versa as both worlds seem rife with corruption and cynicism, especially in relation to narcotics).
If some of these films share a common feature with APOCALYPSE NOW, it’s a sense of the personal or private war, inseparable from the war-at-large but disassociated somehow, perhaps due to the unprecedented fracturing of national unity and generational distrust. With all the bewildering social changes and political shifts at home, sometimes expressed through hostility toward American soldiers rebuked as war criminals than patriots and heroes, there was no guarantee that home felt like home.
If stories on World War II(or the ‘Good War’) tended to emphasize camaraderie, a general consensus, and shared sacrifices of the home-front and the war-front in the attainment of final victory, the ‘defeat’ in Vietnam meant it was up to every soldier to find his own separate peace through a personalized interpretation of the war.
As different as the ‘anti-war’ hero(Ray Hicks played by Nick Nolte) of WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN and the ‘pro-war’ prophet(in the figure of Colonel Kurtz) of APOCALYPSE NOW are, they both carve out a private war from the corporate war, one in which they get to call the shots as independent actors.
APOCALYPSE NOW is probably the most famous and most acclaimed of all the Vietnam War films. Though eclipsed at times by other works, especially RAMBO, PLATOON, and FULL METAL JACKET, it has steadily re-emerged as the most definitive Vietnam War film(or war film of any kind). Its reputation is both well-deserved and misguided. It not only has scenes of unparalleled sublimity but holds legendary status as the last stand of ‘New Hollywood’, of which Coppola was one of the standard-bearers.
During the prolonged production, there were mounting reports that Coppola had finally gone off his rocker, a victim of his own self indulgence bordering on megalomania. Besides, most of New Hollywood had faded by the latter half of the seventies, with Steven Spielberg’s JAWS and George Lucas’ STAR WARS having redefined the era. (Meanwhile, William Friedkin’s own vanity project in the jungle, THE SORCERER, turned out to be one of the biggest busts of the decade.) So, what was Coppola thinking by testing the limits of his own sanity, the entire crew’s patience, and the finances of all involved with what seemed like a project gone off the wheels. As it happened, the results were a mixed bag, soaring to new cinematic heights but sinking like a stone at the end. Given its fatal flaws, one would have expected the film to be remembered as a great mess, noble failure, or at best a mangled masterpiece. But among generations of film critics/scholars and filmmakers since the re-appraisal upon its re-release(as the enlarged REDUX version), its reputation has risen ever higher. Are they blind to its failings or better adept at overlooking them in favor of its many virtues, mostly in the first hour?
Despite the legendary stature of APOCALYPSE NOW, only three films were accurate in their depictions of the Vietnam experience right: Oliver Stone’s PLATOON, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, and HEAVEN & EARTH. One might add HAMBURGER HILL in its daily details of grueling combat. Stone’s edge over other directors was his tour of duty, the thrill and trauma of which cut him to the bone. Granted, it’s hardly guaranteed that experience translates into narrative, as artistic talent is a rare gift requiring innate, along with learned, talent and considerable empathy(which most people lack). (Spielberg’s depiction of violence in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is proof enough that great talent, despite lack of combat experience, can make believers out of the audience through sheer ingenuity and intuition.) Lucky for cinema, Stone not only volunteered for service but had artistic aspirations and took keen mental notes of everything for future reference were he ever to sit with a pen and/or stand behind the camera. Because Stone’s PLATOON seemed to correct the record, not only vis-a-via nonsense like RAMBO but serious efforts like THE DEER HUNTER and APOCALYPSE NOW, it stood for a time as the definitive statement, the gold standard, among Vietnam War films. However, it’s not unusual for ‘topical’ works to recede eventually in relation to more mythically resonant ones, and today APOCALYPSE NOW and FULL METAL JACKET remain the most respected among films set in Vietnam.
Granted, not all movies obtain longer shelf lives due to artistic merit or deep meaning. Some just push the right buttons and gain either cult status or popular appeal. Two such movies are FIRST BLOOD and RED DAWN. The former has a Vietnam vet as its hero, and the latter, while not about the Vietnam War per se, would be inconceivable without it as historical reference.
Both, especially RED DAWN, were deemed ‘revisionist’, capitalizing on the neo-patriotic mood of the first years of the Reagan Era when the Cold War once again took center stage, even though, on that note, RED DAWN has more in common with RAMBO, the utterly braindead sequel to FIRST BLOOD. Stallone later emerged as one of the ‘conservative’ figures in Hollywood, along with Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, Gary Sinise, Robert Duvall, and etc. As for John Milius, the fabulist of RED DAWN, he once portrayed himself as a ‘Zen Fascist’, a strange fusion of Counterculture nonconformity and imperialist militarist ethos, perhaps a Frankenstein combo of Robert Heinlein and Ken Kesey.
Milius, more than most supposed ‘right-wing‘ types in the movie industry, had a deeper understanding of history and something approaching a philosophical perspective, and in this, he stood out along with Oliver Stone as a Man of Ideas(than merely political attitudes or positions). Still, the pop gung-ho side of Milius has largely prevented him from developing into a full-fledged artist. For all his prodigious talents, like Ayn Rand, when push comes to shove, he will go with the fantasy(and fatuously lean on familiar tropes) than dig deeper for truth. The one time the two men collaborated(on CONAN THE BARBARIAN), Stone delved into the hero’s vulnerabilities while Milius stressed his strengths. (Given its comic book origins, perhaps Milius’ instinct was more suited for the material.)
While FIRST BLOOD and RED DAWN are hardly masterpieces(and could even be dismissed as ridiculous and stupid), they nevertheless stood out(and stood the test of time) as more ambiguous and multi-layered than one might have expected. In a way, FIRST BLOOD was the last of Stallone’s grittier roles with tone and texture tracing back to the New Hollywood of the 1970s. At his savviest, Stallone was adept at balancing the on-the-street naturalism(that characterized films like THE FRENCH CONNECTION and MEAN STREETS) with fairy-tale qualities appealing to the masses. His first triumph, ROCKY, thus borrowed dirt from New Hollywood of the early Seventies for the Cinderella seed, whose blossom would characterize the rest of the decade. The scenario of ROCKY would have been laughed off by anyone even faintly knowledgeable of boxing — a local yokel with a dubious record has zero chance of getting a shot at the championship title — , but Stallone’s vivid storytelling and engaging performance made it believable enough, especially as its focus was about earning self-respect than winning the match, an outlandish feat given Rocky’s race.
While the character of John Rambo is far more formidable as a soldier than Rocky is as a boxer(at least in the first movie as he eventually transforms into the baddest boxer on Earth in parts III and IV), he is far from the super-soldier he becomes in RAMBO(or FIRST BLOOD PART 2). Also, as with ROCKY, the central conflict of FIRST BLOOD is about self-respect and dignity than the thrill of mowing down countless baddies and grandstanding about patriotism(of good ole USA blowing up half the world).
The progression(or regression) of Rocky and Rambo into ever more cartoonish caricatures anticipated and amplified the emergence of mindless conservatism or right-wing politics in the US, culminating in the presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Things got so dumb in ‘right-wing’ entertainment that it was no surprise that the later run of action movies to capture Zeitgeist were associated with the ‘left’, e.g. the MATRIX and BOURNE trilogies. (But then, with the advent of Obama’s presidency, deep state shenanigans and militarist ventures were in vogue again among the so-called ‘progressives’ eager to have countries bombed and destroyed to make way for GloboHomo.) If ‘right-wing’ fantasies had simpleminded heroes baring their muscles and blowing up everything in sight, the ‘left-wing’ counterparts presented cerebral types relying more on wit and skill sets than the usual heaps of ammo and explosives. Also, there was the idea of challenging the establishment(thus making the ‘lefty’ audience feel smarter and more critically minded) than unquestioningly fighting for guts and glory(like trained dogs of the right).
Granted, there’s long been an anti-establishment streak in ‘right-wing’ circles(especially as modernity favors liberalism and change over tradition and reaction), but the usual gripe is that the powers-that-be aren’t tough and ruthless enough, or unwilling to go all the way(as Nick Fuentes characterizes the Trumpian weaklings who lack the spine to crush the ‘left’). Pete Hegseth exemplifies such an attitude in his formulation of ‘maximum lethality’ over ‘tepid legality’. In other words, don’t ask questions as to WHY the US must fight these wars; just be a good soldier doing as told in massacring the enemy, apparently even school girls, without remorse.
Rambo came with anti-establishment cred, but his beef with the government was that it hadn’t gone far enough to win, win, win. While American Liberals could be deluded and naive in their own ways, the American Right’s answer, at least in the realm of popular fantasy, was to reach for bigger guns to blow things up to kingdom come.
In a marketing ploy of one-upmanship, the movie PATTON was promoted as a story of a rebel and maverick(either as mockery of or sop to the Counterculture), but then in defiance of what? The great general thought the US military didn’t go far enough(like rebuilding the defeated Wehrmacht to take on the commie Russkies).
Ironically, World War II, as the Good War, propagated justifications for the darker and more disturbing aspects of the American mythos. Because the enemies of that war were deemed so irredeemably evil and monstrous, the idea was that anything done by the (Western)Allies was justified one way or another, even the indiscriminate bombings of civilians, dropping of the atomic bombs, widespread atrocities, and wholesale displacement of around 15 million German folks. Even if we accept the rationalizations of the Good War at face value — and plenty of people still do as evinced in the outrage over Tucker Carlson’s remark that the nuking of Japan was unconscionable — , there’s the tendency of every conflict on the horizon(chosen invariably by Jewish supremacist oligarchs) being Good-War-ized, i.e. the prospective enemy is the ‘New Nazis’. It’s come to the point where the Jews/Zionists(who now harbor an ideology uncannily similar to Nazism) invoke Dresden and Hiroshima to justify what they did to Gaza, utterly lacking in self-awareness that Nazi-like Israel is the one that deserves such a treatment, at least according to the Good-War-logic.
And even though the US and Israel executed two sneak attacks on Iran, actions even less justified than Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor(which, however reckless, was an act of desperation), the Zionic powers-that-be would have us believe it’s World War II or the Good War all over again, with the ‘good guys’ of the West at war with the ‘New Nazis’ of Iran as the ‘biggest sponsors of terror’, a phrase surely cooked up by the usual suspects at AIPAC.
The right-wing appeal of the DIRTY HARRY franchise was also the call for unrestrained firepower, albeit in America itself amidst rising crime, even though the worst of the baddies invariably turned out to be crazed white guys doing the bulk of the kidnapping, torturing, raping, and terrorizing; the supposedly ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’ overtones were further tempered with a bit of diversity and feminism, with nonwhites or women as Harry Callahan’s sidekicks, and with the vilification of the overtly vigilante cops in MAGNUM FORCE. (As with most franchises, only the first flick had artistic value.)
The success of DIRTY HARRY led some culture critics to pontificate that it(and its ilk such as DEATH WISH) peddled a kind of populist fascism, but it was more like a resurrection of the Wild West myth. After all, the focal point of political/historical fascism wasn’t about fighting crime — even though Mussolini was pretty effective against organized crime, which was later revived under US occupation — but about combating radical leftism(as well as sidelining reactionary traditionalism as stodgy and stultifying), whereas the problems of America in the late Sixties/Seventies resulted from street crime, mostly by blacks.
Within the larger context, the message of movies like DIRTY HARRY was that civilization was slipping away, with social order reverting to the outlaw ways of the Old West, leaving decent folks no choice but to rely on the modern day equivalents of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickok. Indeed, a striking feature of Harry Callahan is the absence of ideology or political vision. Like the sheriffs of the Old West, he just wants a freer hand to deal with the varmints regardless of race, creed, or color.
That idea, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem as plenty of left-leaning folks rooted for the eponymous hero of BILLY JACK who took the law into his own hands to fight small town baddies(like in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, another Liberal favorite). When have ‘progressive’-types protested movies where blacks, radical elements, or supposed anti-establishment types circumvented or outright violated unjust laws or oppressive power and took extra-legal measures to set the world straight? Lindsay Anderson’s IF… and Melvin Van Peebles SWEET SWEETBACK’S BADASS SONG had plenty of defenders among the Radical Chic crowd.
Then, the problem wasn’t Callahan’s colorblind approach to justice but the fact that urban blight was mostly a product of black criminality. A truly honest movie about even the most ‘anti-racist’ and colorblind cop doing his duty to clean up the streets would feature him accosting, arresting, beating, shooting, and being shot at by blacks. Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER was more honest than most in depicting the black nature of urban violence and decay, but even they pulled their punches by featuring white pimps than black ones(who dominated the business at the time).
FIRST BLOOD, like ROCKY, is a movie that sits on the fence. Clearly, there was a racial aspect to ROCKY. The name itself evoked the memory of Rocky Marciano, the last great white heavyweight champion and undefeated too. But lest the movie be pigeonholed as a Great White Hope fantasy, Stallone cleverly defused the racial angle by emphasizing the element of personal respect, i.e. what really matters to Rocky is going the distance in the ring as self-validation than the pie-in-the-sky dream of defeating the black champion. Thus, the racial fantasy was sold as a personal odyssey, and in the bicentennial year of 1976, it worked like a charm(and hardly offended anybody).
Likewise, FIRST BLOOD panders to a range of ideological perspectives and could be construed as leftist or rightist or both or neither. This was less a result of genuine complexity, thoughtful ambiguity, or keen sense of irony than of cold calculation taking turns with muddled confusion. Like Walter Hill’s SOUTHERN COMFORT, it isn’t an easy film to summarize politically, and, as such, stands in stark contrast with its unequivocally and cartoonishly ‘right-wing’ sequels.
Movies are more likely to be out-of-time or multi-time than most other arts. A writer can immediately work on his literary idea, a composer can instantly work on his song(s), and a painter can just sit down to paint. But given the vagaries of the production involved in film development-to-production, it could take years, even decades, for a movie idea to come to fruition. Think of Sergio Leone who had a gangster epic in mind after THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, but the project wasn’t realized until 1984. There have been innumerable similar cases in film history, with the original idea and then its second, third, fourth, and etc. revamping falling by the wayside as various artists grew older, lost interest, or got pulled into other projects.
The lag between conception and execution could be a plus or a minus. It could mean more time to mull things over, expand on the idea, add new perspectives, and revise/improve things. But, it could also mean staleness, datedness(especially if the subject is topical), lack of clarity(especially if rewritten over and over), and diminished enthusiasm.
FIRST BLOOD had a prolonged gestation period as it first appeared as a novel in 1972 when the US was still directly involved in Vietnam. Had the movie been made in the 1970s with different actors and crew, who knows what it would have been like? When it finally saw the light of day in 1982, it had clearly become a Sylvester Stallone vehicle, albeit retaining some of the misfit vibes of an earlier era. (Starting with the sequel RAMBO, there was only star power left.) Stallone became most famous for his two roles, Rocky and Rambo, each the basis of an extended series of sequels, now called a ‘franchise’.
Initially, following the spectacular success of ROCKY, Stallone tried to broaden his range and appeal, but he soon realized he could rise as a star or sink like a stone(with nothing in between); and so, he found himself returning to the ring(as Rocky) or the war zone(as Rambo).
Such pigeonholing of actors, a commonplace in Hollywood, had had a deleterious effect in punishing experimentation and curiosity by rewarding cliche-driven formulas. It’s no wonder George Lucas hardly did anything other than STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES despite his beginnings as an avant-garde film-maker. On the other hand, there is a salutary effect as well given that most entertainers aren’t multi-faceted or possessed of range(or depth). For example, if you’re Milla Jovovich, better to stick to ‘action babe’ flicks than ‘serious’ roles. Kristen Stewart, a limited talent at best, flushed away the best part of her career by going for gravitas she simply lacked as a screen presence. And how comical that the members of the Monkees began to take themselves ‘seriously’.
Competing claims define an individual, at times intensified by socio-cultural crises afoot. Changes in the Sixties were heralded as revolutionary, profoundly altering the way people thought, felt, and lived. There were constant declarations of ‘liberation’ and espousals of more ‘authentic’ and personalized approaches to life(ironically within a more cultist or collectivist mindset).
The creatively inclined were naturally more affected by these changes as they thrived on freedom of expression and (self)exploration(sometimes involving drugs). The world of entertainment, once distinct from the domain of art and serious thought, was no less influenced by the new sensibility, with a new generation rebelling against not only time-worn industry formulas but the ideal that art, high or modern, must remain in its own rarefied realm of intellectualism and/or seriousness. Quintessential of the new attitude was Bob Dylan who pilfered everything, old and new, high and low, to forge a unique expression that played fast and loose but also personal-and-eccentric with whatever that caught his fancy. And, there were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, initially straight-up Pop or Rock n Roll bands but evolving in style & range and expanding the boundaries of what constituted youth music. Such shifts in the cultural sensibility were paradigmatic, reconstituting the very idea of what a music star could be. A telling moment was when the members of the Monkees fumed when offered the tune, “Sugar, Sugar” because it wasn’t substantive enough for them. A bunch of semi- and non-musicians assembled to parody the Beatles on TV, and even they began to demand ‘respect'(like Fredo in THE GODFATHER PART II). The problem, of course, wasn’t that the likes of Dylan, Pink Floyd, the Who, the Stones, and etc. had the qualifications to push farther. Rather, even those less inclined or unfit to be personal artists adopted the fashion, usually with dire results. And then, there were those who were content to craft pop tunes but were underrated or dismissed as fluffs or sell-outs, explaining why punk bands got more respect than ABBA from the Rock critics of the Seventies. If time is the best judge, the verdict is in favor of ABBA.
Cinema followed trends similar to those in music. The ideal of New Hollywood was to break with the old rules, reject formula in favor of authenticity. Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS(a financially less successful variation on AMERICAN GRAFFITI by George Lucas) captured the moment. In the film, a small-time hoodlum is also a devout Catholic(or so he thinks), and his ‘spiritual’ quest is sought existentially in the streets, the directness of experience, than from well-entrenched church dogma and authority.
That said, despite bold attempts to mold a new kind of cinema from scratch, owing little to the history of cinema(except the art house European), the defining works of New Hollywood, far from rejecting established genres, chose to reformulate, reimagine, and reconceptualize them. Audiences prefer some measure of familiarity, aka the elements of timeless appeal, yet they don’t want the time-worn cliches, the staleness of style. The trick, then, has been to revamp familiar material with the freshness of personal touch, the basis for the success, commercial and/or critical, of THE FRENCH CONNECTION(crime thriller), THE GODFATHER(gangster film), THE EXORCIST(horror), and CHINATOWN(noir). To an extent, one could make the same case for the mega-successes of JAWS, ROCKY, and STAR WARS, even though they’ve been identified, even excoriated, as distancing themselves from the New Hollywood template. (Undeniably, JAWS, ROCKY, and STAR WARS carried the unmistakable signatures of their unique personalities and, on that note, were very much in the spirit of New Hollywood.)
Rock Music since Bob Dylan proved it could be simultaneously art and pop, and the most successful New Hollywood films followed in that vein, indeed its main distinction from much of European Art Cinema that were far more ‘intellectual’ and commercially viable. (Ingmar Bergman made CRIES AND WHISPERS, an art film with elements of horror, whereas William Friedkin made THE EXORCIST, a horror movie with elements of art.)
Due to the outsized expectations of New Hollywood, many found themselves at a loss to explain what had transpired. And perhaps Sylvester Stallone was more representative of these contradictions. Some of the biggest stars of the 1980s got their start in the decade and became synonymous with its slick aesthetics. Tom Cruise, for instance, emerged as an 80s icon, the persona of which hardly changed over the years. Arnold Schwarzenegger also came into prominence as an Eighties superstar. Others, like Clint Eastwood, gained prominence a full decade before Stallone, but there was consistency in their style and appeal. (There was also a growing sobriety about violence on the part of Eastwood, relatively more reflective among right-leaning filmmakers.) As such, there has been a timeless star quality about Eastwood, with his (anti)heroics, comic or tragic, flowing into one another across the decades.
Stallone stands out in contrast. With ROCKY, he became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, along with fellow Italian-American John Travolta of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE fame. (They would later do a movie together, a sequel to the disco movie, more like a male version of FLASHDANCE.) But in the midst of the Seventies Zeitgeist(emphasizing authenticity) and having struggled as a ‘starving artist’(as opposed to a ‘sell-out’), Stallone’s portrait of Rocky Balboa was humanist and naturalistic, a character who wouldn’t be too out of place in MEAN STREETS. His insistence on playing the hero of his own screenplay hinted at narcissism but also personal attachment to a portrait of a nobody in search of respect. Even though ROCKY II was most unnecessary, it continued in the spirit of the first, i.e. Rocky tries to capitalize on his much celebrated fight to find another line of work, but reality hits him harder than an uppercut as he isn’t qualified for anything but fighting(and maybe breaking thumbs for a local boss). The sequel manages to be both more realistic and more fantastic than the original, detailing the dire and sometimes embarrassing challenges of an athlete who steps away from the game while also laying the groundwork for another match, one in which the Italian Stallion incredibly defeats the Dark Shark. (It also turned out to be prophetic as Stallone himself found little success outside his most iconic action roles.)
Stallone’s movie roles of the 70s were full of heart, exhibiting vulnerability paired with vitality. There was a soulful quality not unlike that of singer-songwriters of the Seventies who emoted on personal wishes and woes. The youthful Stallone appeared to fall on the personal(as opposed to the merely professional or impersonal) side of the cultural and/or generational divide. Supposedly, Old Hollywood was about working within conventions, much like Old Pop was about sticking to formula: Professional but predictable.
But then came the New Music, with everyone from Bob Dylan to the Beatles to Neil Young to David Bowie freely experimenting and evolving, fashioning their own styles and defining their own image. And there was New Hollywood where a new crop of filmmakers, especially the first attendees of film schools, enjoyed greater leeway in subjects and styles, drawing inspiration from just about everything.
Then, it’s no wonder that Stallone in the mid-Seventies, despite an obvious affinity for classic Hollywood, infused his material with the personal element. It was prepared medium-rare, partly raw and bleeding than cooked all the way through.
His Rocky has potential but lacks focus and conviction, as well as the killer instinct. In his current state, he’s no more effective as muscle-for-hire(to a local mafia don) than as a prospect in the boxing circuit. Stallone pushed classic Hollywood ‘Cinderella’ tropes through a workout regimen of Elia-Kazanism, especially of ON THE WATERFRONT(in which Marlon Brando had unwittingly been the spiritual forerunner of the mavericks who would revolutionize cinema in the Seventies.)
Had there been no New Hollywood with its ideal of personalism, Stallone might have eased himself into the industry as just another hunk. But the new mood was pervasive, affecting even someone like Stallone who instinctively preferred the popular to the personal. As a result, ROCKY, like LOVE STORY made six years prior, had the distinction of turning something hoary into something hot, very much of the moment. Thus, Stallone emerged on the scene as something akin to a singer-songwriter, or an actor-writer, for a time one thing he had in common with Woody Allen.
Given Stallone’s cultural link, even if partial, to New Hollywood, his reinvention as an Eighties action star was no mean leap, albeit into the abyss. In contrast, Schwarzenegger’s star rose with new aesthetics of CONAN THE BARBARIAN and THE TERMINATOR, the basis for all that followed. But, how does one square the Stallone of the Eighties with the Stallone of the Seventies, especially in the ROCKY sequels where the Balboa of III and IV has little resemblance to the Balboa of I and II? The transformation was as eye-popping as the once countercultural Jefferson Airplane belting out(as the Starship) “We Built This City”.
Interestingly enough, FIRST BLOOD came out in the same year as ROCKY III, in which Stallone completed Balboa’s transformation from an all-too-human local hero in search of self-respect to an ‘iconic’ super-athlete whose fists could fell just about anything from a hulking blond beast to the toughest and meanest-talking Negro, albeit leavened with pity for fools.
However, even as Stallone was retooling the myth of Rocky Balboa into a mindless cash cow, he was portraying a conflicted angst-ridden Vietnam veteran in FIRST BLOOD, not exactly a complex character study but nevertheless more nuanced than one might have expected. Though several notches below Nick Nolte’s comparable role in WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN, Stallone retained the soulful qualities of his Seventies efforts, the sense of personal autonomy and private life(as opposed to merely serving as commercial property). Perhaps, this owed more to Ted Kotcheff(who proved his mettle with the remarkable WAKE IN FRIGHT) in the director’s seat, as Stallone was Johnny-come-lately to the project. One thing for sure, upon the movie’s surprising success, Stallone turned John Rambo from man to myth, much as he did with Rocky Balboa, and whatever was redeemable about the first film was lost in the lunacy of sequels that got dumb-and-dumber. Just when Stallone was losing his humanist grip on Rocky Balboa, he had a second chance with John Rambo but tossed it aside as well in pursuit of slick and impersonal commercialism.
How does one explain Stallone’s sudden about-face? Was he on steroids that made him see everything as a vanity project? Had he been faking his Seventies persona and been all along a closet-megalomaniac? Was he cynically pandering to Reagan Era neo-patriotism and the reheating of Cold War tensions, jumping on the backlash bandwagon against the Vietnam syndrome(of defeatism and fatalism) that had dogged much of the political debate since the fall of Saigon? One incontestable fact was, the dumber his movies got, the more he earned at the box office, at least until people finally wised up to the idiocy(but then only to seek out new idiocies). ROCKY III was cartoonish and stupid but outperformed parts I and II. The even dumber ROCKY IV was also a big hit. FIRST BLOOD did well, but the retarded RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II really raked it in. Granted, Stallone wasn’t entirely to blame. When he’d attempted varied and challenging roles after ROCKY, he was mostly met with indifference, only to be lavishly rewarded thereafter for some of the dumbest movies ever made. (The success of idiocies such as TOP GUN and PEARL HARBOR doesn’t say much for ‘conservative’ culture in America, but it can be traced back to Stallone’s monstrosities of the early-to-mid-Eighties, mostly ‘roid-charged exultations of mayhem that make the worst of John Wayne movies seem like works of art.)
Thanks in no small part to Sylvester Stallone, American right-wing culture became almost synonymous with reptilian-brained impulses, a blustering expression of volcanic machismo presumed capable of overcoming any obstacle and accomplishing any objective if allowed to do so(i.e. unrestrained by wussy wiberalism). Anything measured and temperate about Stallone’s screen persona faded as the ROCKY and RAMBO sequels grew ever more bombastic. The hyper-optimism had the Italian Stallion accomplishing on the big screen what white boxers failed to do in reality: win the championship by beating the blacks. What about the Soviets eclipsing the US in the Olympic medal count? Don’t you worry because Rocky not only crushed he blacks but demolished the Soviet sports industry in the fourth installment. And the Vietnam War? What the military-industrial-complex and three presidents failed to achieve, Rambo did all by himself by being parachuted back into the jungle, in the process not only laying waste to entire divisions of commie gooks and rescuing American P.O.W.s but taking on the fearsome Soviets well-entrenched in their vassal colony.
Positive thinking and can-do spirit have long been a (beneficial)feature of Americanism, but the Stallone-isms of the Eighties were a cancerous manifestation: hyperbolic, maniacal, rabid, and cartoonish. It was as if Stallone bundled every white male and/or American frustration about race, politics, and world affairs into a flaming ball of pop fantasies, mentally on the level of Pro-Wrestling but with real-world impact.
RAMBO concocted a variation of the stab-in-the-back theory, the idea that Americans were destined to be perennial winners, and the ONLY reason for the failure in Vietnam was that the chickenshit or crypto-commie ruling elites tied the hands of heroes who would have hoisted the victory flag in Hanoi. The problem wasn’t the kernel of truth in such assertions(as the military and the police force have often been hampered by ‘politics’) but the cocksure derangement that there could be no other explanation.
In a way, Stallone’s fantasies overlapped with the assumptions of John Milius whose Cold War ideology, not least in relation to the Vietnam War, held that the US didn’t go far enough in confronting the commies, which would he basis of Milius vision of war as extolled by Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW. But whatever that was semi- or pseudo-thoughtful about Milius was wholly absent in Stallone’s ROCKY sequels III and IV and the RAMBO sequels.
The sheer idiocy of the RAMBO sequels makes FIRST BLOOD seem better than it actually is. How did Stallone go from portraying, with a degree of sensitivity, a sympathetic but disturbed character withholding his trauma to an Adonis of war who can surmount every challenge, endure any pain, and snap back into tiptop form from the latest ordeal? If Rambo of FIRST BLOOD carries the scars of torture suffered under communist captivity, latter-day Rambo of the sequel faces torture like it’s child play or a rougher session of mud therapy. (One wonders if Mel Gibson’s PASSION OF THE CHRIST drew as much from RAMBO as from the New Testament.)
If liberation was the dominant cultural theme of the Sixties — black liberation, youth liberation, women’s liberation, ‘gay’ liberation, and so on — , the 1980s were a time of right-wing liberation, of which Sylvester Stallone was perhaps the biggest poster child. American capitalism, traditionally restrained by the (remnants of) Protestant Work Ethic and New Deal legacy, gave way to the financial nihilism of the Eighties with yuppie materialism that had the approval of the National Review crowd. American militarism, once tempered (at least in officialdom and the popular imagination) by a sense of humanitarian patriotism, gave way to Miliusian-Stallonian call for utterly ruthless Carthaginian mayhem with no room for mercy. And if there was a sense in traditional rightism that, for all the mythos of courage and toughness, a man is a man after all — even John Wayne’s character was felled by a bullet in THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA — , the new militarism propped up the Terminator-like indestructible hero who didn’t even have to duck from bullets(that presumably bounced off his muscled torso).
It was surely easier for the likes of Milius and Stallone to cook up childish macho fantasies as neither experienced combat, though, to Milius’ credit, he did try to enlist for Vietnam but was rejected for his asthma. (Stallone spent the better part of the war years in Europe as a physical trainer for rich kids.) Stallone’s eat-your-heart-out rhetoric of guts-and-glory about Vietnam might have been more convincing(though no less idiotic) had it been borne of actual experience alongside the men in the jungles lurking with Viet Cong, but he got all worked up over something he knew nothing about.
It’s doubtful that most Vietnam veterans, even those of right-wing persuasion, appreciated Stallone’s Elmer-Gantric antics laying claim to the hurt and rage that rightfully belonged to the men who served in the war. Also, even though the disaffection among the veterans were wide-ranging, diverse, and conflicted, Stallone boiled it down to the most insipid stab-in-the-back theory. As for the P.O.W.s presumably left behind and betrayed by the US government(and possibly killed by the Vietnamese), Stallone took a serious subject and turned it into a self-aggrandizing fantasy of a christ-warrior resurrecting G.I. Lazaruses from the living-dead.
As such, the success of RAMBO the sequel owed mostly to the young audience that had no memory of the war or the Sixties. It was a war fantasy sold as a comic-book rock concert and pop-paean to the New Patriotism of the Reagan Era that finally shaking off the doldrums of Sixties radicalism and Seventies self-doubt entwined with Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and Jimmy Carter’s troubles with the economy and foreign policy.
Bruce Springsteen’s album BORN IN THE U.S.A. had the same kind of appeal, albeit spun as a criticism of Reagan Era materialism given Brucie’s partisan Democratic politics and the self-delusion of being a working class hero, comparable to Stallone’s delusion as a ‘war hero’, though his genuine talent as song-writer and performer resulted in something far more admirable and enjoyable than the over-the-top RAMBO sequel. (An infinitely more thoughtful and provocative movie about the winner-takes-all and go-for-broke mentality of the 80s was TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., where a lawman tries to break through the sound barrier of the law itself.)
At any rate, Springsteen’s super-success in the mid-80s cannot be appreciated apart from the pervasive mood of the New Patriotism. At a Rock Concert with tens of thousands of attendees cheering and hollering to the raucous performance, it’s doubtful anyone paid much attention to the ‘irony’ of the lyrics(of what was really intended as an anti-war anthem).
The same went for the once infamous Hanoi Jane, reinvented as the Work Out Queen, making a killing with a series of ‘aerobic’ exercise videos. All were selling a new narcissism centered on a health craze that was, consciously or not, in sync with the advent of yuppie materialism and spandex optimism. It was an era when the seemingly appropriate and ‘progressive’ response to a famine in Africa was to throw the biggest Rock Concert of all time. You could mix business with pleasure and pleasure with tragedy, an idiotic sensibility that has lasted to this day. Apparently, the ONLY way to get people even halfway interested in some moral cause was to throw a huge party with glitzy celebrities arriving in a motorcade of limos.
If history is a series of dialectics, it was only a matter of time before the theme of liberation would draw in the New Right. Money liberated from moderation, or ‘Greed is good’. The US as the lone superpower, an empire liberated from restraints that does as it wishes, unleashing an endless series of wars and now manifested in its fullest and ugliest form in the figure of Pete Hegseth.
And a preference for amnesia(willfully oblivious to the hard lessons of the past) as hope springs eternal for the stupid.
And, of course, the obsession with libertarianism with its shameless and ‘liberational’ embrace of hedonism and self-indulgence whether through sex, drugs, and gambling, leading eventually to the approval of GloboHomo, the movement of the most vain and narcissistic group on Earth, the ‘gays’. It’s no wonder that the New Right(or Post-Right) melded rather easily with the Post-Left of the Clinton Era, the first presidency defined by ‘boomer liberation’.
Very likely, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had little inkling of what they were helping to unleash in the 1980s. Both idealized capitalism as the spirit of enterprise(against the overweening power of the state), the driver of ingenuity and hard work that needed protection from the socialist ‘road to serfdom’. They still thought of capitalism as a system practiced by people of social restraint and patriotism, blind to the implications of liberation-capitalism(with no sense of moderation and temperance) and globalization(that would hollow out the patriotic side of capitalism that had once united the elites and the masses), something Patrick Buchanan began to understand as conveyed in his 1992 GOP convention speech.
Reagan’s genuine appreciation of Oliver Stone’s PLATOON and sincere efforts toward peace with Mikhail Gorbachev suggest that he wasn’t as simpleminded as many assumed or came to a belated realization of a far more complex reality. (Ironically, the Clinton-Gore team that ran against Reagan-Bush Era ‘culture of greed’ pushed it even beyond anything Reagan-Bush had sought, but then, this has been a running theme in US politics, e.g. Donald Trump who gained traction as an anti-Neocon ‘peace candidate’ 2016 is now embroiled in the biggest Neocon war yet against Iran, i.e. he makes John McCain look like a peacenik in comparison.)
The Eighties were like a liberation-opportunity for Stallone, who could finally cast off the ‘humanist’ burden he took on in the Seventies. The changes in the industry since the late 1960s had come with more freedoms but also more challenges(or responsibilities). The notable films of the era weren’t only about increased permissiveness in language, sexuality, and violence but utilizing the new liberties in pursuit of deeper truth and a greater range of expression. Even though Stallone’s star rose with ROCKY as the impact of New Hollywood was beginning to wane, he was undoubtedly affected by the cult of authenticity beyond mere expectations of formula. While ROCKY seems insubstantial(as art) compared to the most renowned films of the period — TAXI DRIVER came out in the same year — , it is downright Dostoevskyian-Tolstoyan compared to the slop Stallone served up later. It would have been inconceivable in the 1970s that Stallone, the writer-director of ROCKY(and the lead in Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T), would be churning out stuff like RAMBO II & III, ROCKY III & IV, and of course COBRA in the next decade.
As the Seventies fashion for authenticity faded(helped some by the sheer ‘gay’-ish artifice of the Disco craze), what remained was the sense of liberation minus the obligatory nod to truth and meaning. The Eighties restoration of order(or semblance thereof) was less Anti-Dionysian than Neo-Dionysian, i.e. social order makes for fuller indulgence in the Golden Calf of consumer-materialism, evinced in the restructuring of Rock events with heightened security and surveillance so as to avoid costly scandals that plagued the concert scene.
If, in the spirit of early Seventies cinema, Stallone envisioned something more than a hunk-hero in the original ROCKY, he no longer felt bound to gravitas as he cashed in on one dumb fantasy after another. Even though the onus was mostly on him, the idiot masses handsomely rewarded his (lack of)efforts at the box office.
The best genre movies of the Seventies had both the eccentricity of perspective and the economy of formula. Think of Sam Peckinpah’s THE GETAWAY and Michael Cimino’s first directorial outing with THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT. And along with Chayefsky-Lumet’s NETWORK, Stallone’s ROCKY, praised by critics and applauded by audiences, proved that personal passion and mass appeal could converge to great effect.
But, as if even that modicum of human element became too much of a burden(like the first wife that movie stars often toss aside in search of hotter mates), Eighties culture and aesthetics increasingly promoted the superficial and generic at the expense of substance, a dire trend that went ignored because the fast-paced thrills and booming effects were so ‘awesome'(and profitable). Whether it was FLASHDANCE, the RAMBO sequel, or TOP GUN, many were taken in by the sugar highs and empty calories.
Among the hot talents of the era, Michael Mann tried his best to add artsy sheen to vapid and soulless expressions(as emanations from within or reflections on the culture), and MIAMI VICE, a brazen exercise in narcissism, was a TV sensation, making for instructive contrast with the grittier cop dramas of the Seventies(notwithstanding the popularity of HAWAII-FIVE-O). Well, at least Mann tried.
Stallone certainly didn’t, and if his career arc proves anything, stupidity has a limited shelf-life, and the audience began to tire of his stale knee-jerk formula that a sleepwalker could have come up with. (Not that stupidity is necessarily superseded by something smart, as is often the case, the new stupidity merely replaces the old stupidity. The world grew tired of the idiot action flicks of Stallone and Schwarzenegger but then flocked to Michael Bay blockbusters and CGI-loaded superhero spectacles that make even dumb 80s action flicks seem smart by comparison.)
FIRST BLOOD is of interest as the last Stallone movie with cultural hangover from the Seventies, through which the property had passed through various hands, gaining reputation as a problem child for any taker. It had the basic components of a solid action movie, but its politics seemed murky, easily and/or mistakenly construed as ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’, ‘pro-war’ or ‘anti-war’. Was John Rambo a misunderstood and wrongly maligned hero? A folk hero(like Billy Jack) or a tragic psycho? Did he represent the best of those who served in Vietnam, the best the US military had to offer? Or was he a psycho, damaged goods whose repressed demons were triggered and let loose upon the world by unwarranted provocation? Did he represent the Counterculture like the (anti)heroes of EASY RIDER, especially given that his tormentors are ‘conservative’ small-town folks? Or, was he the patron-saint of those who felt betrayed by the system that wouldn’t let them win? Controversy was written all over the material, and the project kept getting aborted until the star power of Sylvester Stallone finally saw it through to delivery.
It proved to be pivotal for Stallone as he, in the role of an unrelenting killing machine, ventured far beyond the sentimentality associated with Rocky Balboa(who couldn’t even break a thumb for his local boss). That said, there is a touch of Balboa in the introductory version of John Rambo, a wounded vulnerability and a degree of empathy, qualities added by Stallone himself(as the remorseless Rambo of the novel often kills with ruthless abandon). Unlike the sequel, the first movie isn’t a steroid-pumped manual on the most ‘creative’ ways to dispatch the baddies in the most blood-drenched ways imaginable. It’s about John Rambo as a survivor with a broken than a cold heart.
FIRST BLOOD straddles the fence between Seventies fatalism and Eighties optimism(manufactured though it may have been). A truly inspired filmmaker could have synthesized the contradictions, like William Friedkin with TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., an interplay of Eighties aesthetics and Seventies angst, but Ted Kotcheff, though no slouch as director, ultimately fell short, delivering something incoherent in meaning or message, though one suspects the lapse owes to Stallone’s interference in sanitizing Rambo from an emblem of history-gone-wrong to that of man-done-wrong.
A striking feature of the movie is a role reversal of sorts. John Rambo, an ex-Green Beret trained to flush out Viet Cong guerrillas, is forced to play the role of the Viet Cong and employ various guerrilla-style tactics against the local law enforcement, which is soon backed up by the National Guard.
The legends surrounding the Green Berets were a tacit admission that the US was involved in a new kind of war. It simply wouldn’t do to fight a conventional war against an enemy as elusive and stealthy as the Viet Cong(and North Vietnamese seasoned in jungle warfare); therefore, the US needed special teams of troops to out-guerrilla the guerrillas, and so, the Green Berets were touted as superhuman warriors who could adapt to any environment, blending into than struggling against the surroundings to track down the enemy for destruction.
If the official strategy was to ‘Vietnamize’ the war by training South Vietnamese regulars to bear the burden, the less mentioned strategy was to Vietcongize certain segments of the US military to wage a ‘dirty war’ against a most intractable enemy, made even more difficult by its ability to meld into the general population as into the jungle. No wonder then that John Wayne’s Vietnam War movie idolized the Green Berets, men specially trained to fight a new kind of war. And Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW had joined the Green Berets before plunging deeper into the war by creating his own local jungle army. And then there’s John Rambo, the most fearsome Green Beret that ever was.
The American-as-guerrilla also had a historical pedigree in the myth of 1776 where bands of Minutemen harassed British Imperial Troops. Even after America became the global top dog, the original underdog DNA remained in its body politic. This has resulted in a certain schizophrenia in America’s self-image, a sense of invincibility as the lone superpower while simultaneously exaggerating the enemy’s prowess.
One aspect of Americanism is the imperial pride of absolute dominance, deservedly so of the greatest power that ever was, the most formidable fighting force able to project its will anywhere in the world. But another aspect of Americanism is the humble sense of duty, mostly of Average Joes who simply want to go on with their lives but are forced by circumstances to put on the uniform, i.e. America is a land of peace-loving folks who engage in war only as a last resort(LOL).
Historically speaking, there’s usually a lag between the founding mythos and the prevailing reality, as when Christendom continued to riff on the victimhood of the Early Christians long after its emergence as an imperial power laying waste to other domains and persecuting/torturing countless victims.
The movie PATTON was something of an exception as it shamelessly and unequivocally celebrated imperial megalomania and cult of invincibility as the true face of American character, i.e. never mind the questions of good vs evil or right vs wrong, as the ONLY thing that matters is simply to win regardless of reasons cooked up by politicians. But then, lest the message trigger a backlash, there was Karl Malden as Omar Bradley to remind the audience that Patton, despite his legendary stature, was something of an outlier.
The two-faced(or dualistic, to be more generous) nature of American Power is readily found in just about any war movie, be it HEARTBREAK RIDGE or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Even though the much diminished German military(ground up mostly in the Eastern front against the Soviet Union) was doomed as the Allies descended on Western shores, Spielberg’s film is centered on a humble mission of Regular Joes to save the last remaining Ryan, emotionally rendering the Americans the underdogs.
Clint Eastwood’s HEARTBREAK RIDGE is even more absurd. The movie turns the cakewalk in Grenada into a near-epic act of heroism, especially with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells whipped into shape by a sergeant in search of sure victory(after the stalemate in Korea and the debacle in Vietnam). It no doubt copped a few ideas from DIRTY DOZEN(and maybe STRIPES as well), a movie that naturally cast Americans as underdogs, given Lee Marvin’s character was assigned to train and lead a bunch of wretched refuse proven useless on the teeming shores of Europe.
It’s been a historical habit of America to pick easy targets and then inflate its roles as going against serious opposition, like a champion boxer padding his ‘impressive’ record against a bunch of palookas. (Boxer or empire, it’s when the seeming pushover pushes back that alarm bells go off and panic sets in.) So, even as one side of American mythos gloats about being #1, another side is given to self-pity, as if Americans, soldiers and civilians alike, usually bear the brunt of the conflict(in utter indifference to what befalls on the other side).
Take the supposedly legendary feats surrounding the Spanish-American War in which the US took on a flea-bitten empire on its last legs. The US took great pride finishing off the Spanish military in no time with minimal casualty. Still, one would think Theodore Roosevelt achieved an unprecedented victory in the taking of San Juan Hill, the subject of John Milius’ bloated(but entertaining) TV movie. Even wars of considerable cost in lives and treasure have been taken out of context, willfully misinterpreted to imply that the US played the most decisive role in the outcome, as in the narratives of World War I and World War II.
And given Hollywood’s global dominance in disseminating narratives and iconography, the mere focus on US infantrymen lends the false impression of underdogs fighting for their lives — after all, even foot-soldiers on the dominant side encounter all kinds of danger.
Most war movies emphasize the soldiers in the mud or sand than the politicians, financiers, and commanders up above. So, even though the US war machine was overwhelmingly wreaking havoc on countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, combat movies conveyed the impression of beleaguered Americans surrounded by enemies from all sides(like in COURAGE UNDER FIRE and BLACKHAWK DOWN).
Because these movies invariably ignore the political overview — the Zionist-controlled US empire blowing up hapless countries to kingdom come — and usually feature US soldiers hunkering down amidst gunfire and explosions, they perpetuate the myth of Americans as David against Goliath.
The tendency can be traced back to the Wild West myth, one where the white race moved inexorably to displace the natives but framed the encounter in terms of their heroic resistance against the Hostile Savages. And, despite the US having handily defeated its rival in the Mexican-American War, the defining moment became the Alamo as a tragic-heroic reminder of American sacrifice, hardly representative of the conflict but affirmative of the underdog myth. Apparently, compelled by historical exigency or righteous wrath, the gentle giant of Americanism time and time again ‘reluctantly’ stirs itself up to do what’s right or to ‘save the world’. It’s like the nice guy Rocky Balboa really wants to hang up his gloves, but things happen and ‘ya gotta do what ya gotta do.’
Granted, it’s been a harder sell since the end of the Cold War and especially with endless war-making following 9/11. And with Trump and Hegseth at the helm(or as the face) of US might, the cat is out of the bag for the whole world to see that Americanism is simply insatiable greed and power-lust(and venal cuckery to the Jews as the Masters of the World, though Jews have an underdog routine of their own as perennial victims, even as they pile up dead bodies sky high in Gaza and Lebanon).
FIRST BLOOD taps into the contradictory myth of the American over-dog as the underdog. John Rambo represents the prime specimen of American might — no country on Earth can produce killers so lethal and efficient as the good ole USA can — but also the freedom-loving individual who’s up against the system. He’s at once a champion warrior of the American Empire and an ordinary citizen who wants to be left alone but is provoked to violence by authorities ranging from local to federal. Both war-fetishists for the empire and anti-establishment types will find something to identify with in Rambo.
There’s a disturbing aspect to John Rambo’s alienation(an idea taken farther in JACOB’S LADDER where a Vietnam vet stuck in limbo between life and death was part of a secret experiment). The implication is that the system selects certain personality types and molds them into near-psychotic killers who can feel ‘at home’ only in the battlefield. As a corollary, their often nomadic existence may be more dangerous among civilians because they’ve been conditioned to do only one thing: kill, kill, kill. In other words, John Rambo and his ilk are like pit bulls, selected for strength & aggression and trained to maul anything in sight. What makes them so useful in war renders them useless, indeed worse than useless, in a world of peace where conflicts(usually petty in nature) are resolved through negotiation, give-and-take, or simply one party stepping aside(and swallowing its pride) than by kill-or-be-killed. John Rambo is like a walking timebomb or grenade whose pin should never be pulled. Local yokels pull it out.
FIRST BLOOD is all over the map in terms of messaging, likely due to the competing interests of the director Ted Kotcheff and the action-star Sylvester Stallone(who reworked the script to make his character more heroic). What likely began as a story of a sympathetic but irrecoverably damaged personality was turned into a tale of a wronged man seeking justice in the only way he knows how. Reportedly, Stallone made John Rambo into a conscientious hero(than a disturbed anti-hero), one who does his utmost to spare the lives of the men arrayed against him; he prefers to wound than kill. Furthermore, Rambo seems at once a psycho-social victim of the system(that churns out ruthless killers and then spits them out once the war is over) and a latent hero awaiting restoration and redemption by the system, the only body that can assign purpose to his talents.
FIRST BLOOD, though far smaller in scale, suffers from(or gains from, take your pick) the same challenges that beset APOCALYPSE NOW, also marked by rival tendencies, with ‘liberal’ Coppola reworking right-wing John Milius’ resoundingly pro-war vision into a somber contemplation on the tragedy of war. If APOCALYPSE NOW was conceived of as a right-wing fantasy but revised leftward, FIRST BLOOD may have undergone a similar process but in the other direction.
FIRST BLOOD’s ideological confusion was compounded by its small town setting. At the end of the movie, Rambo rails against the system that restrained men like him in Vietnam, but what does this have to do with local yokels with zero influence in world affairs? At least in the Clint Eastwood vehicle IN THE LINE OF FIRE, the ex-deep-state operative gone rogue(John Malkovich) is engaged in a personal vendetta against the powers-that-be that created monsters like him before tossing them aside; it’s about a man made by the system going against the system.
In contrast, despite the closing rant by John Rambo on the betrayal of men like him by the politicians and generals on top, the entirety of the movie is about his prolonged tussle with locals who are about as far removed from D.C. policy as one could imagine. Thus, when the Passion of Rambo turns from the personal to the political, we are left wondering.
Besides, the hyperbolic militarist tone with which the movie ends feels out of place with the bulk of the movie, merely anticipating the numb-nut politics of the sequel where John Rambo is given a second chance to ‘win’ the Vietnam War, only to be betrayed once again but, this time around, overcoming all obstacles in mowing down the commies, rescuing the P.O.W.s, destroying what appears to be the half of the Soviet air force, and finally blasting away at the venal American system that recruit patriots like Rambo only to stab them in the back. In a similar vein, John Milius’ original version of Colonel Kurtz(vetoed by Coppola in the final script), ends up warring against all sides, as apparently even the Americans stand in the way of his apotheosis as the Ultimate Man.
Possibly, the Rambo-pitted-against-yokels scenario accommodated Hollywood’s ‘liberal’ bias and/or narrative cowardice. It was(and still is)easier to bash small town folks who exert little in the way of social, political, or cultural sway. Vilify blacks, and you get called a ‘racist’. Vilify Jews, and you get called an ‘Anti-Semite’. Vilifying(or at least ridiculing) urban liberals is more acceptable, as in DIRTY HARRY, but doesn’t sit so well with the overwhelmingly Democratic base of the movie industry.
So, even though John Rambo, especially with Stallone’s input, resembled a right-wing folk hero, controversy could be minimized with conservative small-towners as the baddies. In a similar manner, after gunning down a quota of black criminals, Harry Callahan usually expended the rest of his energy tracking down white villains. And consider FALLING DOWN, supposedly a sop to right-wing angst but mostly a (mis)direction of White Male Anger towards more ‘convenient’ targets, thereby sparing the Jews, Negroes, and Homos. And AMERICAN HISTORY X veers from white vs black tensions to white vs white tensions, as if afraid to probe deeper into America’s race problem, 80% of which originates from black pathologies.
It would have made more sense for John Rambo as right-wing hero to lock horns with various left-wing and/or anti-war outfits. Instead, the entire movie is about him being hunted by local authorities and then turning the tables on them.
Local yokels, invariably white, as villains worked well enough in John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE, but the trope has been beaten to death(not least in rustic horror). It’s also been a moral dodge by dumping the blame of social ills on small-town bigots, thereby reducing the culpability of the urban powers-that-be. Consider BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, where the hero(Spencer Tracy) nobly engages in a private war with small town thugs who’d murdered a Japanese-American. By directing moral outrage at the locals, the movie overlooks the fact that it was the Liberal New Deal elites that dispossessed over 100,000 Japanese-Americans and placed them in internment camps and, via mass media and entertainment, egged on collective prejudice against all ‘Japs’, even next-door neighbors. And by focusing on overt racial segregation in the South, Northerners have long ignored the various subtle and not-so-subtle ways of de facto segregation in their own communities(though the ruse finally caught up with them in the BLM moment of 2020). It’s like how Jews veil their own cult of privilege and exclusion by directing ire at WASP country clubs.
By sneering at small town rubes as the face of evil, urbanites feel absolved of their own(and far bigger) responsibility for the political violence both at home and abroad. (A prime example of ‘liberal’ Hollywood’s attitude toward ‘rural America’, especially Southern, is found in KALIFORNIA where a chic couple is stalked and tormented by a ‘hick’ couple as the mother of all white trash.) One wonders how many people are fooled by such mischaracterizations. While EASY RIDER’s depiction of redneck hostility toward hippie types seems about right, how likely is it that two bikers would encounter only nasty whites in their trip across the American South?
Granted, the politics of EASY RIDER is too strung out on dope for coherence. The hippie collective, for instance, despite thumbs up from Peter Fonda as ‘Captain America’, seems well-intentioned(on the delusional spectrum) than viable as a community. The two bikers are drug-dealers(as pointed out in Albert Brooks’ LOST IN AMERICA) without direction and focus, with one of them conceding near the end, “We blew it.” The most positive portrait is of a southwestern rancher leading a traditional(or conservative) livelihood oblivious to social fashions, in not-too-subtle comparison with whom the bikers are suggested as latter-day cowboys, except that they ‘blew it’ in a ‘pilgrimage’ turned into a ‘lost weekend’ of sex and drugs. People moved westward in the 19th century to claim territory on which to labor and build, but the two bikers remain rootless and noncommittal, their constant movement a procrastination into nothingness.
How convenient to use southern rubes as foils to the two leads who smoke pot, sell dope, drop acid, freak out, have sex with hookers, and ride off yet again. Lacking innate heroic qualities, they’re canonized as instant martyrs of shotgun-wielding rednecks as an extreme symbol of an uncaring and disdainful world? Minus the crucifixion-by-rednecks, EASY RIDER can only draw to the same conclusion as the Stones concert at Altamont, of which Mick Jagger could well have said, “We blew it.” (Reportedly, Dennis Hopper the manic actor-director was only a few degrees off from Charles Manson, and his next film THE LAST MOVIE managed to repulse just about everyone for every conceivable reason.)
Muddled or contradictory messaging can confuse audience expectations but also engage their wishful fantasies as projected onto the work(as a something-for-everyone). A prime example is JEREMIAH JOHNSON, at once a neo-western with a fresh, revisionist, and more realistic perspective on the pioneer narrative and a rousing action-packed vehicle in which a vengeful white guy clashes with an entire band of red braves and comes out on top(though the ‘racial’ violence may have been made somewhat palatable given Johnson is avenging a murdered squaw than a white woman). It was a collaboration among right-wing John Milius(who adapted the book), liberal Robert Redford(who, like fellow liberal Paul Newman, often relished tough-guy roles as compensation for wimpy do-goodery), and cerebral Sydney Pollack, the last person one would expect to direct such a picture. (Incidentally, Pollack would be among several directors attached to one of the earlier drafts of FIRST BLOOD.)
Taking the scenario of FIRST BLOOD at face value, it is certainly conceivable that Vietnam veterans were met with rejection, ridicule, and mockery in small town communities. For starters, in a country that had been synonymous with endless victory, Vietnam veterans carried the stigma as the first ‘losers’ of a war in American History. As such, they could have been seen as symbols of shame and disgrace than of heroism and pride.
Furthermore, the socio-political divide wasn’t so neatly between patriotism and anti-Americanism during the war. The social, cultural, and racial tensions roiling in America carried over into Vietnam, where many soldiers indulged in sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, indeed not unlike the hippies who also burned draft cards in Haight-Asbury. So, not every Vietnam veteran returned from service as a shining light of patriotism, the stuff heroes are made of. Some of them, especially if black, could have been suspected of insubordination and disorderly conduct, or contributed to the defeat. Some of them grew long hair and used drugs, even made common cause with the Counterculture and anti-war movement(like Tom Cruise’s Ron Kovic in BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY).
The public perception as the increasingly unpopular war dragged on was that the draftees, far from serving with conviction, were merely going through the motions to do their time(like inmates in a prison), all the while doing everything to undermine authority.
In that context, there was no guarantee that a soldier returning from Vietnam would evoke the sentiments of a Norman Rockwell painting. His mere presence could set off distress signals of dissolution, criminality, and/or anti-social pathologies.
Thus, the reaction of the local sheriff in FIRST BLOOD may not be as outlandish as such might have been in regards to an earlier war. It could be that anything associated with Vietnam, disaffected veteran or anti-war freak, amounts to the same thing, which is trouble, in the eyes of a local lawman who prioritizes order in his community.
Even so, there is another point of contention between John Rambo and the local sheriff, William Teasle(Brian Dennehy). Teasle is used to being the big man about town, the alpha male. He sees himself as protector and the keeper of the peace, most probably with genuine attachment to the town as a modest oasis(in a country going to pot), and he has his own way of doing things, albeit not as ruthlessly as Gene Hackman’s sheriff in UNFORGIVEN(by Clint Eastwood) but tough enough if necessary.
Therefore, when a strange fella like Rambo, by looks a loiterer-drifter, ‘intrudes’ within the town’s limits, alarm bells go off in Teasle’s mind. Even if just a peaceful passerby, Rambo’s very presence, dark and brooding, is an affront to Teasle’s idyllic image of his town, a quiet place for nice decent folks.
There is something of a racial angle as well, even though the conflict that ensues is white vs white. The story begins with Rambo visiting the home of a black family on the outskirts(than in the heart) of the town, only to discover that his comrade-in-arms, fellow Green Beret back in Vietnam, died of an illness. Thus, Rambo isn’t merely a Great White Warrior but a ‘spiritual’ pallbearer(or cross-bearer) of all the men, white-black-brown-and-etc., who were forged into a brotherhood-of-iron that the civilian world simply wouldn’t understand.
In a way, Teasle’s suspicions about the strange and off-putting wayfarer is similar to white attitudes(even in urban environments) to the sight of unfamiliar blacks whose style and demeanor spell trouble. Thus, if ROCKY movies had a white guy ‘appropriate’ the heavyweight championship that was invariably held by black guys(at least before the arrival of the Klitschkos), FIRST BLOOD has a white guy in a situation more evocative of black guys who find themselves in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’.
But, there is a layer to the conflict that is more elemental and eternal: The clash of male egos. When alpha meets beta, the latter usually backs down, and order is quickly restored. Most of society is about beta-males getting along with beta-males and taking orders from alpha males(or lately, from alpha-females). But what happens when alpha meets alpha, especially of different domains? Alphas belonging the same outfit can be part of a team(like the A-Team), fitting together than fighting each other, like Rambo and fellow Green Berets in the jungles of Vietnam.
But when alphas of separate worlds cross each other’s path, the misunderstanding is compounded by the crisis of pride as retreating is anathema to alpha honor. Thus, unlike a beta who prioritizes self-preservation and steps back(at the expense of his pride), the alpha fears to blink first or ‘chicken out’.
Granted, not all alphas are so pigheaded and stubborn and may well decide to avoid situations where life and limb are put at risk over some trifle.
Incidentally, alpha-mentality can even affect beta males, especially if the culture over-stresses manly honor, e.g. the ‘sodbuster’ in SHANE with third-rate gun skills who is loathe to walk away from a cold-blooded killer(Jack Palance) who taunts him to draw.
Also, alpha-ness is of course relative — a rabbit alpha is just lunch to a coyote. And varying situations favor different skill sets in establishing dominance. e.g. nerds who were nobodies in high school compensating later as big tech tyrants throwing their wit around.
Certain forms of dominance are more self-reliant while other kinds owe considerably to support mechanisms. John Rambo is clearly someone who can go one-on-one and toe-to-toe against anyone in combat. When push comes to shove, he demonstrates his mastery as an elite warrior.
In contrast, Teasle’s authority relies considerably on institutional backing and community support. Whereas Rambo was trained for self-reliance(as well as for teamwork), Teasle grew accustomed to parking his arse about town as his personal fiefdom. In this light, Rambo’s presence seems a threat not only to communal stability but Teasle’s assurance of authority, or complacency of power; he’d grown accustomed to people, especially strangers, complying to his will, which is why he takes Rambo’s obstinacy as a personal insult. He simply isn’t used to anyone saying ‘no’.
Even though John Rambo isn’t a criminal, his shaggy independence poses a challenge to Teasle’s sense of shared or communal order. Because individuals like him transgress(against unwritten rules) without illegal trespass, they’re thornier to deal with than lawbreakers whose arrests are readily justified.
In THE WILD BUNCH(directed by Sam Peckinpah), the captured outlaw Deke Thorton fumes at the well-connected ‘respectable’ boss about town: “Tell me, Mr. Harrigan. How does it feel? Getting paid for it? Getting paid to sit back and hire your killings with the law’s arms around you? How does it feel to be so damned right?”
On some level, the outlaw can be construed as ‘more honest’ as he relies on his own wits and limitations, whereas those on the side of the law, even when unethical, abusive, and/or corrupt, can always flash their badges and draw support from the state and the community.
Furthermore, in their predatory behavior, outlaws are the true alphas as they live by the law of the jungle(or make up their own rules), albeit tempered by honor-among-thieves and sparing-the-hapless. In contrast, lawmen, despite their training in violence, are at best domesticated alphas whose wilder nature has been tamed by social contract to protect wimpy law-abiding betas from predatory alpha outlaws. Outlaws are wolves, lawmen are sheep dogs, and most people are sheep.
In GOODFELLAS(directed by Martin Scorsese), the alpha hoods are contemptuous of the goody-good beta herds who play by the rules, pay their taxes, and lead dull 9-to-5 existences. Granted, even among gangsters, there are chiefs and mavericks who stand above mere flunkies and sidekicks. And the smarter gangsters, like the boss Paulie, employ a quasi-institutional authority that even the most brazen hoods fear to tread.
From another angle, however, outlaws can be deemed as essentially cowardly, i.e. not true alphas, because they usually go for easy pickings and rely on the element of surprise. They usually ambush or sucker-punch their victims in fear of an honorable face-to-face challenge.
In an honorable contest(like a duel), two men challenge one another in the open with agreed-upon rules. In sports, a contestant who cheats(by eye-gouging or ball-grabbing) is despised and condemned. (Even the antagonist in the Western may claim a modicum of honor in a fair showdown with his nemesis, whereas even the protagonist in the Gangster Movie goes for dirty tricks as the first resort.)
Despite the element of daring and bravado in outlawry, criminals usually go for the most dastardly ways to grab the loot while shirking from a fair fight, not unlike predatory animals, which, for all their ferocity and aggression, go for the easiest kills, often targeting the young, the old, and/or the enfeebled than risking injury by tackling creatures of equal strength. In boxing, heavyweights fight heavyweights, but in nature heavyweights go after featherweights.
Now, John Rambo is no outlaw but a soldier. Yet, what soldiers are trained to do would be criminal, even psychotic, in peacetime or the home-front. Also, despite similarities between sports and warfare(as both are governed by rules), there’s a profound ‘dirtiness’ in war that is absent in sports. Sports are based on parity and impartiality(of rules), whereas war is about winning by any means necessary, with minimum restraint under international law(which is usually circumvented by powerful countries at any rate, e.g. Trump and Netanyahu won’t face Tojo’s fate for their perfidious sneak attacks or war of aggression). Whereas the matchup in sports is proportional and/or balanced — ten players on each side, heavyweights against heavyweights, collegiate vs collegiate, and etc. — war has no rules governing manpower, supplies, and firepower. It’s perfectly acceptable for a superpower with boundless arms to take on and totally trounce a third-rate power with ill-trained men equipped with outdated weaponry.
Such was the use of American Power in Vietnam, destroying millions of lives with endless bombing campaigns. But, it also became a cause for shame as the world witnessed a superpower employing all its might to smash an impoverished nation. When the Vietnamese as underdogs resisted year after year against such odds, much of the world, even anti-communist ones, couldn’t help but feel a measure of sympathy and admiration.
Anyway, the Rambo vs Teasle battle of egos is an age-old story of nerves that is as touchy(even fragile) as it is about toughness, a case with serious psychological as well as ‘political’ ramifications as, by alpha male standards, the one who steps back isn’t sensible but ‘chickenshit’.
In FIRST BLOOD, it begins as a psychological pissing contest involving only the two men. Either one could have walked away and just let it go with no one else knowing(of his ‘indignity’), but neither is willing to bow to the other’s will.
From Teasle’s viewpoint, he went relatively easy on Rambo, even offered him a ride to the town’s edge. He firmly but calmly explained to Rambo why his mere presence might ruffle some feathers in a town accustomed to routine and familiarity. And as Teasle’s word is usually final around town, he assumes Rambo will take heed and go elsewhere.
Perhaps the practical, even wise, thing for Rambo would have been to just walk away and avoid trouble that simply isn’t worth it. But Teasle’s bated contempt and virtual decree don’t sit well with Rambo’s self-image and deep-seated bitterness. Even though he is a complete stranger in town, it means the world to him that he stands his ground, which is anywhere he is standing, if only to defend his wounded pride. A veteran of a ‘lost’ war to which he gave his body and soul, he isn’t about to take rejection sitting down(or walking away) from some two-bit sheriff of nowhereville. Something buried deep within him begins to stir, like a volcano about to blow its top. Was it bound to happen sooner or later given his unstable mental state? At a subconscious level, was he looking for an incident as the straw that finally broke the camel’s back of his unresolved ‘peaceful’ existence as a civilian?
He carries within the pride of a super-soldier(who even bears the scars of a P.O.W.), but some nonentity lawman, who parks his fat arse all day in a squad car, treats him like some good-for-nothing loser, a smelly unkempt vagabond. If Rambo were indeed just some hobo, he could probably take the insult, but he was far more, an elite warrior of the US military, one in a thousand among soldiers.
Both Rambo and Teasle are armed men trained and employed by the system. However, whereas lawmen serve a purpose even in peacetime, soldiers become like ronin(masterless samurai) when wars are over. In war, a soldier may see more violence in a single day than a cop in a lifetime, but without war he’s like a fish out of water. No wonder the Marine Sergeant(Michael Shannon) in Oliver Stone’s WORLD TRADE CENTER reacts to 9/11 as if it were a godsend. His kind will have purpose again as Crusaders against Terrorism.
At first, Teasle misreads John Rambo, judging a book by its cover. As it turns out, Rambo is really a decent sort and a nice guy, that is as long as he isn’t provoked, whereupon the stray dog turns werewolf. Though adrift and alienated from society, if left alone his inner-time bomb stops ticking. Dejected by defeat and rejected by society, the least Rambo expects of life is a peace of mind. He’s become ascetic-like, psychologically withdrawing into his own world; in an urban setting, he would be ‘invisible’, just another nobody going about his own business.
He surely remembers that the anti-war crowd once reviled his kind as ‘baby killers’, especially in the aftermath of the My Lai Massacre scandal, while the pro-war types ignored his kind as shameful reminders of America’s first ‘defeat’.
While certain Vietnam narratives emphasized the problems of disunity and demoralization, understandable and even inevitable of the soldiers, especially if black, who hadn’t a clue as to why they were sent thousands of miles from home into jungles teeming with guerrillas, FIRST BLOOD reaches for a different explanation, heretofore at odds with the general consensus and prevailing mood. While Rambo comes across as your typical disaffected soldier, sent to fight in an unnecessary and even immoral war, his testament-of-sorts at the end rails against a betrayal of a different sort, i.e. men like him wanted to fight and came ‘this close’ to winning, BUT the damn politicians, spineless military brass, treacherous media, and the spoiled American public withdrew essential support at a crucial juncture, thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Was FIRST BLOOD trying to have it both ways, at once pandering to those who felt the war was sold on lies as winnable and those who felt the war was sold on lies as unwinnable?
FIRST BLOOD teeters between Seventies defeatism and Eighties revisionism(as the result of several factors). There was obviously the presidency of Ronald Reagan as a hardline Cold Warrior. In addition, even though the Domino Theory didn’t come to pass in Southeast Asia, several countries in Africa — Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Angola — came under Marxist-Leninist control. And the Sandinistas took over Nicaragua, and there was much handwringing about the revolution spreading across Central America. Also, the repressive measures of the communist Vietnamese government, especially in relation to the Boat People crisis, led to disillusionment among the Liberal class. And the absolute horrors in Cambodia led some to rethink their opposition to the war. Among elites and masses alike, Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy, seen as ineffective, was in need of correction. Supposedly, Carter’s wobbling led to the fall of the Shah and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was as if the Red tide, along with various Anti-Americanisms, was beginning to engulf the world; therefore, only tough leadership could send a message to the world that America is back and not to mess with.
The setbacks in Afghanistan and Nicaragua also laid the grounds for the US to return the favor, supporting their own Viet-Cong-like guerrilla proxies in the form of the Mujahideen and the Contras.
It was in this political context that the US opened a new chapter on the subject of Vietnam, away from the ‘liberal’ consensus of a tragic quagmire in an unwinnable war to the ‘conservative’ correction of a just and winnable cause undermined by a lack of will and a House Divided, i.e. the US was engaged in a two-front war, a social-cultural-racial one at home and a military one abroad. But then, why was the American Homeland divided in the first place? Because those darned liberals and crazed radicals burned the flag and spat on veterans.
While not every revision of the Vietnam venture was so hyperbolic or gung ho, there was a degree of contrition across the entire political spectrum. Even the liberal/leftist types began to feel they’d gone too far in vilifying soldiers as ‘baby killers’. In the very year that FIRST BLOOD came out, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial had a profoundly cathartic impact on Americans, especially due to a design that was open to interpretation, ranging from bereavement of the departed in a senseless war to an appreciation of their heroism and honor in service to country.
At any rate, whatever ambiguity and duality might be gleaned from FIRST BLOOD was blown up in the sequel that was all guts-and-glory huffing-and-puffing, as if sweating out the last vestiges of the Vietnam Syndrome(that lingered until the rapid and resounding victory in the Gulf War, which was followed up, as icing on the cake, by the total collapse of the Soviet Union). What irony that the boomer generation, once associated with anti-war sentiments, would redefine itself as post-Vietnam-syndrome and thereon embark on never-ending wars in the Middle East and North Africa, usually with minimum opposition at home. The latest boomer president Donald Trump(as puppet-whore of Zion) gave us the Iran War. It’s even more ironic when we consider that Jewish boomers were among the most vocal segments of the Anti-war Movement in the Sixties. These same people would become the biggest warmongers, their agenda culminating in the full-blown genocide in Gaza.
The Rambo-vs-Teasle conflict, personal and archetypal, was avoidable but almost inevitable given the alpha anxiety between the two men. In certain situations, a man fears losing face more than losing life. Consider the duels throughout history where men put their lives on the line to defend their reputation. Even when faced with a superior foe, death with honor was preferable to life with shame.
Even though Rambo and Teasle live in a post-duel world, they lock horns in a deadly game over honor. Man may modernize the exteriors, but his interior remains ‘ancient’.
The actions of both are tightly wound around the vanity of pride, but when the entire community gets dragged into the mess(and then the news reports attract national attention), things get more complicated as a personal battle of egos turns into a public war of righteousness(in the eyes of the world), somewhat similar to what happens in CONVOY(directed by Sam Peckinpah).
For Rambo to have acceded to Teasle’s ‘advice’(to leave town) would not only have signaled a retreat(something he’s averse to repeating following the ‘defeat’ in Vietnam) but confirmed the lawman’s impression of him, i.e. he’s a useless bum who doesn’t belong in decent company.
Rambo’s dilemma is like a simplified American version of MICHAEL KOLHAAS(by Heinrich von Kleist), the eponymous character of which served as the model for Coalhouse Walker in RAGTIME, the film adaptation released a year before FIRST BLOOD.
While Teasle isn’t nearly as repugnant as the Irish-American firemen who torment and humiliate Coalhouse Walker, what ensues in both cases is something more primal than a matter of justice. They turn into battles of manly pride. In Teasle’s view, there’s no reason why a hobo-loser like Rambo should defy his ‘friendly’ suggestion to just move on, but for Rambo it’s infuriating that some small town bigshot should be giving him the marching order. Man-to-man, Rambo can destroy Teasle with a mere move or two, but the law favors Teasle over Rambo, even though, technically speaking, the latter didn’t do anything illegal.
There’s a scene in EXCALIBUR when Arthur the newly minted king discovers a path in his domain obstructed by a newly arrived knight, Lancelot. The tension between them could easily be defused by Lancelot relocating his camp or by Arthur(and his knights) using an alternative path, but neither is willing to budge because at stake is something far more significant than control of a road. For Lancelot who prides himself as the mightiest knight, giving into Arthur’s demand, at least without a fight, will deflate his martial vanity. For Arthur, his authority as king depends on giving orders than taking them, however trivial they may be. Thus, the consequences for backing down are profound, psychological and political, for both, and a near-fatal duel ensues.
The battle of wills in COOL HAND LUKE follows a similar logic. The friction building between Luke and the prison warden and his guards could have been kept to a minimum if either side gave an inch, but for Luke pride becomes everything(especially as his fellow prisoners begin to lionize him as an indefatigable hero) while the guards see Luke’s exuberance-bordering-on-defiance, however subtle and indirect, as an annoyance growing into a threat to their authority and respect. And so, the battle of wills keeps escalating, ultimately with deadly consequences.
The Stanford Prison Experiment(dubious by some accounts) focused its lens on the tyrannical tendencies of power, but the mounting friction may have owed as much to the anxiety of pride, troubles brewing from the obstinacy of ‘prisoners’ unwilling to ‘take any shit'(including reasonable demands) from the ‘guards’ who, in turn, felt compelled to increase their leverage to maintain their authority(and all-important pride).
The alpha vs alpha tension is partly a legacy of warrior culture forged with courage and honor(as proof of one’s good name), which can result in the greatest heroism or the biggest stupidity. Warriors joust than jostle, which leaves little room for negotiation or compromise. Rivalries or grievances are settled as a matter of kill-or-be-killed, deadly when involving individuals and disastrous when involving entire nations(as in the Great War).
Jews, prominent among whom were rabbis and merchants, were less defined by head-to-head warrior culture. In Steven Spielberg’s FABELMANS, the Jewish kid, with no hope of a man-to-man matchup with bigger and more numerous goy boys, cleverly craft a strategy of manipulating one against others, i.e. instead of engaging in a futile pissing contest for alpha pride, attempt to win over the top alpha as protection against alpha-wanna-be’s.
The Jewish way allows for a wider range of individualities because mind-games, as opposed to fist-fights or pistol-duels, are less clear as to winners and losers. There’s no argument as to who won after a KO in the ring, but argument as to who won a debate may go on forever, which is why Richard Dawkins, despite the facts and logic he brought to the table, has failed to convince the faithful, who remain adamant that the sophistry on their side has won the day.
Thus, in a game of wits, there may be no clear winner or loser, meaning the trophy of pride isn’t a zero-sum game(as opposed to when black boxer Jack Johnson totally demolished the white Jim Jeffries who, collapsed on the canvas, was reduced to an ass-whupped bitch to a ‘crazy nigger’ in the eyes of the world).
In a world of physical competition, players enter the arena as alpha-wanna-be’s, but most scurry away with tail between their legs as humbled losers, utterly vanquished by the true champions.
Paradoxically, those in the Tough Guy business are more likely to submit to hierarchy as their world clearly delineates the winners from the losers; it may explain why white goyim, with their legacy of warrior culture, bowed down to the authority of the Other, be their Jews or blacks, as the Real Winners/Masters. Jewish culture made every Jew feel like a righteous Chosen of God despite win-or-lose in the material world, whereas white goy culture, shaped by the warrior caste of aristocrats in its formatives stages, conditioned the population to accept one’s worth based on strict determinants of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
As a result, Jewish Powerites needn’t have contended with most goyim who accepted their lower or lowly social rankings; they only needed to subjugate the uppermost goyim(as neo-aristo trend-setters) and all the rest of the goyim would fall in line.
It may also explain why Japan’s defeat in World War II was so total. Its history, for so long steeped in martial culture, had resulted in a mindset of clear winners and losers, those who chopped off heads and those who got their heads chopped off. The head-choppers clearly stood as the ‘better man’, and so, if you didn’t want your head chopped off, you had to bow before them. Japanese lacked a deeper reservoir of self-worth independent of the (mis)fortunes of the physical world, and so, their defeat to American Might was accepted as absolute, like Jim Jeffries groveling at the feet of Jack Johnson and pussy-whipped to the end of his life. It’s no wonder that, even after all these years, Japanese remain a bunch of sappy dogs and toadies to the US. There was Buddhism to be sure as a spiritual off-ramp, but its effect was universal dissolution, not national refuge or holdout. Whereas Judaism offered retreat into ethnic resilience from material defeat, Buddhism taught detachment from everything, even from one’s own people and culture.
The alpha vs alpha confrontation becomes complicated due to contrasting strategies. Rambo is essentially pure alpha as a fully self-reliant warrior if need be. His survival(and vindication if possible) is entirely a matter of his grit, skill, and toughness, with nothing to fall back on. Teasle, on the other hand, has the law and the whole community on his side. That said, it’d be unfair to paint him as a mere coward or weasel. Upon learning of Rambo’s true identity and background(as a first-rate Vietnam soldier), far from backing down, he doubles down with eagerness to prove himself the equal of Rambo in toughness and resolve. He grows even more committed to the hunt than scurrying away like a mouse.
The discovery of Rambo’s true nature only ups the ante for Teasle, increasing the wager in the game of alpha vanity.
Okay, maybe Rambo is a combat expert, but this here is the gool ole USA, and he isn’t up against third-rate ‘gooks’ who can’t shoot straight but red-blooded Americans who, unlike Rambo and other losers who cut and ran from Vietnam, would never quit and give up. At an unconscious level, capturing or killing Rambo might be for Teasle a validation of true patriotism, i.e. in his eyes, Rambo is the ‘Viet Cong’ hiding in the ‘jungle’ while he and his men represent true Americanism washing itself of the disgrace of Vietnam(lost by men like Rambo).
Besides, for all his proficiency as a killer, Rambo is mortal, not divine(though in Part II he might as well be a demigod with a bulletproof chest), and it takes only one bullet to take him out. Indeed, the gun has been the great equalizer, supplying lethal force to the biggest dork against the biggest/toughest guy. Amidst all the pandemonium, Teasle isn’t about to get cold feet on account of Rambo having once been a Green Beret. It’s come-hell-or-high-water for him. His manhood is at stake, not only as a matter of personal pride but public purview.
Whatever modest virtues could be found in FIRST BLOOD(as a semi-thoughtful revision of the Vietnamese experience) were blown to smithereens in the sequel, which makes sword-and-sandals B-movies(made for cheap in Rome) look sophisticated by comparison. An empathy with embittered post-war trauma was traded for meathead militarism, going from dissonant fugue to beating of war drums.
But then, given the nagging self-doubt and disillusionment lingering from the negative vibes of racial tensions, a doomed war, the Watergate scandal, and Carter’s dashed hopes, the RAMBO sequel certainly struck a nerve in a country longing for renewed optimism/narcissism, a ‘Morning in America’ vision where anything was possible with the can-do spirit of positivity restored(or at least sold as marketing slogan). And so, RAMBO became something of a cultural landmark, with even fads like the ‘Rambogram’.
But all things must come to an end, and there was no way something as retarded as Rambology could last for long. The stupor of stupidity was bound to produce a hangover and a new sobriety, which arrived in the form of Oliver Stone’s PLATOON. It was rather surprising because Oliver Stone was himself no slouch when it came to excess(of style, passion, and messaging), like a drunkard leading an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a moralist preaching accountability while doing lines of coke. He was like a cross between Che Guevara and Tony Montana(of SCARFACE), or between Christopher Lasch and Jim Morrison(of The Doors). While clambering onstage as a teller of inconvenient truths, a slayer of falsehoods(however appealing as ‘noble lies’), he himself was prone to ‘storytelling'(or narrative-formation), as confabulating, exaggerating, sensationalizing, and mythologizing were natural to his voracious personality.
Too often, he devoured his subjects than tasted them, a berserk appetite trumping careful appreciation.
He was responsible as screenwriter for the shameless and tawdry MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and the over-the-top SCARFACE remake. It wasn’t so much that the personal was political in his case; rather, the personal was everything: hysterical, epic, all-consuming, with subjectivity conflated with objectivity. Quite likely, Stone projected his own bitterness over a minor drug bust(from which he was quickly bailed out by his Wall Street father) onto the story of an American locked up in Turkey for smuggling hashish(the basis of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS), turning a stark real-life account of captivity into the Passion of the Dope-dealer.
SALVADOR was perhaps Stone’s most confessional work, with James Woods’ character(as his alter-ego) admitting he’s too busy serving himself to save the world. For a political-consciousness-raising film, there’s a good deal of let’s-party atmosphere, as if done in part by the crew of ANIMAL HOUSE. (The visceral in-your-face staging of the rape scene in SALVADOR tilts towards sensationalism, rendering crudely titillating what was meant to be tragic. Brian De Palma met much the same fate with CASUALTIES OF WAR that felt unclean as a morality tale, with the victim used more as a prop for American/male guilt than understood in human terms.) Scorsese had his ‘mean streets’ to Catholicism, and Stone had his ‘midnight express’ to commitment. At the very least, he understood his shortcomings and inbuilt betrayals(given his nature and temptations).
Given Stone’s penchant for excess and indulgence, his worst works have usually resulted from combinations of extremes: Stone and the obnoxious Alan Parker(in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS), Stone and Jim Morrison(in THE DOORS), Stone and Conspiracy Theory(in JFK), Stone and Tarantino(in NATURAL BORN KILLERS), Stone and the insatiable Macedonian(in ALEXANDER), Stone and the stoners(in SAVAGES), whereas the best works anchored his freneticism to the depressive or disciplined weight of the subject matter: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, HEAVEN AND EARTH, and especially NIXON, his masterpiece.
A clear display of Stone’s contradiction is found in WALL STREET that, for all its cautionary messaging against greed, turned Gordon Gekko into an uber-yuppie icon, a Reagan-era superhero whom business graduates aspired to be. (Come to think of it, Stone/DePalma’s supposedly anti-drug movie SCARFACE likely led more people to just-say-yes than just-say-no.)
And, in THE DOORS, where did the myth end and the demystification begin, as the most repulsive features of Morrison were also lionized as the most authentic and awesome? And, there was JFK, where the official myth of the assassination was sieged upon with counter-myths that seemed just as or even more outlandish.
Still, given the sheer idiocy that had engulfed Vietnam revisionism and Cold War hysterics, PLATOON was a most welcome counterpoint, not least because Oliver Stone could back up statement with experience. That fact alone made PLATOON stand out among Vietnam War films, most of which were made by directors, however gifted cinematically, who’d never been anywhere near a battlefield or even fired a gun.
And even though Stone’s directorial prowess ranked well below that of the best — his combustible style compensated for lack of true mastery — , he was sufficiently imaginative and impassioned to carve out a place in the culture.
It’s no exaggeration to say PLATOON was truly the first of its kind. No war film, at least an American one, had been so unflinching in its minutiae of the Vietnam experience: Not just the nerve-racking explosions and sudden torrents of bullets but the daily grind of enduring the humidity, insects, sweat and the stink. Stone closed the distance between the audience and the characters-on-screen. Just as he’d put the actors through a grueling training regimen to make them feel(than merely act) as soldiers, he conscripted the nerve-endings of the audience into the hell-scape of jungle warfare rife with ambush. (The Soviet COME AND SEE came out a year earlier to much acclaim, perhaps comparable in Russia to PLATOON’s in the US. And plenty of film scholars consider it a greater work, if not the greatest war film ever. PLATOON, however, is more effective for its naturalism, i.e. the clarity of details, intimacy of relations, and immediacy of events dissolve the barrier between viewer and soldier, whereas COME AND SEE’s overt expressionism, impressive as it is at times, paints a nightmare scenario that has an oddly distancing effect: War in the Eastern Front as imagined by Goya, a world of gargoyles and monsters, victims and saints, than of people recognizable simply as human.) Stone made the viewer feel the war from inside the soldier: The pain and aches, panic and anxiety, and the pangs of the heart(the final and fragile refuge of what distinguishes man from beast). More than before, it was war shared as experience than seen as spectacle.
After PLATOON, it was embarrassing to even mention RAMBO in the same breath. But the reasons went beyond politics, or pro-war vs. anti-war. PLATOON affected many on the right as well as on the left because it was far more than an anti-war screed. While it showed the horrors and the hatred that American soldiers(carrying as much prejudice as gear in their rucksacks) were capable of, it presented a range of characters, some nobler than others, and also, more interestingly, a range of characteristics within each character, e.g. unnerving but utterly convincing, a soldier who goes psycho with the natives of a village can be the gentlest fellow among his peers.
Instead of the agitprop narrative of evil American baby-killers tormenting the Vietnamese as salt-of-the-earth, the artist-side of Stone showed how enragement(understandable given Viet Cong ambushes and atrocities) could spill over into derangement(war crime territory) in dealing with the locals(as potential collaborators with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army, or NVA). Thus, the film works on two levels: Physical conflict between two armed sides and psycho-spiritual conflict within each soldier to safeguard his humanity amidst the inhumanity that is war.
In a sense, both Sergeant Elias(Willem Dafoe) and Sergeant Barnes(Tom Berenger) are schizoid in their own ways. Elias is a man of conscience, averse to committing atrocities even under immense pressure; he also believes the US deserves a comeuppance for its boundless hubris. Yet, when it comes to soldiering, he’s one of the best, a real killing machine fully committed to destroying the enemy. It’s an extreme case of a two-track mind, like an anti-war activist immersed in the heat of battle(which he even seems to thrill to, short of participating in atrocities). One might expect such a man to be a deserter, conscientious objector, or a joiner of the anti-war protest once his tour of duty is over; however, one gets the sense that Elias will remain in the war as long as it lasts as a kind of personal cross to bear, to serve as a shining exemplar of the Good Soldier who fights with honor and never loses sight of humanity, sort of like Steiner(James Coburn) in THE CROSS OF IRON, a man who has no use for Nazism and no respect for the military aristocracy but who feels responsible to his platoon and lives by a personal code of ‘a man is generally what he feels himself to be.’
The angel-or-devil-on-my-shoulder dichotomy involving Elias-vs-Barnes is somewhat melodramatic, but there’s a good deal of nuance among the varied and diverse personalities. The hard facts of PLATOON relegated RAMBO to the realm of fad, a fatuous one at that, surely one of the biggest beneficiaries of Mass Formation Amnesia. Even conservative types skeptical of Stone’s politics appreciated what he’d tried to do, which was to provoke, challenge, and broaden the sense of shared history. In that sense, characterizing PLATOON as necessarily ‘anti-war’ was misleading. (Incidentally, the French generally regarded the film as jingo-militarist.) The problem, of course, was that the label came to be associated with Hanoi Jane, burning the US flag, waving the NVA flag, spineless Liberals, commie-lovers, and etc., which was why conservatives distrusted with knee-jerk reaction films like COMING HOME, dramatically pre-loaded to target Americanism. The politics of PLATOON, if indeed anti-war, shone from a different angle, casting a critical light on the war but glowing with sympathy for the young men who served, i.e. ‘baby killers’ were among the men but not all the men, not by a long shot. One might say the film was more war-critical than anti-war.
‘Anti-war’ has always been problematic as a branding term. For starters, the meaning can be philosophical or political(especially as pertaining to a particular war). Based on a philosophical(and/or spiritual) principle, one can be anti-war as yet another expression of being opposed to violence in general. Christianity and Buddhism, for example, are intrinsically anti-violence, with pacifism written into their DNA(though in actual practice, it’s been a different matter). Some Christian sects, like the Quakers, have been especially so.
One could be philosophically anti-war without going so far as to adopt pacifism, i.e. concede the moral and/or practical necessity of certain wars without abandoning a generally anti-war position.
Anti-war politics, however, operates differently. Leftists who condemned the Vietnam War commemorated World War II. They were opposed to the US fighting the communists but not the fascists. Among the most reviled in their book were the anti-war ‘Isolationists'(prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor).
There’s no place in politics for anti-war stance as a universal/timeless principle. It’s always a matter of which war and for what reason, be it moral or tribal. Kevin MacDonald noted the discrepancy of Jewish Liberals who opposed the Vietnam War but ecstatically supported Israel’s crushing victory in the Six Day War.
Anti-War Politics is usually ideological or partisan. Naturally, the American Right opposed US interference with Germany’s war against leftist Soviet Union, whereas the American Left called for immediate and total involvement. The advent of the Cold War, however, turned the tables, with rightists being more hawkish, whereas some liberals and many leftists took up anti-war positions on crises such as Cuba, Vietnam, and etc.
Ideological justifications are partly principled, but partisan rationales almost always aren’t, e.g. Democrats opposing wars instigated by Republicans but supporting new conflicts once they’re in charge, and vice versa; or MAGA idiots agreeing with Trump that Biden and Harris were warmongers who had to go but then supporting Trump’s even more egregious war-making. Of late, however, Democrats and Republicans seem broadly united in their endorsements of Wars for Zion. Evidently, the tawdry agenda of Jewish tribal supremacism is the one issue that can transcend party differences.
For a time, brutally realistic depiction of war in cinema was nearly synonymous with anti-war sentiments. Censorship had hitherto hidden the true cost of war in life and limb, rendering the action and agony as heroic and tolerable; even the dying was clean and ‘economic’, without blood spurting and/or lungs screaming in horror. The raw TV news footage of the Vietnam War already had played a role in shifting public perceptions(of the true cost of war) that had been accustomed to Hollywood movies and carefully curated newsreels(once a regular feature in movie theaters prior to mass television viewership).
There was once the promise(hopelessly naïve from today’s vantage point) that heightened depictions of violence via new expressive freedoms would make the public more mindful of the true horrors of war and the like, steering the populace toward diplomatic solutions if not exactly pacifism. After all, hadn’t National Socialist Germany banned ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT for its supposed demoralizing effect on war-making? Granted, Hitler’s regime probably feared the humanist message more than the harrowing details. Think of Jean Renoir’s THE GRAND ILLUSION(also banned in National Socialist Germany) that underscored the brotherhood-of-man(across national, ethnic, and class lines) without much in the way of screen violence.
The problem with messaging the anti-war position via blood-and-guts realism is not only the desensitizing effect of violence(even if well-intentioned or high-minded) but its arousal, which craves, unconsciously if not consciously, for higher dosages. If realistic/gruesome violence is truly off-putting, horror movies, especially flesh-eating zombie ones, would have gone out of business long ago, which most certainly hasn’t been the case. Think of the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO(with its sensationalist shower scene), once shocking but soon overtaken by far bloodier fare.
And BONNIE AND CLYDE, a real game-changer in screen violence, cast a ‘sexual’ spell with its unprecedented blood-letting. Far from the sobering takeaway of “Gee, crime sure doesn’t pay”, many in the audience, especially the young ones, found the orgy of mayhem almost cathartic and liberating. The quasi-ritualistic massacre of Bonnie and Clyde at the end became an object of fetishization(not unlike the execution of St. Sebastian with a slew of arrows), almost certainly an influence on the ending of EASY RIDER with its Counterculture Crucifixion with the blazing motorcycle as the cross.
While the new violence, if handled artistically and responsibly(as opposed to ‘gratuitously’), had its defenders as a sobering demonstration of the true and ugly nature of violence, many viewers, especially younger ones, grew accustomed to the New Norm , with the initial impact and the ensuing discourse(pro and con)soon forgotten.
In time, what might once have been deemed disturbing, thereby inferentially anti-war, became, if not pro-war, sort of ‘awesome’, an integral ingredient of kinetic cinema. THE DEER HUNTER and APOCALYPSE NOW don’t fully qualify as ‘anti-war’ for those very reasons. The battle scenes in APOCALYPSE NOW do not shirk from the ugly and terrifying side of war but also revel in the thrill and excitement, which, if anything, are intensified by the sublime horror.
And, for all of THE DEER HUNTER’s accumulation of the physical and psychological tolls of war, the ultra-violent centerpiece keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, as if spectators of an extreme sport than the dire realities of war, all the more so as the communist enemy are made out to be such absolute villains, the kind that toss grenades into a lair of villagers and then use prisoners as quasi-gladiators in ruthless rounds of Russian Roulette. (Granted, the capitalist Vietnamese/Chinese in Saigon playing the same game suggests the inhumanity may be more racial than ideological, i.e. the Orientals of all stripes don’t respect human life like Americans do.)
Film critics who’d initially greeted the film as a powerful anti-war statement about Vietnam began to wonder if it was really an updated flag-waving pseudo-epic. Its tragic elements seemed to have been taken from other works and draped onto the material than sown to emanate from within, like trees transplanted from other gardens than grown from seeds within the soil.
These complications were all the more reasons for the remarkable achievement of Oliver Stone’s PLATOON. Mere realism, of blood squirting all over, was no longer sufficient to shock the audience, which, over nearly two decades, had grown accustomed to the new violence, not least as a sensationalistic high. Indeed, FIRST BLOOD and the RAMBO sequel were both rated R and full of gut-wrenching violence to the delight of the most unhinged war-lovers.
The only way Stone could up the ante on Stallone was by conveying the sense of unpredictability and vulnerability of soldiers in constant fear of ambush. That element of fragility made all the difference, an acute awareness that being part of the best equipped military force in the world was no insurance against sudden death or horrific injury. In contrast, the sense of invulnerability in the RAMBO universe rendered even the worst violence as mere child’s play, like something in a video game. Oliver Stone’s relentless sustainment of jungle paranoia, perhaps a nod to John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE, is what set PLATOON apart from what had come before(and from which Kubrick may have taken some cues for FULL METAL JACKET).
Another problem is that (anti-war)combat realism is the great equalizer, dissolving the boundary between ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. Now, if a film intends to show that war is hell for all sides, then the point is well made. Undoubtedly, at the ground level, all parties in war consist of soldiers blindly following orders, killing for ‘my country’(without having a say in the matter), and paying the ultimate price as expendable cannon fodder. Even conceding that certain wars were justified as necessary evils against far greater evils, there hasn’t been much to distinguish the wartime experience of one side from any other. Soldiers, regardless of country or ideology, exist mainly to follow orders and operate on the crude principle of ‘better you than me’ in combat.
Whereas the ruling elites have definite reasons(usually geo-political) and distinct incentives(usually racial or class-based) for starting or engaging in wars — like Jewish supremacist rulers of the US who prioritize Israeli hegemony — , the soldiers(or suckers expected to swallow the official narrative) simply must do as told without questioning.
Consider how all these Wars for Israel have been sold to the US public and servicemen as ‘war on terror’, ‘spreading democracy’, ‘defending human rights’, ‘protecting protesters from tyranny’, ‘preventing a nuclear jihad’, and etc. Laughably, the attacks on Iran were initially justified on grounds of instigating political change to liberate the Iranian people, LOL. Through the ages, soldiers were often apathetic or cynical, but many bought the official line hook-line-and-sinker, usually a pack of lies with just a kernel of truth. On occasion, one side does present the substantive, if not the total, truth. Surely, the Iranian government’s account of the war to its countrymen carries far more truth than the slop that the US and Israel have been feeding their populations.
Still, in a war that leads to considerable suffering on both or more sides, soldiers begin to resemble one another despite the political divides. Following World War I, the universalists, humanists, and idealists of various stripes stressed that very point. While there was a sense that Germany had been more responsible than the other participants, there was also the sense that every side bore some blame for the catastrophe that devoured millions of soldiers(as well as civilians) regardless of national origin.
The growing consensus on the Great War was it could have been prevented had the ruling elites been a bit wiser and more temperate, cautiously playing their hands instead of betting the entire house under false, indeed paradoxical, assumptions of the enemy as both a looming existential threat and a push-over to vanquish in no time. (Some mental habits seem de rigueur during war. Russia is at once too weak to defeat Ukraine but on the verge of taking all of Europe. Iran has been totally crushed and is pleading for mercy but remains a global threat with secret nukes that may blow up the US in two weeks.)
The decisions of the rulers, the Proud and the Privileged(as forerunners of the Best and the Brightest), outmoded in their thinking in a new kind of war, sent literally millions of young men to the meat grinder that indiscriminately chewed everyone, regardless of his flag or uniform, into mangled flesh and bone.
Such anti-war convictions never went away but became somewhat problematic with World War II, the central event of the 20th century. Whereas all sides were regarded as partly to blame for World War I as a most unnecessary war, there emerged a clear-cut consensus on World War II as the ‘Good War’, an epic battle between Good and Evil(than merely between better vs worse), one that pitted noble heroes against irredeemable villains(even including civilian populations that apparently deserved Dresden and Hiroshima).
Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were seen as among the worst monsters of history, with the latter being maybe the worst of all time on account of the Holocaust, supposedly unique and unprecedented among the great horrors.
Therefore, even as innumerable books and films about World War II dwelled on the horrors of war(and even atrocities committed by the Allies), the kind of anti-war universalism stemming from World War I was generally frowned upon. The idea that soldiers suffered on all sides might render the Germans and Japanese worthy of empathy(if not sympathy), at least at the troop level. It would imply that, despite Axis leaders being evil incarnate, most men who fought for the Wehrmacht or the Imperial Japanese Army/Navy were more or less like Allied soldiers: Regular Joe patriots (mis)led into serving their countries.
In order for World War II to be canonized as the ‘Good War’, it had to be characterized as a cosmic clash between angels and demons; therefore, it posed a problem to humanize the ‘demons’, even if lowly soldiers following orders or civilians bombed to smithereens.
Granted, the Cold War climate, in which former adversaries of Japan and (West)Germany were semi-rehabilitated as new members of the liberal-democratic camp, did allow for some degree of historical rapprochement — consider Frank Sinatra’s lone directorial effort, NONE BUT THE BRAVE, that humanized Japanese soldiers ‘trapped’ on the same island as the Americans, with whom they agree to a temporary truce — , but the part of the World War II narrative that was set in stone emphasized the utter necessity of the Allied effort and sacrifice(though not necessarily those of the Soviets), and the irredeemable evil of the Axis powers that had to be utterly destroyed or else.
It became the main focal point of moral clarity in the 20th century(especially in the West), perhaps and ironically because American, British, and non-German European hands weren’t so clean either across that period. Even corrupt men feel justified when compared to a serial killer or total psycho — a prison full of robbers, rapists, and murderers will still draw the line between criminals and sickos, e.g. the ‘chomo’ or child molester — , and World War II certainly had that baptismal effect on much of the world; it made even tainted men feel cleansed in comparison to ‘true evil’. Soviet apologists could argue that Stalin, for all his crimes against humanity, did contribute mightily in the defeat of the greatest evil that ever was. And the British and the French, two of the biggest world empires at the time, could pose as victim-heroes or the victim-resistance.
And of course, we can’t overlook the Jewish angle. With eventual dominance over academia and media, Jews went about milking the World War II narrative for all it was worth. With the Holocaust as the foundation of a reconstructed Jewish identity and with Zionism as historical compensation, Germans were collectively cast as a race of Cains, eternally marked with the stain of Jewish blood.
Therefore, the idea that German soldiers, despite their leadership, were essentially like any other soldiers became increasingly anathema — consider the outrage over Ronald Reagan’s visit to Bitburg cemetery where Nazi war criminals were buried(and there’s been endless brouhaha over the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan) — , and perhaps the real tipping point was DIRTY DOZEN that took devilish delight in the mini-holocaust of German officers, i.e. the Teutons are so villainous that even psychopathic criminals may be redeemed by massacring them(and their wives in the bargain) with zero remorse. (Ironically, Jewish supremacists and their pathetic white cucks now exult in genocidal bloodlust all across the Middle East, with the likes of Mike Huckabee doggishly endorsing the vision of total Jewish hegemony over the entire region.)
To further illustrate the World War II exceptionalism even among generally anti-war(and anti-imperialist) ideologues, consider how Oliver Stone, along with collaborator Peter Kuznick, excoriated the ‘Isolationist’ side prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor in THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Apparently, the anti-war position has been the preferable guide to foreign policy EXCEPT when it came to WWII, in which case the only good ‘kraut’ or ‘jap’ was a dead one.
To be sure, the Western-dominant Judeo/Anglo perspective(with its clear-cut us-versus-them distinction) doesn’t equally apply everywhere. Japan and Germany, for example, have produced many World War II narratives in which their soldiers were presented as humans(albeit in doomed ventures) than monsters. Of course, as loser nations, the post-war reconstructions of which were founded on contrition, their novels and films generally accepted the war guilt. Still, the stories dwelled on tragedy and suffering universal to all nations caught up in war, i.e. being on the wrong side of history didn’t make you any less human.
In a way, defeat poses a moral problem for the victorious side. While all sides want to win, it’s generally the case that the losing side suffers a great deal more(though there are exceptions like the USSR in World War II, both the biggest victor and the biggest victim of the war). The Greeks got the glory, but the Trojans got the sympathy(as in THE TROJAN WOMEN). Same with the Romans vs the Hebrews perched atop Masada(or for that matter, the IDF vs Gazans). So, even as the winners write the history as vindication, the losers sing the lamentations of defeat, which pulls at the heartstrings. The North defeated the South in the American Civil War, officially justified on grounds of preserving the Union and ending slavery, but the South got a good deal of moral traction with its tragic song-and-dance, the narrative basis for THE BIRTH OF A NATION and GONE WITH THE WIND. Same goes for the American West. Even those who believe that the Red Savages had to go(to make way for civilization and progress) can’t deny the Indians their tragedy.
While the USSR was the biggest victor of World War II in having done most to defeat Nazi Germany(and then arranging things in Asia so that communists would take over China), the biggest winner was the US in the sense that it gained supremacy over the Atlantic and the Pacific without any harm being visited on the homeland. Imagine that, being the major participant in the war to suffer the least but gain the most. If we measure victimhood in terms of hardship, the horrors visited upon Germans and Japanese far exceeded the sacrifices, mostly economic(such as rationing), of the Americans. But, do Americans want the ‘Krauts’ and ‘Japs’ to win the compensatory war of sympathy? Most felt NO.
Then, it’s understandable why the Good War narrative was all the more indispensable in order to ennoble the Americans over the Germans and the Japanese in World War II. Thus, even the nuking of Japanese cities is rendered justifiable, thereby denying sympathy for the Japanese: Better that actual 200,000 Japanese died in order to spare the hypothetical thousands of US soldier(in an invasion scenario), i.e. what-if deaths of noble Americans trump the real deaths of lowlife ‘Japs’.
As the dominant Jews are less fixated on Japanese war crimes, the humanization of the Japanese in wartime has been less contentious. (Given that Japan, not Germany, attacked the US, this seems rather odd, but then it makes total sense in Judeo-centric America where Jewish feelings matter more than those of any other, i.e. Germans killed Jews, so they’re worse than the Japanese, end of story.) It is why, when exceptional films about the German experience break through, they create a disturbance in the established narrative flow. Consider the remarkable DAS BOOT(directed by Wolfgang Petersen) that featured the ins-and-outs of a U-Boat crew presented first and foremost as men of professionalism and duty(also true of K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER about a Soviet nuclear submarine). There had been a 1957 war movie called ENEMY BELOW, in which the US navy is caught in a cat-and-mouse game with a German submarine; notably, the German crew is portrayed nearly as sympathetically as the American crew, and at the end, the victorious Americans even extend their hand to rescue the Germans from the sinking sub(so at odds with the mentality of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump who crack jokes about drowning Iranians), but such movies increasingly became problematic as the Jewish-ascendant culture increasingly dictated the dehumanization of the Germans.
So, when DAS BOOT hit the US art house circuit, it was a challenge to the American perception of war-time Germans. (CROSS OF IRON by Sam Peckinpah came out earlier but faded at the box office.) Petersen’s film came out in the same year as RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with its usual(or more-than-usual) depiction of Germans as either cartoon villains or shooting ducks.
Even so, DAS BOOT could be rationalized as a humanist observation of men with no say in policy and agenda, men simply doing their duties like the men of any other military; besides, as naval men, they’ve zero chance of killing Jews.
In contrast, DOWNFALL was a real surprise in daring to humanize(though not to be confused with ‘sympathize with’ or ‘validate’) the uppermost figures of the system, the very men who made decisions for the war(and war crimes). Evidently, when a film is inarguably great, as DAS BOOT and DOWNFALL indeed are, the cultural momentum may carry it through despite the nervous reactions and anxious murmurs.
Still, it’s noteworthy that both were made in Germany, unlike LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, a sympathetic depiction of the Japanese war experience by none other than Clint Eastwood. Would any American director dare make a similar film about Germans in World War II? There was VALKYRIE with Tom Cruise, but it made a clear distinction between the Few Good Germans and the Evil Rest. (With Russia as the Big Bad Wolf in the Jewish-dominant US, there may be allowances in the future for movies in which Nazi Germans join up with Ukrainians in a heroic struggle against Soviet Russkies, but then, it would have to overlook the German-Ukrainian cooperation in the anti-Jewish campaigns. But maybe revisionist-fantasy history, the kind in Quentin Tarantino’s INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, will have the good Nazis, Jews, and Ukrainians all joining up to fight the Russian Orcs.)
A real game-changer with what had hitherto been identified as ‘anti-war tropes’ was Steven Spielberg’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the impact of which has gone underappreciated. Spielberg had manhandled Nazis before in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, in which there was nothing anti-war-ish about the violence, with all-American Indy Jones stumbling upon devilishly delightful ways to dispatch cartoonish Nazis. (Both adventures take place prior to the German invasion of Poland, let alone the Holocaust, ironically at a time when the National Socialists and Zionists were sort of collaborating on the Palestinian project.)
Spielberg also made two movies about the Pacific theater, one a delirious action-comedy-spectacular titled 1941 and the other, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, essentially war seen through the eyes of a child. Given the Japanese had no role in the Holocaust, Spielberg was comical about or even fascinated with them. In 1941 the Japanese are a laugh riot, no better or worse than the zany Americans(with John Belushi at the ‘heroic’ helm, perhaps a parody of John Milius), and EMPIRE OF THE SUN conveys to the hilt, without a hint of irony, the boy’s idolization of the Japanese air force. (The Imperial Japanese actually come off better than the civilian Chinese.)
SCHINDLER’S LIST was something new for Spielberg. Even more so than in EMPIRE OF THE SUN, the violence was sobering than sensational, perhaps shockingly so as the audience weren’t accustomed to such visceral and emotional impact from a Spielberg film. It was violence as inescapable and claustrophobic, one where the victim was helpless before his/her fate or hopelessly clinging to the last inch of safe space. Even the wishful dreaminess of earlier ‘serious’ efforts, COLOR PURPLE and EMPIRE OF THE SUN, had no place in SCHINDLER’S LIST in which a victim’s fate was sealed once a Nazi official grabbed his mauser or rifle. (The Spielbergian dreaminess did soak into the Capraesque melodrama that considerably diminished the film as art.)
Though set in wartime, it wasn’t a war film, and the violence, though deeply disturbing, wasn’t intended to support an anti-war or pacifist viewpoint. If anything, the grim detailing of Nazi horrors was meant to enrage the audience toward a full acceptance of the Good War Narrative, i.e. the Germans who did this were so evil that they deserved everything they got in World War II, and furthermore, the great injustice done to the Jews fully justified Zionism — notice the film ends with the survivors in Israel. The character of Schindler was a message to goyim: Only goyim who side with the Jews against their own kind have any value, and of course, this ties into the Zionist project, the support for which comes from white goyim who believe their worth is inseparably linked to their ‘Schindlerian’ utility to the Holy Holocaust Jews. The political morality of MUNICH walks a similar path. Though acknowledging the lethality of Israeli methods, its manifestations are emotionally justified on grounds of the Arabs being the ‘New Nazis’, the kind who would murder innocent Israeli athletes(while totally overlooking what Jews had done to Palestine as the instigator of PLO terrorism).
Now, some may argue that Schindler’s change of heart and his efforts to protect Jews are unrelated to ethnicity, indeed merely acts of decency; but whatever may have motivated the real-life Schindler, the film’s construct of him is as the Useful Good Goy. If indeed Spielberg paid tribute to Oscar Schindler for his universal kindness and sympathy, why is this quality utterly lacking in Spielberg himself who has remained silent about the Gaza Genocide? It appears Spielberg weeps for Jews as victims but will not condemn Jews as victimizers.
Also, throughout the film, Schindler’s transformation incrementally comes about by subtle manipulations by the Jews, especially Judeo-Gandhi played by Ben Kingsley, implying that goy virtue is less a matter of individual conscience than of Jewish psychological games. In other words, Schindler is played like a piano, like the tall blond jock in THE FABELSMAN who is turned from an ‘Anti-Semite’ bully to an emotional bitch of the clever Jew. (Perhaps, the piano in Roman Polanski’s Holocaust film serves the same metaphor.) Spielberg is essentially a Judeo-centrist if not an outright Jewish supremacist(which he probably is as well), and Schindler is lauded not for saving innocent lives but for saving the JEWS. If current Schindlers were trying to save Palestinian lives from IDF death squads, Spielberg would most likely side with the JudeoNazi goons who laugh at the suffering of the Palestinians(in the manner that Nazi thugs laugh at Jewish suffering in the film).
Unlike SCHINDLER’S LIST that was only set in wartime, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was a full-blown war film, notably one that appropriated and amplified what outwardly came across as anti-war conventions. From the beginning of the Normandy scene, the unsteady and fidgety camerawork denies the audience a firm footing on which to observe what’s about to unfold. As such, the audience is made to share in the seasick portentousness of the soldiers about to hit the beach, only for both to be overwhelmed by sudden bursts of violence that leave no time to brace oneself for what’s coming. Spielberg here understood that details matter less than expectation, like a boxer is impacted most by a left hook from nowhere as opposed to a punch he sees coming. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN left the audience feeling exposed, like the soldiers, with no safe hole from which to observe the action. Thus, the senses were pounded flush over and over, forcing the audience to adapt to the unbearable as the true nature of war.
The opening of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, very likely the greatest action scene ever filmed, made PLATOON and FULL METAL JACKET seem like a picnic.
Upon initial impact, the notions of the ‘Good War’, heroism, patriotism, nobility, sacrifice, and/or morality all go up in flames, leaving only the smell of War-Is-Hell lingering in the air. No one watching the first minutes of that scene could possibly feel, “Yeah, I wish I’d been there to serve my country and kill them Nazi bastards.” The violence is so ghastly and horrific that the only message seems to be ‘War is hell’. (But then, precisely because the scene frames US soldiers as the primary casualties of the most intense violence shown on screen, the horror not only frightens but sows the seeds of vengeance in the viewer. A family shown a video of its member being tortured and killed by a serial killer will be overcome with shock and grief, only to be overtaken by vengeful passion, even of the sadistic kind. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN shows the horrors of war but as befalling only on Americans, thereby justifying any amount of American violence as mere counter-horror against the German monsters.)
There was a reason why anti-war tropes were usually reserved for unpopular or unsuccessful wars. While a good many World War II movies did address the darker sides of war, the doubts and misgivings weren’t allowed to overwhelm the collective conviction that, despite the agony and sacrifice, it was all worth it somehow. So even though many more Americans died in World War II than in Vietnam, depictions of war were presented as more hellish(and futile) in the latter conflict, i.e. in line with anti-war attitudes.
Partly, this owed to Vietnam movies having been made in the post-censorship era, but even movies set in World War II made in the same period(such as PATTON) generally followed the same trajectory, presenting the action in the Good War as noble and heroic.
Thus, the anti-war convention has been as much a political tool as a moral instrument, and it’s usually been the case that ‘good wars’, despite being no less harrowing than the ‘bad wars’ for the grunts, have been spared the anti-war treatment.
It took considerable chutzpah for Spielberg to begin SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with just about the biggest barrage of anti-war conventions amassed in film history. Upon clawing onto the beach, the G.I.’s that weren’t gunned down right away scramble for refuge from nonstop hails of bullets and artillery; there’s no time to think or feel, even breathe. For those sold on the Good War narrative, which would be most Americans, the scene posed something of a challenge as no sane person would have knowingly volunteered to be sent to such hell-on-earth.
Yet, Spielberg gradually and steadfastly turned the anti-war tropes on their head. What initially seems like an inescapable death trap begins to open into a series of passages through which to navigate, and the Americans slowly but surely gain the upper-hand. Try hard enough, like the little train that can(go up the hill), and the seemingly invincible Nazis aren’t such ubermensch after all.
Thus, the action goes from terrifying to thrilling(or terrifying to the other side, which is okay as the subhuman Nazis aren’t even human).
Spielberg twists another anti-war trope in the scene of American soldiers committing a war crime by gunning down a couple of surrendering Germans. But given the hellfire visited upon American soldiers earlier, the gravity of the crime hardly registers. This way, Spielberg has it both ways. He could posture as an artist who doesn’t shirk away from the brutalities of war, even those committed by ‘our side’, while also implying that the Germans were so vile that they deserved even the atrocities done to them. (Besides, the surrendering Germans looked particularly unphotogenic, crude and Neanderthal, no great loss reduced to dead bodies.)
After pummeling the audience with the kind of violence(and then some) usually associated with anti-war messaging, Spielberg employed every patriotic, sentimental, nostalgic, and melodramatic trick in the book, often hokey and Norman-Rockwellian, to nudge the audience that war, terrible and unspeakable as it is close-up, is a noble and necessary undertaking(at least if in service to the Jewish agenda) that not only turns boys into men but men into heroes, even wise ones who realize there’s more to life than saving one’s own skin or even fighting for one’s country. There’s also the heroic sacrifice to save or protect the weakest and most vulnerable. You see, they are not merely fighting the dreaded Nazis but on a mission(like the Blues Brothers) to save some poor kid, the last remaining son whose brothers have all been killed. In other words, within the armor of Americanism is a beating heart, one of profound decency, which often goes muted amidst pressures of self-preservation and groupthink but whose murmurs keep calling out to us, as in Frank Capra movies.
The boy Ryan is, of course, meant to signify the Jews. Like Ryan who lost all his brothers, Jews lost so many of their kind at the hands of the evil Germans, and therefore the war isn’t only about the Allies vs the Axis but about a civilization with a heart vs a civilization without one. Bit by bit, inch by inch, the soldiers, initially skeptical of the mission, are won over to its righteousness, and by the end of the film, no amount of bloody horror shown on screen can deter the audience from feeling that it was all worth it, i.e. “Yeah, I would have been honored to have been among the band of brothers on Normandy(and on a mission to save the kid).” Incredibly, Spielberg flipped anti-war-isms into pro-war-isms, and thereafter came a slew of blood-and-guts war films in which the horror actually accentuated pro-war sentiments, with TROPIC THUNDER finally and mercifully blowing the contradictions to bits.
Honest appraisal of war at the ground level leads to only one conclusion: War is hell for all. Whether it’s the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’, it’s all the same when bullets tear into flesh, when bombs explode. However, notwithstanding the most ardent pacifists of the ‘turn the other cheek’ school, no one believes wars should be avoided at all times and at any cost. Generally speaking, ‘anti-war’ positions come with caveats or exception clauses, much like the politics of food. Even meat-eaters recognize the moral costs and limits. ‘Innocent’ animals are slaughtered to provide food for humans. Now, there are those with an ultra-humano-centric view of animals, regarded as existing(or created) mainly for the benefit and pleasure of mankind; some hunters actually enjoy the thrill of gunning, spearing, or shooting arrows at helpless animals with zero consideration for their pain and suffering.
At the extreme other end are the so-called ‘vegans’ who abstain from all animal and animal-related products. Less extreme are the vegetarians who might partake of dairy and eggs. The great majority of people do eat meat but also understand the moral issues involved and duly support ‘humane’ ways of raising and killing animals; some go a bit farther and insist on consuming only free-range-raised animals. Some prefer to eat certain kinds of meat, fish and poultry, while rejecting beef, pork, and lamb, or mammals in general as higher animals. And of course, virtually all people in the West wouldn’t consume dogmeat even if it were the tastiest thing in the world. While meat-eaters aren’t overtly ‘anti-meat’, they do understand and even respect those who make a moral case against the carnivorous diet. What is rejected as practice can be respected as principle.
A similar mental loophole comes into play on the topic of anti-war-ism. Even(and sometimes especially) many in the military are wary of war, like Ron Paul supporters for example. Their patriotism is not to be confused with militarism; they see war as a necessary evil or last resort when all other options have been exhausted, not the primary means of dealing with problems. Many soldiers are anti-war in principle but prepared to fight in necessary wars against real dangers.
All said and done, because war at the soldierly level looks and feels more or less the same on all sides, it’s rather disingenuous to argue against a war based on combat reality. Even among the evil Nazis and villainous ‘Japs’, there were surely men of honor and courage; and even among the ‘good guys’ of the Allies, there were psychos, sadists, bigots, and lunatics(even though DIRTY DOZEN says even the scum of the earth are redeemed by atrocities against Nazis). Also, plenty of men on whichever side, though decent and law-abiding in peacetime, may find themselves doing unspeakable things, what with their moral bearings ground down by the daily horror. It’s like a football game in a storm — splattered in mud, both teams begin to look alike.
Another problem with the anti-war approach(or the appropriation of anti-war tropes) is that they tend to follow the travails of ‘our guys’, thereby making them the object of sympathy and identification whereas the enemy or the other side remains invisible, peripheral, or barely recognizable as human.
It was one of the problems with the films either critical or equivocal about the Iraq War and other military ventures in the Middle East. While hardly rah-rah gung-ho about the war, they lent the false impression that the primary bearers of war’s tragic cost, physical and/or psychological, were the American soldiers.
When a war-is-hell narrative features American soldiers journeying to hell and back, overlooked and forgotten is the far greater suffering visited upon the peoples of the country being invaded and ravaged by the American military-industrial complex at the behest of Neocon warmongers.
But, that is a bug in all anti-war films regardless of national origin. Masaki Kobayashi’s HUMAN CONDITION presents the Japanese war machine in a negative light, but the main objects of sympathy remain the doomed Japanese soldiers, especially as they come under the crushing weight of the Soviet juggernaut. The German film STALINGRAD details how the invasion deep into Russia turned disastrous and tragic, but our sympathy remains with the German soldiers who, faced with encirclement and impending defeat at the hands of the Soviets, seem all too human in their frailty and regret. Soldiers make no decision but bear all the brunt.
Therefore, the only proper way to gauge the political/moral validity of a war is to examine the decisions of those in power and/or with influence(especially in the media). What were their reasons for promoting aggression, declaring a war, initiating a strike, (presumably) preempting an attack, joining in a conflict(begun by others), and etc. Undoubtedly, the best justification for war is the defense of the homeland, so much so that even political orders we may otherwise detest may win our sympathy/support if attacked first. Wars stemming from territorial disputes are less obvious in terms of right-and-wrong but still understandable as national boundaries have been artificially constructed and disputed over, with profound consequences for the security and/or prosperity of the country, especially if the territory in question is rich in natural resources or geographically advantageous. Consider Alsace-Lorraine between France and Germany.
But, as certain powers grow hegemonic with imperial ambitions, the reasons for wars become less ‘existential’ and more ‘exotic’, divorced from the everyday needs of most people and more in tune with the overweening rapacity of the elites grown megalomaniacal.
Now, the elites would have difficulty winning popular support for their aggressions if the reasons were stated candidly: “We wanna be kings of the world.” It is why ulterior motives remain hidden behind the ideological sophistry of the imperial state and the oligarchic press, further fortified by an ever-expanding cottage industry of ‘think tanks’ aligned with academic institutions. There is no clearer example of this than the current Iran War, really the product of maniacal Jewish supremacist hegemonism but marketed under the guise of various ‘noble’-sounding causes.
It is with wars such as the current one(with Iran) that the usual logic of anti-war-ism breaks down. If wars are to be avoided as hell-on-earth, then Iranians should be the ones suing for peace as they’ve suffered considerably while the US remains unscathed. Yet, Iran is fully justified in fighting this war despite the huge cost in lives and infrastructure, whereas the US has no good reason at all.
The horror of war cannot be the decisive factor from the Iranian perspective.
Ultimately, Iran is in the right as a target of a perfidious sneak attack, a war of aggression, by the evil twins of the US and Israel motivated by genocidal Jewish supremacist power-lust. The anti-war position is valid only from the Western perspective, i.e. not only was the US-Israeli aggression unjustified but the unjust war has caused great harm to the Iranian people(and others in the region).
In terms of destructive proportionality, the Iran War is somewhat like the Pacific War. The US destroyed far more of Japan than vice versa, and the US is currently destroying far more of Iran(and even slaughtering untold numbers of civilians) than the other way around — at the most, Iran can take out some US military bases in the region. But the Pacific War is still remembered as the ‘Good War’, whereas only a moral retard would deem the current one as such. It’s because Japan was then a ruthless imperialist power that lost control of its destiny, was driven to desperation, and became embroiled in a doomed war. Japan wasn’t some innocent sitting duck picked on by the US.
In contrast, Iran didn’t pick this fight and had always been open to a diplomatic solution. Not only did the US and Israel initiate a clear-cut war of aggression, but their motivations are as vile as those of Nazi Germany. The White West, especially the Anglo-Germanosphere, totally cucked to Jews as the rightful master race and committed itself to appeasing and satiating the bloodlust of vampiric Jewish power.
Therefore, the question of pro-war or anti-war in this case, as in most other cases, comes down to the nature of the ruling elites, their ideology and agendas. The war with Iran is simply the product of Jewish supremacist control of the US and its hegemonic ambitions over the entire Middle East(with profound implications for Russia and China as well).
When it comes to the matter of war, always focus on the powers-that-be above all, especially in our day when the elites and their children face zero chance of dying in foreign wars. At least when the West was ruled by the aristocratic warrior caste and/or conscripted men from all classes, there was a fair chance of the elites dying alongside the proles and peasants in wars. Thus, there was some overlapping of elite and mass involvement, tragic or triumphal, in wars as patriotic collective endeavors. In our time, however, the Western elites, Jews and white cuck flunkies, remain untouched by war while Third World peoples comprise most of the dead, along with some US soldiers of modest backgrounds.
Unfortunately, most anti-war novels and films focused on the raw horrors on the ground than on the hidden secrets at the top. Stanley Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY and DR. STRANGELOVE are exceptions of sorts, but the former fixates on the egotism of the top brass while the latter excoriates the paranoia of a rogue general. Surely, most wars are not caused by personal vanity or private madness. Rather, there’s a consortium of moneyed interests, imperial ambition, tribal arrogance, and/or ideological fervor.
The ideological factor tends to be most dangerous in the revolutionary phase of a political order, but it eventually recedes in favor of more worldly motives and timeless drives(of human nature).
Most anti-war films about Vietnam were about death and mayhem, soldiers returning in body bags or consigned to wheelchairs. Anti-War films have tended to be medical than legalistic, i.e. they diagnosed the physical and/or psychological toll on the soldiers than presented a case against the ruling elites.
Why hasn’t an anti-war film been made about America’s involvement in Vietnam connecting and detailing the various forces in government and industry(that as readily profits from guns as from butter)? In the 21st century, one of the few exceptions was W.(based on the presidency of George W. Bush, especially in relation to the Iraq War) by Oliver Stone, but even that dig deep enough.
Generally, the more damning anti-war films have been documentaries like THE FOG OF WAR(Errol Morris), FAHRENHEIT 9/11(Michael Moore), and THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER(Eugene Jarecki), though they too skirted around certain issues, especially pertaining to Zionist/Jewish influence.
Now, we move onto RED DAWN written and directed by John Milius. Even more than FIRST BLOOD, Milius’ movie seethes with, even reeks of, Viet Cong envy. Essentially, the movie is based on a kind of role-reversal, with red-blooded ‘rural’ Americans, under occupation by foreign imperialists, engaging in guerrilla resistance. Basically, the Soviet invaders play the role of Americans in Vietnam whereas small-town Americans play the role of the Viet Cong.
One can’t deny the movie’s cleverness(as a political thought-experiment) and imagination(bordering on ‘vision’), hallmarks of Milius as one of the bolder personalities of New Hollywood. But, neither can one deny the disingenuousness and willful stupidity, deficiencies running throughout most of Milius’ output as writer and/or director.
Milius has been a lot smarter, thoughtful, and empathetic than his self-professed gung-ho antics would suggest but also a lot stupider than he needed to be.
At once, RED DAWN challenges American hubristic assumptions about its national myths and neo-imperial role in the world and indulges them to the max. It’s hard to think of a movie so simultaneously committed to opening up and shutting down the mind.
At the more provocative level, RED DAWN encourages Americans to rethink their experience in Vietnam, i.e. maybe we were the ‘bad guys’ from the vantage point of the Vietnamese who fought on the basis of ‘because we live here’, their homeland of rice farms and jungles. By featuring US guerrilla-resistance fighters as the heroes in the movie, the implication is that the Viet Cong were heroes in their own right. Besides, wasn’t the American Republic founded on the myth of resistance against the British Empire? Did Americans, in becoming the denizens of a new empire in what came to be known as the ‘American Century’, forget the lessons of their origins? RED DAWN reverses the first-world vs third-world dichotomy by forcing Americans into the third-world position, mounting a resistance by the skin of their teeth against what appears to be the more powerful Soviet empire.
In retrospect, it’s hard to ignore the howling irony. The movie’s small town patriot-heroes who fight to their last breath against communism are exactly the type of Americans whose livelihoods would be sacrificed in the coming decades by the Uniparty consensus on ‘free trade’ and globalism cooked up by winner-takes-all ultra-capitalists with zero concern for rural white working class America.
One thing for sure, the Jewish Milius doesn’t seem to have been a Buchananite who came to realize the dangers of unfettered capitalism by way of anti-national globalism, instead sticking with the Rush-Limbaugh talking points that pitted rightism-capitalism against leftism-socialism. In contrast, Oliver Stone did sense that the entrenched ideological categories were giving way to something else.
Despite the thought-provoking role-reversal in RED DAWN(with Americans in the Viet Cong role), the movie also encourages far simpler responses that overlook critical reevaluation. It indulges in American self-pity by pirating the experiences of another country, Vietnam, which was ravaged by the American war machine. If one side of Milius opens up new possibilities of narrative and intellect, another side just as readily slams the door on anything complicated.
For the flag-wavers, the main intended target audience, the movie presents a stark division of the world between Good Americans and Evil Commies(along with suspicious Third Worlders and cowardly Europeans). Soviets are out for world conquest, Europeans lack spine to stem the threat, and the Third World, mired in poverty, corruption, and/or dysfunction, gravitates toward the communist world against Americans who are barely hanging by their fingernails.
Thus, Americans are the last folks on Earth standing against the new Dark Age of communist tyranny, especially as the Soviet commies seem to have galvanized much of Latin America against the Yanquis or Gringos.
There are two levels of conflict in the movie. One is global, an epic struggle between two dominant systems, capitalist-democratic and communist-totalitarian, vying for the destiny of the world. The other is local, partly patriotic(pro-American and pro-liberty) but also partly tribal and communal. Like the men in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, there is a distinction between turf and country(or empire); the British authority, still in control of the colonies, insist on unity in service to ‘God and country’, but the local men feel that their own families and lands come first as the foundation of their own liberty and property, sort of like Sonny Corleone reprimanding brother Michael, “Your country ain’t your blood, remember that” in THE GODFATHER PART II.
Even though the distinction isn’t as starkly etched in RED DAWN, there’s a sense that the resistance is as much a local/communal fight as a national/global struggle. Perhaps, it was an expression of Milius’ Jewish-Americanism. Notice when Jews often talk about ‘American Interests’, there’s a hidden layer of Jewish interests that aren’t necessarily aligned with the broader national ones. And in APOCALYPSE NOW the figure of Kurtz, who initially served as an agent of the empire, embarks on a mission of his own making with himself as the head of a tribe.
The element of self-pity in RED DAWN is offensive, downright indecent and perverse within the historical context. It’s like some big kid beating up a little kid and then making believe he’s the poor victim of bullying. The American mainland was never attacked, let alone invaded, for as long as anyone could remember. If anything, the US empire has been trampling all around the world, slaughtering scores of people with bombs and bullets. Yet, RED DAWN allows Americans to indulge in the fantasy that they are the hapless natives being invaded, terrorized, and tyrannized.
In other words, everything the US did around the world, especially in Vietnam, is repackaged as wrongs done to the poor, innocent, and noble Americans who simply want to live on the lands of their forbearers. It was a total inversion of the historical reality at the time of the movie’s release, a mindset that grew even more obnoxious following the Cold War’s end, with Zionist-US empire crying out in pain as it struck the world.
Just when the US was supplying arms to both Iraq and Iran to maximize the mass slaughter between Arabs and Persians, as well as ramping things up in Central America to prop up US puppets, Milius’ movie pushed the fantasy of the US being occupied not only by the Soviets but the children of Che Guevara. It’s like Jewish Zionists destroying neighboring countries but always playing the victims ‘defending themselves’. It’s like the Jewish-run New York Times (mis)characterizing the Iranian resistance against the US-Israel War of Aggression as an ‘escalation’ of conflict.
Of course, RED DAWN can be chalked up as political fantasy, i.e. not to be taken too seriously, but it cannot be as easily dismissed as the RAMBO sequel, which is too retarded for words, little more than a live-action cartoon.
In contrast, RED DAWN was made with some degree of complexity, irony, and even subtlety. And the still relatively young Milius was a student of history, politics, and art cinema. So, whereas the RAMBO sequel is simply dumb, RED DAWN is smartness put to dumb use.
Take for instance the depiction of the Soviet occupiers. Initially, they come across as a bunch of Slavic boors, hardly different from the Mongol hordes that once terrorized much of the known world. But, the Soviets are also capable of revising their tactics and decide to install a new leader who works towards, if not winning the hearts and minds of the Americans, not alienating them so much.
This was clearly inspired by the character of the French colonel Philip Mathieu in THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, a film that is clearly on the side of the Algerian cause but nevertheless gives its due to the more creative(and relatively humane) Frenchmen who sought to resolve the conflict with a smarter strategy. The allusion showed that Milius knew his film history, as well as historical complexities, and possessed empathy, essential to any thoughtful narrative. Furthermore, there is a Cuban commander who feels caught between the gringos(as the Old Boss) and the Soviets(as the New Boss).
Thus, RED DAWN is at once a work of considerable complexity and shameless simplicity, with Milius both challenging and indulging the gung ho ideology of red-meat patriotism. Milius was into self-glorification as both warrior and philosopher — once, he characterized himself as a ‘Zen-Fascist’ — , and it may explain his contrasting(or confused) modes as storyteller. The philosopher side of him raised questions and challenged dogmas while the warrior side demanded action and commitment.
The role of warriors isn’t to think as an army made up of philosophers would be like the Greece vs Germany soccer game in the Monty Python skit. Milius, in his own way, in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway and Yukio Mishima, sought to square the man of thought with the man of action, running into the timeless problem wherein thought ends where action begins. What the Dennis Hopper character says of Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW might as well have applied to Milius’ image of himself: “He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense.”
That very quirk has made Milius one of the most exasperating, as well as commanding, figures of the Movie Brat generation. He’s either too smart to be wallowing in stupid shit or too stupid to be taking on smart ideas. Given his demonstrable talents, the problem is likely the former, i.e. Milius willfully undercut his true potential to posture as a right-wing pop-Hemingway. Oliver Stone suggested as much in relation to CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Milius, for all his smarts and cultural/historical erudition, fell back on swords-and-sandals cliches than attempted an original take. But then, Milius’ approach suited the source material(comic book), certainly vindicated by box office receipts.
Milius’ willful immaturity, often against the grain of achieving full potential, has been a common feature among his generation, perhaps due to having come of age amidst Youth Culture that discouraged or staved off adulthood, a ‘maturophobia’ anticipated by THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and in full display in THE GRADUATE. What a difference a few years makes. Consider that Francis Ford Coppola was separated from George Lucas and John Milius by only five years, but that made the difference between THE GODFATHER and STAR WARS. Or maybe it had something to do with Italian-ness, i.e. Italian-Americans, generally being more traditional and family oriented, were less affected by Youth Culture than some other groups were. Think of Martin Scorsese who, despite his attraction to the Counterculture, also felt the equal and opposite pull of the Italian-American community and the Catholic Church.
Contradictions abounded with exposure to the wider range of possibilities of New Hollywood and International Cinema, the best of which were deemed superior as art. If legacy Hollywood remained mired in genre conventions(catered to mass tastes or presumed thereof), the new liberties meant a chance for American Cinema to finally grow up, catching up to the higher standards established by the best of European(and Japanese) cinema. It meant filmmakers could be more original, personal, and truthful, less compromised in their visions.
But, here was the rub. Whoever said increased freedom necessarily guaranteed seriousness, maturity, and integrity? Greater sexual frankness could mean American culture finally growing out of its stunted ‘puritanism’, i.e. being less hung up on matters of sensuality, like the supposedly sophisticated and intellectual Europeans. However, what came to be known as ‘adult entertainment’ was simply pornography, or sexuality turned into fast food.
The great irony is that Old Hollywood, though resistant to attempts at creative maturation, had generally crafted works targeted for adult audiences, whereas New Hollywood, despite the wider range of styles and subjects, increasingly pandered to youthful sensibilities. New Hollywood possessed the freedom to be either more adult or more childish than Old Hollywood, and the latter tendency eventually won out. While no one would name the ANIMAL HOUSE as representative of New Hollywood, one can connect the dots from the raunchy flick to the changes originating in the late Sixties. Strip M*A*S*H of its satirical content(or conceit) and edgy attitude, and you have the John Landis movie that is cozy in its uncouthness, like a pig in a sty.
The hope that reduced inhibitions would lead men and women to grow into healthier and more natural adults, unperturbed by neuroses of sexual repression, soon became an afterthought in a culture increasingly inundated by pathological pornification of everything, a prime example of which is ‘twerking’ as the quintessential expression of ‘Western Civilization’ in the 21st Century.
For all the informal declarations of principles among the major New Hollywood personalities, what if ‘the boys just wanna have fun’ or ‘party all night long’? Old Hollywood hampered artistic development but at least had the salutary effect of curtailing excessive self-indulgence and shameless vulgarity.
BIG WEDNESDAY, Milius’ semi-autobiographical variation on AMERICAN GRAFFITI(a runaway success for George Lucas), was a clear illustration of the gap between contrasting sensibilities. On the one hand, Milius clearly wanted to make a personal film like no other, sensitive and truthful, nostalgic but reflective, and with creative liberties inconceivable only ten years prior.
Yet, much of the film is stuck in a childish mentality, its juvenile antics making Frankie-Avalon-and-Annette-Funicello beach movies thoughtful by comparison. It’s one thing to candidly reflect on one’s immature years, an inescapable phase of growing up, but quite another to wallow in them as if they amounted to anything worth flaunting to the world. With his semi-autobiographical film, Milius had a stab at personal filmmaking but delivered little more than a prankish bag of jokes. Martin Scorsese, being more contemplative, did develop into a genuine artist. One need only compare MEAN STREETS with BIG WEDNESDAY.
Of course, Scorsese, like Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma(on his good day), is a natural filmmaker, whereas John Milius could, at best, be a learned one, along with fellow writer Paul Schrader. A learned filmmaker, no matter how accomplished, cannot match a natural filmmaker, just like a learned musician who crafts tunes cannot match a natural composer who snatches melodies from the air. Given that cinematic genius is a rare thing, a proficient learned filmmaker is nothing to sneeze at. Clint Eastwood, never a natural filmmaker, mastered the craft, rightfully earning his place in movie history. The problem with Milius and Schrader is that, unlike Eastwood and others, they aspired to be personal artists, in other words more than mere professionals. As it turned out, their forte was the turn of phrase than the stream of images.
It’s no wonder that the notion of ‘auteur’ was developed to address the strange phenomenon of cinema, a complex collaborative art of contested credits. Famous writer-directors have been relatively rare for the simple reason that excellence tends to fall into narrow categories, e.g. a great gymnast is unlikely to be a great swimmer, a great composer is unlikely to be a great painter, and etc. If it’s rare enough for someone to be good with words or with images, imagine the rarity of someone who’s equally adept with both words and images. (Furthermore, true originality in writing involves not only plot devices and dialogue but the imagination for fresh scenarios, a talent that even most first-rate writers lack, which is why they fall back on genres and conventions.)
Generally, the finest directors aren’t writers(though some collaborate in the writing), and the finest writers don’t make the best directors. There have been some great writer-directors, most notably Ingmar Bergman, but their directorial prowess don’t stand toe-to-toe with that of the greatest directors.
As for the most gifted directors, they can do magic with images and sound(nearly as important in the overall effect), but they don’t have it within themselves to imagine and construct a universe of their own making. Take Roman Polanski, brilliant at working with good material but usually trapped in a cul-de-sac with his own ideas. Or Francis Coppola, a peerless gardener with fertile material, like THE GODFATHER and the first hour of APOCALYPSE NOW, but meandering with his own material or second-rate stuff. If talented writers like Milius and Schrader are better off handing their scripts to better directors, most gifted directors are better off sticking to material suited for their styles and sensibilities.
It explains the fascination with the likes of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino who, despite their uneven output, possess enviable chops as both writers and directors(though with the Coens it’s hard to tell who did exactly what). (Writing is usually associated with a knack for dialogue, a key component to be sure, but no less important is the creation of striking characters and memorable situations and to go even further, an entire universe, as Lucas did with the STAR WARS saga. In that sense, despite his dim ear for dialogue, Lucas is one of the biggest writers in movie history. It’s hard to think of another filmmaker who created a world of his own. James Cameron’s AVATAR is a mere imitation.)
David Cronenberg and David Mamet, along with Woody Allen, also come to mind as formidable writer-directors, but they’ve tailored their visuals to suit their specific ideas, generally lacking or rejecting the free-flowing possibilities of Tarantino’s amusement parks and the Coens’ pinball machines. While in terms of directorial talent alone, Tarantino and the Coens are well below Scorsese, Spielberg, and Kubrick, they have the rare firepower combo as writer-directors.
Another big universe-creator was John Boorman, a true visionary with ZARDOZ, a film mercilessly ridiculed and dismissed upon release but eventually a cult favorite, albeit not only among genuine admirers but among those into ‘camp’. ZARDOZ is as audacious in universe-building as STAR WARS is but with far darker themes of dubious mass appeal. Like Lucas and Milius, Boorman was obsessed with the mythic, with the key difference that, whereas Milius magnified the hero or the warrior-prophet, Boorman emphasized the process, the (Oswald) Spenglerian cycle of life and death of entire systems, i.e. the fall of civilization may be a great loss but what grows old must decay and die in order for renewed vitality to grow shoots from the ground. There’s where the similarities between Boorman’s THE EMERALD FOREST and Milius’ FAREWELL TO THE KING end. For Boorman, ‘great men’ are simply actors in the cycles of rises and falls, the ultimate truth of man and nature.
Given the formative influences of the Sixties and Seventies(that underwent profound socio-cultural changes), the emerging talents developed multi-faceted tastes and contradictory tendencies. Spielberg was the child of John Ford and Walt Disney, inspired by Cecil B. DeMille but also aspiring to be like David Lean and Akira Kurosawa. He made his name and fortune as a wunderkind of movie magic but also craved respect as a serious filmmaker. In an earlier period, he might have been content with mass entertainment, but like others of his generation he caught the ‘auteur’ bug. Likewise, George Lucas’s career has been a contentious mishmash of competing sensibilities. He emerged on the scene as an avant-garde experimentalist whose first attempt, THX 1138, was one of the most audacious science fiction films ever made, so ahead of its time that even the art-conscious Film Generation didn’t get it. Francis Coppola took him under his wing as his right-hand man in the dawning transformation of the cinematic landscape — Lucas did eventually change the playing field but not in the way his peers expected.
Directors like John Ford had a clearer sense of their place in their industry and their creative perimeters. Ford didn’t pander to kiddie tastes, but then neither did he claim to be a Serious Artist. He stuck to the familiar fare of ‘middle-brow’ entertainment, regardless of genre, for grown-ups.
In contrast, the younger talents among New Hollywood developed a ‘post-modern’ outlook, a wide-ranging eclecticism open to everything from children’s entertainment to European art house(as with Rock musicians). The sheer diversity of tastes, styles, and sensibilities could spark new ideas but also breed confusion and self-delusion.
The inspiration for STAR WARS, for instance, was drawn from the rich heritage of mythology & religion(especially as interpreted by the scholar Joseph Campbell) and well-regarded science fiction literature but also based on stuff like FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS(and increasingly pandered to the SESAME STREET crowd). Thus, it was at once more serious and less serious than the works of John Ford and his contemporaries. And even though Lucas invested virtually all of his time and energy into churning out more sequels of STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES, his origins in avant-garde filmmaking remained as a self-justifying conceit, i.e. the STAR WARS was no less an expression of personal vision.
Partly, it was a generational thing. Filmmakers who’d come to prominence earlier had a firmer sense of who they were and what their works were about. John Ford famously quipped, “My name is John Ford. I make Westerns.” Now, Ford did much more than that, but it was his way of saying he understood his limitations(as well as his strengths, of course); he wasn’t trying to be the Shakespeare or Dostoevsky of cinema.
The next generation of directors began to alter the formula and broaden possibilities but nevertheless retained a well-defined sense of purpose(that informed the style) bound to maturity and conviction. Think of Richard Brooks, Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah, Sidney Lumet, and etc.
But the generation that followed, fairly or not labeled as the ‘Movie Brats’, were blessed with unprecedented freedom but then suspended in a youthful limbo averse to making up its mind one way or another. John Milius, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas all professed to be great admirers of Akira Kurosawa, but the difference was that Kurosawa was invariably Kurosawan(across different genres) whereas the ‘Movie Brats’ tended to be all over the map, either due to the confusion of sensibilities or profusion of choices. The Lucas of THX 1138 is hardly detectable in the Lucas of STAR WARS. One knowing no better would likely assume different directors made them.
A key factor was the realization of unprecedented riches to be made from so-called ‘blockbusters’, something hardly on anyone’s mind in the early Seventies when the Movie Brats began to emerge as a force. That Spielberg changed the business with JAWS isn’t surprising given his preference for Old Hollywood(of Disney and DeMille, Hawks and Hitchcock).
With Lucas and the even bigger game changer of STAR WARS, it was something of a surprise as Lucas had gotten his start as a partner of Francis Coppola at the independent studio Zoetrope in favor of the ‘auteur’ and personal filmmaking; indeed, he was originally slated to direct a highly experimental approach to APOCALYPSE NOW. But, he projected his dreams onto a galaxy far far away and suddenly found himself, one of the key figures of New Hollywood, in the shoes of a mogul-in-the-making.
While the Movie Brat crowd mostly remained on good terms with one another, there was a sense of betrayal, especially in the case of Lucas. Milius grumbled too but not too much. Lucas and Milius had exchanged points between STAR WARS and BIG WEDNESDAY when, incredibly enough in retrospect, many had thought the latter would be a bigger hit. Milius sure made off like a bandit with those points. If ‘money talks and bullshit walks’, Lucas and Yoda, along with Spielberg and E.T., were the masters of the universe.
But then, for all his maverick posturing, Milius was more like Lucas than he was willing to admit. CONAN THE BARBARIAN, a big hit for Milius, was surely no less fantastic than STAR WARS. And RED DAWN essentially pandered to neo-patriotic paranoia fashionable at the moment.
Even conceding that Milius delivered a work more intelligent and engaging than what most directors would have done with the same material doesn’t negate the fact that it aimed low than high, wrapping political fears and patriotic zeal into a happy meal for the young ones. Sort of like THE OUTSIDERS meets RAMBO.
Milius shared with Lucas the tendency to underestimate or underachieve one’s true potential. Lucas failed to fully appreciate what he might have achieved with the STAR WARS universe, ultimately settling for shiny space fantasy for the young ones(including toddlers). He could have been a visionary mythmaker but opted for a mercenary toymaker. Milius started out with ambitions to be America’s Homer, a modern poet of war and peace, but the hunger turned into satiation, self-satisfaction(with machismo antics) bordering on smugness.
As comparison, consider Ernest Hemingway whose stories never took anything for granted. Like Milius, Hemingway spun tales of hunters, soldiers, and adventurers but always alert to the threats and dangers(the real kind) of a cold hard world oblivious to man’s strivings and his codes. The nobility of Hemingway’s heroes derives from their perseverance in the face of this indifference, like in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.
In contrast, Milius’ worldview tended toward immature yearnings of dominance, i.e. if one wills it hard enough, the world just might bend over and cater to one’s desires, like the Genie for Aladdin. It’s like the Mr. Atlas ad(in comic books) where some scrawny guy humiliated on a beach builds up his muscles and becomes top dog in no time.
One can’t help thinking Milius led a rather privileged life and never faced a true challenge that forced him to reevaluate his adolescent presumptions. For all his experience as a surfer and carouser(or jock) — despite being Jewish, he likely hung around the kind of big tall goyim who tormented Steven Spielberg as a kid — , he was never tested like Hemingway in World War I and Oliver Stone in Vietnam, men whose theory of manhood was hazed with the practice of reality.
Granted, one can have an uncanny feel for the thing even without direct knowledge, but Milius’ alpha baggage usually smothered such a keenness of intuition. Milius could have been much more if not so besotted with alpha male braggadocio(of his fantasy alter egos if not his own), but he usually sold himself short by indulging his fantasies than testing and breaking them.
One thing that his martial-oriented vision did anticipate was how the elements of the Counterculture could be appropriated or flipped on their head to serve the new militarism. Indeed, the title of APOCALYPSE NOW was an inversion of the hippie mantra of ‘Peace Now’ or ‘Nirvana Now’. Incredibly, the boomers would grow old into the most pro-war generation. Just about the only demographic group cheering on Trump’s mad antics around the globe are the boomers.
The sad, even pathetic, fate of George Lucas owed to the Peter Pan syndrome. Like Michael Jackson, he got everything he wanted and cocooned himself in a personal Neverland. Surrounded by yes-men and minions, he was bereft of the challenges that might have piqued his curiosity. And given the sheer scale of his business empire, he came to rely mostly on formulas to keep the money flowing. Emotionally, he aged backwards, sounding almost infantile in his old age, all the more painful to watch as he seemed deluded in his self-justifications. He’s become like one of those fake Kung Fu masters doted on by his followers and convinced of his magical powers. Jedi Master Lucas. (In contrast, Spielberg did try to move beyond what made him rich and famous, not entirely convincingly or successfully, but he did grow as a filmmaker.)
Even though Milius didn’t regress to childhood mentality in the manner of Lucas, he generally failed to mature and go beyond the macho mythos of his early adulthood, thereby lacking the breadth of Oliver Stone or even the gritty qualities of Walter Hill who, at his best, joined the ranks of the greats, especially with THE LONG RIDERS; but then, unlike Milius, Hill was a natural filmmaker.
Walter Hill and John Boorman grasped what eluded Milius: Ultimately, the test of manliness is about urgency, necessity, and resilience/resourcefulness within harsh limitations, borne painfully against intractable reality. Man relies on the power of myth precisely because he cannot overcome the greater power of matter; it’s the myth that keeps him striving against futility, making him both a hero and a fool.
In contrast, the world of Milius is more about myth-and-myth than myth-vs-matter.
Instead of man testing the limits of myth against matter(like Burt Reynold’s character in DELIVERANCE who goes from alpha hunter to whimpering baby), we have myth using man to demonstrate its illusory mastery over matter. Instead of an image of what a man may bear and overcome against the odds, a pop-mythic ideal of heroism is imposed onto the world as its deferential stage. (RED DAWN is something of an exception as the boys all come to a sad end, but still, what they’re able to achieve against all manner of Soviet hardware is simply breathtaking.)
It’s not that Milius fudged on what his heroes are up against. Indeed, more than in most action movies, they encounter all kinds of dangers, get battered, and groan aplenty, but it’s all in the feel-good school of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, an indulgence of than a challenge to juvenile fantasies of manhood. As such, it’s about on the level of TARZAN fantasies. Because the myth is paramount, the Milius’ demigod hero is predestined to triumph, if only to prove Milius’ point.
Now, it may be true that most violent narratives are unrealistic because the good guys usually win. Even in the grimmest and most historically accurate Westerns, the good guys almost always ride into the sunset. The good guys win in SEVEN SAMURAI, though at the cost of four swordsmen. The fellas prevail in DELIVERANCE, and Dustin Hoffman’s intellectual is the last man standing in STRAW DOGS. Still, the victory seems attained with every sinew of strength and every spark of wit, with just a pinch of luck.
In contrast, Milius’ FAREWELL TO THE KING is preordained to validate the Great White Man pop theorem. There’s a lot of struggle and suspense, some of it well-done, but everything has been prepped to confirm Milius’ ‘philosophical’ vision. Thus, it comes across more like professional wrestling than real wrestling. It’s action choreographed to validate a viewpoint, a fanciful one at that.
What differentiates childhood mentality from adulthood mentality is the former expects the world to conform to its wishes(the denial of which may produce tantrums), whereas the latter acknowledges reality as resolutely independent of one’s will. If science-fiction is more adult than fantasy and superhero genre, it’s because problems must be approached with knowledge, skill, and logic within defined limits than by invocation of magic or possession of outlandish power, the stuff of childhood imagination.
Children think the world revolves around them but eventually mature to revolve around the world. But what happens when one gets to recreate a quasi-childhood universe, like Michael Jackson’s Neverland or George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch? Thus goes the impetus for further growth as their idealized surroundings cater to their childish whims, leading to a kind of ‘Benjamin Button’ effect.
Milius developed considerably beyond George Lucas but on some level clung to his comic book fantasies, which were serviceable and amusing enough in his role as script doctor for action vehicles in the Seventies but ultimately checked his growth into a true artist. There’s ample intelligence and inspiration in all of his major projects, far more interesting than just about anything associated with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, James Cameron, and etc., but also the nagging sense that he sold himself short by holding onto his toy pistols.
Indeed, that was one of the challenges confronting Francis Coppola on APOCALYPSE NOW, which Milius approached as both a hard-nosed artist and soft-headed romantic.
Ultimately, Milius has been more about fascination with than loyalty to any power(except that of his own imagining). He’s thrilled by the idea of empire and overreach, expanding the boundaries of possibility, but also keen on the idea of resistance, the fearsome courage against the biggest odds. He’s both Goliathan and Davidian. In RED DAWN, he’s with the American local yokel resistance against the mighty Soviet Empire. But, during the Vietnam War he tried to enlist and serve the US empire against the local ‘gooks’ but was rejected for medical reasons. Still, his view of America’s involvement wasn’t as simple as one might have expected given his right-wing and Heinlein-like militarist politics. Unlike most pro-war types, he also harbored a great respect for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces waging a resistance campaign against the American Empire. As a right-wing American patriot, he wanted the good ole USA to defeat the commies. But as a ‘Zen Fascist’, he could understand why the Vietnamese fought as hard as they did: “Because we live here.”
If Milius were transported to ancient times, one could imagine him being awed by the Roman legions but also cheering for the scrappy Zealots burning with resistance-chutzpah against the biggest empire the world had ever seen. Does this make Milius confused? Or complicated, i.e. thoughtful and empathetic on the complexities of history comprising endless conflicts among tribes, nations, and empires?
This element of empathy might be deemed the saving grace of Milius, something that elevates him from lunkhead jingoists who can’t think and feel beyond ‘my country right or wrong’(like the moral idiot and emotional retard Pete Hegseth). Take Milius’ view of American History. One of his heroes is Theodore Roosevelt, a man of words and action, who talked the talk and walked the walk, a warrior and adventurer as well as politician and gentleman.
Power is never static and always unpredictable, and its momentum may seem unstoppable, that is until met or reversed with counter-force or undone by sudden inertia from within, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. It has been so with the rise-and-falls of the Romans, Genghis Khan’s Mongols(about whom Milius developed a project never realized), and of course the Americans(as direct heirs of Anglo expansion). Empire builders extraordinaire.
But, Milius also wrote the screenplay, a sympathetic(but also tough-as-leather) treatment of the life and times of the Apache warrior chief Gernonimo, for the director Walter Hill. (It must be noted however that Milius’ sympathies are with resistance warriors than with passive victims. Resistance warriors, though tyrannized by an empire, have within them the latent potential to be empire-builders themselves if the opportunity would manifest itself. Conan the Barbarian begins as a slave but has the heart of a future king. Genghis Khan was once in bondage and treated worse than an animal but burned inside with dreams of empire. Gernonimo fought in resistance mode but possessed all the essential qualities of an imperial chief. It’s like there are slaves meant to be slaves and slaves meant to be kings. The android Roy Batty in BLADE RUNNER garners our sympathy as a slave but also fascinates and frightens us with his god-king complex. He not only wants to break free of his human masters but seeks mastery over them.)
To his credit, Milius is free of the churlishness among many a white rightist on the subject of the American West. The White conquest of North America was inevitable, an unstoppable momentum of history. There was no way the best real estate in the world could long remain in the possession of stone-age tribes dispersed across vast territories. And, of course, plenty have rationalized the outcome in the name of civilization and progress and the like.
Still, one can acknowledge the deep spiritual and ancestral connection between the American Indians and the lands on which they were born, lived, fought & hunted, and died through the eons. But, plenty of petty-minded conservatives cannot even muster a modicum of empathy, instead lecturing like a priggish schoolmarm about ‘muh civilization’.
If white Liberal types have been prone to idealizing/romanticizing/sacralizing American Indians as peace-loving proto-hippie folks living in harmony with nature(ROTFL), white Conservative types have tended to justify everything on the basis of service to civilization/progress vs savagery; ironically, they sound like radicals with a simple binary of progress vs reaction.
At a bare minimum, it should be acknowledged that the American Indians, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, doomed by history in the most absolute and irreversible manner, fought for what humans have done so since the beginning of time: My people, my culture, my land, and our way of life.
Walter Hill and John Milius, though admiring of the cowboys who tamed the Wild West, had within them the ‘warrior honor’ to tip their hats to the American Indians, especially those who’d fought as long and as hard as they could, like the losing team that nevertheless plays hard to the last second. Even among the enemies, we admire the bold and brave. Plenty of American Indians collaborated with the White Man, but the legendary ones honored by history are those who took up the fight. ‘Uncle Tomahawks’ were valued as useful but never honored as heroic.
Milius’ deeper understanding of conflict(as rooted in human nature) and real respect for other cultures/civilizations(including the said enemies of the country to which he belongs) are evidence of empathy so essential in the arts. THE ILIAD is all the richer for giving the Trojans their due. (Arguably, one of the deficiencies, psychological as well as moral, of Biblical narratives is the underlying contempt for other peoples, likely the product of Covenantal conviction in the one and only God who favors the Jews over the goyim. In contrast, THE ILIAD allows for gods to favor the Trojans as well as the Greeks, i.e. no single group is eternally entitled to all the blessings of the divine, which must be competed for by every side and every individual.)
Milius seems genuinely curious, peering into the hearts and minds of other cultures, especially in fascination with their warrior ways. One reason for this attribute may actually be Judeocentric, even if subconscious on his part.
In a way, the political evolution of Jewish Power in America parallels the philosophical transformation of Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW. Kurtz came to prominence as a patriot, a soldier’s soldier committed to the US involvement in Vietnam, seeking innovative ways to up the game against the enemy.
But the deeper he commits to the war, the less loyal he becomes to the US government. Slowly but steadily, he develops his own reasons for remaining in the conflict, eventually playing prophet and founding his own kingdom in which HIS authority is the law of the land.
In a similar manner, Jews in America seemed to be rapidly assimilating, becoming newly minted patriotic so grateful and appreciative of the unprecedented opportunities provided by America. One might have thought that, within several generations, Jews would become fully American or American-as-apple-pie, America-uber-alles, and loyal to Americanism(as founded and shaped by Anglo-Americans of Christian persuasion) above and beyond all other considerations. But, rather like Kurtz, Jews took a detour from the assumed destination and carved out their own tribal kingdom in Palestine(as Israel) and increasingly shifted their loyalty toward Zion(away from Americanism).
Jewish political consciousness remained with or returned to their ethno-spiritual tribalism than committed fully to American patriotism. As Kurtz went from an ideal US officer to a founder of a personal kingdom, Jews went from prospective All-American patriots to stubbornly zealous tribal-centrists. And just as Kurtz used his sheer will to compel his followers to worship him like a god, submitting to his megalomania, Jewish Power insisted on American goyim, especially whites, bowing down to the Jewish race as the rightful master race, the Jewish genius as the true genius, and the Jewish chosen-ness as the true will of God.
Indeed, what difference is there between white cucks who suck up to Jews and Montagnard minions who bow down to Kurtz?
It could be that Milius’ subconscious or closeted Jewish side couldn’t help but envision an alternative(to generic Americanism), one insisting on its own sense of history and prophecy. Milius’ admiration for figures like Gernonimo could be a sublimated expression of Jewish rebel-will against goy authority.
American Indians were doomed by History but had the pride and will to resist as long as they did. Jews, far more adaptive and protean in their capabilities, often made out as if they were cooperative and going with the flow in allegiance to goy dominance, all the while retaining in their dark recesses the will to resist, eventually take over, and bend goyim to their own superior will.
Thus, Milius isn’t your typical conservative or right-winger with partisan loyalties and predictable attitudes. He’s the kind who can admire the Romans but also root for the Zealots, who can ride the whirlwind with the cowboys but also war-whoop with the Indians. In one interview, Milius praised black writers/directors for being real and authentic, i.e. whatever their ideological differences, Milius regarded blacks as being truer to their identity and interests in ways that white filmmakers weren’t, either due to limp Liberal attitudes or overly cautionary Conservatism(that shrank before controversy).
Perhaps, Italian-Americans were something of an outlier as Italian pride wasn’t as disapproved of as Northern-European-origin pride. When Italian-Americans joined together in a gang(like the mafia) to pursue their ethnic interests, it was often portrayed, even glorified, as colorful and ‘cool’; but shared Anglo-American identity and interests were usually associated with the KKK, and of course the German-American equivalent invariably got labeled as neo- or quasi-Nazi.
Such biases have largely owed to the Jewish grip on the media/academia(and white fear of Jewish accusations of ‘antisemitism’), something Milius hardly touched upon.
One suspects Milius was tolerated, at times even favored, in Hollywood because of his Jewish credentials. Roger Ebert’s (generally favorable) review of CONAN THE BARBARIAN came with the caveat that it could have earned the seal of approval from none other than Joseph Goebbels, especially as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the ideal ‘Aryan’ ubermensch ultimately slays the villain played by the black James Earl Jones. (To be sure, Jones, presented with straight hair, doesn’t come across as blackity-black, and he was likely cast as a nod to his voice-actor-role as Darth Vader.) Hollywood may have indulged Milius’ ‘fascist’ antics because of his Jewishness, i.e. whatever outrageous brew he may stir up, surely he wouldn’t go full Nazi or ‘anti-Semite’(like with Mel Gibson whose THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST irked a lot of Jews). It’s like Jews in Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS only playact at being ‘Nazi-simps’.
For all that, there was more honesty to be had from Milius than from his Movie Brat peers. Milius could be confused and contradictory in his worldview but also more bluntly honest about what fired up his imagination. In contrast, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s self-identification as Good Liberals was something of a conceit. Spielberg has always been a Jewish tribalist and Zionist supremacist, or ‘far right’ on matters pertaining to Jewish identity and power. His Liberalism has been tactical than principled, i.e. Jews are safer in a liberal goy-majority society in which Gentiles have been defanged and declawed of their own tribal-ethnic-racial-national interests. But Spielberg has been adamant about Jews keeping their own claws and fangs(and lots of venom). His SCHINDLER’S LIST denounces the horrors of radical rightism(Nazism) but also exploits the tragedy to justify Zionist-supremacism. And for someone who claims to love the Negroes and is opposed to ‘racism’, he has been rather silent on the matter of the American Indians, often used as sitting ducks in the movies of one of Spielberg’s heroes, John Ford. Spielberg collaborated with George Lucas and fellow Jew Lawrence Kasdan in the INDIANA JONES movies, which, despite their vilification of evil bigoted Nazis, thrill to the excitement of Indy Jones as the Great White Man destroying a whole bunch of Arabs(RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) and Chinamen & Hindus(TEMPLE OF DOOM). And even though KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL begins by presenting anti-communist red-baiters in a dubious light, it turns into one long bash-the-Soviet-commies action spectacle — in other words, the anti-communist ‘witch hunt’ in the US was bad because of suspicions of Jewish disloyalty, but it was great fun to destroy commies in the form of Evil Russkies. Identity always trumped ideology with Spielberg.
Given the ideological orientation of the artistic/creative community and entertainment industry, it’s no surprise that most succumb to or at least fall in line with the prevailing political attitudes, which are usually labeled as ‘leftist’ though really isn’t. Seriously, how truly leftist was Warren Beatty who wrote, directed, and starred in REDS? And why would true leftists want to work in an industry as brazenly capitalist as Hollywood?
Even the relatively few figures who resolutely remain on the right usually conform to certain conventions: Whereas liberal storytellers may present domestic or homegrown right-wing villains, rightist storytellers usually vilify foreign ‘threats’, like in RED DAWN with its fantastic commie invaders from Russia, Cuba, and maybe Mars. In regards to crime, virtually all films, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, make believe that street thugs are multicultural(or into white punk culture) than mostly black as is true in reality. There are rules for liberal and leftist types to conform to as well: If the villains are right-wing, make sure they’re White Supremacists or Christian Zealots while ignoring America’s close ties, indeed subservience, to far-right Zionists.
Indeed, what usually passes for ‘leftism’ in creative circles and Hollywood is more idolatrous than ideological. A work is labeled as ‘liberal’, ‘leftist’, or ‘progressive’ if fawning of Jews, homos, and/or blacks regardless of its actual ideological implications. So, a movie could be totally militarist or US imperialist, but if it has heroic blacks committed to co-imperialism, it must be ‘progressive’. Or, it could be about the richest and most privileged bunch of Jews but still qualify as ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’ for its obsequiousness to Jewish ethno-vanity. Notice our society doesn’t care what homos are up to, which is mostly working in cahoots with Jewish supremacists and the Deep State to perpetuate Zionist-global-capitalism and US neo-imperialism; what matters is that the ‘gay agenda’ has been made synonymous with ‘liberal democratic’ values, i.e. identity trumps ideology in the corrupted political discourse.
Because Spielberg made some movies sympathetic to blacks, he’s supposed to be a ‘liberal’ even though he’s a hardline Jewish Supremacist Zionist who supports the far-right regime in Israel. Or take the silly pigeonary(as opposed to visionary) James Cameron whose AVATAR movies are glorifications of warrior-hunter cultures where robust physicality is paramount, but he prances around as a ‘progressive’ for his sensitivity toward the Other(even if entirely fantastical). It’s rather like the case with Leni Riefenstahl. When she idealized the Germanic Aryans, she was a ‘racist’ or Nazi apologist; but when her fascination was redirected toward an African warrior tribe, it was praised as a sign of ideological redemption, a point made by Susan Sontag in her essay, “Fascinating Fascism”.
George Lucas’ STAR WARS, his main achievement, owed a great deal to his obsession with war, imperialism, and Nazi aesthetics, but he carried on as otherwise, especially by filling up the STAR WARS universe with diversity(though much of it was intergalactic, albeit with uncanny resemblances to various Earthling ethnic/racial stereotypes). Apparently, glorification of war & destruction and fascist fantasies may be construed as ‘progressive’ if some Jedis are black and if the Rebellion recruits more odd-looking critters from every corner of the galaxy.
As with Spielberg, Lucas seems to believe blackness is sufficiently redemptive. Since Spielberg made AMISTAD and LINCOLN, he counts as a ‘progressive’ despite his hardcore Zionism. And since Lucas produced RED TAILS and married a Negress, he must be some leftist radical even though he built his fortune on fantasies inspired by Nazism and the legacy of British Imperialism, i.e. Indiana Jones is an extension of Kipling-ism. Lucas, like Spielberg, owes to ideas, icons, narratives, and attitudes associated with ‘racism’, imperialism, and militarism far more than they’d be willing to admit. They drew water from the same well frequented by Milius but spiked with ‘corrective’ antidotes.
A closer inspection of STAR WARS reveals how bogus its politics are, especially as a reflection of the events of World War II. It would have us believe that the galaxy is divided between the Empire and the rebellion(or anti-imperialism). But World War II was about Germany and Japan as upstart empires at war with far bigger and more established empires. It wasn’t about imperialism versus some improvised ragtag rebellion.
John Milius has been more honest and forthright in terms of his inspirations and inclination. He didn’t launder the ideological substance of what fueled his imagination into some properly ‘liberal’ or acceptably ‘progressive’ pablum. No apologetics. He was open about digging Rudyard Kipling and the whole mythology of the Great White Man. And instead of pretending that the Other, the world of the nonwhites, embodies the antithesis of rightism, he admired it for its own pristine links to tradition and tribalism.
As such, there is less confusion(or mental gymnastics) in something like GERONIMO(though the final product was made more ‘palatable’, leashed if not neutered, by other writers) than with DANCES WITH WOLVES and THE LAST SAMURAI. Kevin Costner’s epic was praised as a Liberal Western, but what is it really honoring? The tribal-warrior culture of the American Indians ‘uncorrupted’ by modernity. THE LAST SAMURAI is even more confused. It opens with a guilt-ridden white man disillusioned with his own civilization of ‘racism’ and ‘imperialism’ but who then is reinvigorated by joining an ultra-traditionalist caste-obsessed clan of samurai who refuse to relinquish the old way in a rapidly modernizing and liberalizing Japan. Zwick is surely a Jewish Democrat or self-professed ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ of sorts, and the movie begins by adding check-marks to the entire litany of what’s wrong with white folks. Ironically, however, a white man who is ashamed of his own warrior culture finds renewed meaning, even a kind of redemption, by immersing himself into another warrior culture, one less prone to self-reflection and pangs of guilt conscience. In other words, the apparent cure is even a stronger dose of rightist tendencies. The movie is ‘liberal’ in the way DANCES WITH WOLVES is, i.e. it is open-minded, curious, and sympathetic toward the Other, but it just so happens that the Other-in-question is utterly out of sync with modernity, of which liberalism is an integral part.
Perhaps, Zwick’s political angle on THE LAST SAMURAI has an esoteric link to the Jewish shepherding of white rightist instincts toward serving Zion. If it is wrong for a white man to be proud of his own racial civilization but it is permissible, even honorable, for him to serve another civilization, it comports with the Jewish agenda in the West of shaming and suppressing white identity/interests and rightist tendencies but then channeling those repressed energies toward serving the Jews and Israel. The likes of Pete Hegseth would be driven out of DC if they extolled white pride and insisted on white agency, but they are valued by the powers-that-be as useful attack dogs of Zion. In other words, white being right for white is wrong, but white being right for Semite is all right.
When Trump appeared on the scene as a political candidate in 2016, his swaggering style sent chills down the spine of Jewish Power. Even though Trump didn’t criticize, let alone denounce, Jewish Power, his unabashed manner seemed to violate the conventions of white behavior. Jews feared that his style might prove infectious, i.e. whites emboldened to be be uppity toward Jews.
Eventually, however, Jews realized that the style had an irrepressible appeal within white populism, and it was better to appropriate and redirect it(to serve Zionist supremacism/imperialism) than to engage in futile attempts to suppress it.
Allow the style but change the substance, like how the Terminator(Schwarzenegger) was repurposed in the sequel to serve the humans against the machines.
With big carrots and bigger sticks, Jewish Power threatened and bribed the Trump family into re-employing the style but against targets chosen by the Zionists. If Jews once feared that Trump’s style might awaken White Identity politics, they subsequently banked on the style adding fuel to the Zionist cause(that was bleeding Democratic support).
Most Vietnam War movies have imposed preconceived(or rather provincial) notions onto a foreign nation of no particular interest or concern to Americans. As in the science fiction novel SOLARIS(by Stanislaw Lem), it’s human nature to project the familiar onto the unfamiliar, not unlike the personification of the mysteries of the universe(into anthropomorphic gods).
In a way, the tendency among filmmakers wasn’t all that different from that among politicians. The architects of military involvement(and economic investment) merely treated Vietnam as a piece on a chessboard and a guinea pig in an Americanization-experiment. It was never about understanding Vietnam as a people, culture, or history but about anti-communism, neo-imperial hegemony, and/or spreading the American-‘democratic’ way of life.
In right-leaning movies, Vietnam had no value other than as a testing ground for a set of Americanisms, i.e. the US had more of a ‘right’ to bomb the country into the stone age as demonstration of its global dominance than Vietnam had a right to exist as an independent and united entity. (The same mindset prevails in Washington in regards to Iran. America’s might-is-right imposition of its will onto Iran supersedes any consideration of Iran’s sovereign right to mind its own business, or the US has more right to blow up Iranian school girls than Iranian school girls have a right to attend classes. But then, the attitude is a facsimile of Zion’s view of America, i.e. World Jewry believes the US exists mainly to serve and appease them than to forge its own independent path as a mostly goy sovereign country. The US says Iran must bend to American will, and Zion says the US must bend to Jewish will.)
Given that most film talents claim to be liberal or left-leaning, one would have expected their attitudes to be substantially removed from those of right-leaning filmmakers. While their politics on the war were at odds with John-Wayne-isms(and later Stallone-isms), their stabs at the subject were also mostly impositions than even minimal efforts to understand a different people and culture.
In APOCALYPSE NOW, a crew member known as ‘chef’ in a fit of panic reminds himself, “never get out of the f***ing boat”, and it’s a useful analogy for nearly the entirety of American films on Vietnam. Just about the only films with any interest in the actual people and place were HEAVEN AND EARTH(by Oliver Stone) and THE KILLING FIELDS(by Roland Joffe), though about Cambodia.
PLATOON is close to the ground with a real feel for the place(though shot in the Philippines like many a Vietnam film) but is mostly about the American experience. (Even Brian De Palma’s CASUALTIES OF WAR is little more than an imposition of White Man’s War Guilt Burden onto Vietnam than anything remotely interested in the actual country.) Right-leaning movies and left-leaning films both projected Americanisms onto the jungle, the difference being the pride of mayhem among the former and the guilt of destruction among the latter.
In certain cases, the lack of curiosity about Vietnam per se didn’t matter much. No doubt, Stanley Kubrick was mainly focused on human nature, power dynamics, complications of conditioning, and order-vs-chaos. FULL METAL JACKET could have been set in a different war but in pursuit of the same ideas.
It was more problematic with THE DEER HUNTER and APOCALPYSE NOW to the extent that they claimed to be statements about the Vietnam experience. Overall, their handling of anything or anyone remotely non-American came across as perfunctory, forced, or trite.
Granted, THE DEER HUNTER, like COMING HOME and the considerably later BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, is more about the war’s impact on an American community than whatever happened over there. Upon closer inspection, however, Michael Cimino essentially used the war as canvas to illustrate the art of manhood. Indeed, it’s more about the ‘hunter’(and his code) than the soldier(and his duties). Soldiers are about camaraderie, strangers brought together and working as a team. Hunters are about brotherhood, friends bound by affection and honor. Thus, the scene with the Russian Roulette, forced upon the prisoners by the Viet Cong, is historically ludicrous but used effectively as a test of manhood, separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of resilience and determination.
Due to its intensity, THE DEER HUNTER bowled over much of the critical community and won big prizes, but the backlash, once the visceral impact wore off, was inevitable given the story is politically nonsensical, logically looney, and dramatically contrived. Cimino was quite skillful in conveying the appearance of gravitas, complexity, and depth, but there was precious little in terms of actual substance. It was a great piece of façade, like those grandiose structures built for World Fairs that appeared formidable on the outside but were flimsy on the inside.
THE DEER HUNTER is layered thick, but remove the layers and there’s little within, like an artichoke. Still, Cimino could mount a scene — communal, natural, or action-oriented — and sustain a mood, and the film is not without some fine touches.
If the film still works at all, it’s as a testament on the manly code as embodied by Michael(Robert De Niro), in the outdoors as hunter, in the jungle as soldier, and in the community as healer who picks up the broken pieces and glues them together the best he can . THE DEER HUNTER is as incurious as a film could be about its supposed subject, the Vietnam War, which only registers as a despoiler to the grey and grimy but nevertheless idyllic community in which Russian-Americans maintain their bonds of brotherhood.
For all the differences between THE DEER HUNTER and APOCALYPSE NOW, they have in common the idealization of uber-manhood. Incidentally, Michael Cimino and John Milius crossed paths as co-writers for MAGNUM FORCE, the sequel to DIRTY HARRY. Cimino, a natural filmmaker, went on to direct THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT for Clint Eastwood and really struck gold with THE DEER HUNTER, which cleared the path for HEAVEN’S GATE that would forever etch his name in cinema infamy, so notorious that the film’s treasure trove of wonders went overlooked in the merciless pile-on; rather unfairly, it served as an all-purpose scapegoat for just about every excess associated with New Hollywood: runaway auteurism, megalomania, wastefulness, self-indulgence, hubris, and etc.
If Cimino explored what separates real men, a rare breed, from mere men, Milius took it one step further, indeed into the realm of myth: What makes a great warrior, how may he become chieftain or king, how does a king become a living god? If Cimino ran his concept of stoicism through the meat grinder of Vietnam to see what of it might come out at the other end, Milius aimed his conceptual firearm at the ultimate trophy, the confirmation of his god-warrior philosophy, with the jungle serving as his game reserve. Neither man had much interest in Vietnam except as an outdoor laboratory for his ideas about manhood. (Michael’s hesitance to re-enter civilian life in THE DEER HUNTER may owe less to trauma than pride, a sense that after the extreme, even awesome, test of manhood he’d been through in Vietnam, everything back home is too quaint and small. Kurtz and Willard in APOCALYPSE NOW have similar attitudes about returning to normal life back home. In the lost parts of THE ODYSSEY, the returned Odysseus begins to feel restless.) This was true to an extent with Oliver Stone as well. Unlike most soldiers who enlisted out of sense of duty or were drafted, Stone had literary aspirations and big ideas about war. His motivations were patriotic and political(anti-communism) to be sure but also poetic and philosophical, expecting Vietnam to provide the kind of material that World War I did for Ernest Hemingway and that World War II did for Norman Mailer(whose THE NAKED AND THE DEAD was once hailed as the definitive statement on the war).
Thus, Stone shipped to Vietnam with more ideas and imagination than the average grunt. What set Stone apart from Cimino and Milius was that the actual experience of combat truly tested his assumptions, be they literary, philosophical, or political. He learned fast that reality plays by its rules with zero regard for one’s concepts(readily bared as mere conceits). It’s hard to imagine Stone writing a scene as hackneyed as the one in which Michael and Nick(Christopher Walken) prevail against their armed-to-the-teeth Viet Cong captors or peddling the blind faith assumption of Nick having the most amazing run of luck with the game of Russian Roulette, only to have it run out for maximum tragic effect in one of the most contrived scenes ever. (If anything, the cold calculation lessens the dramatic effect. For all the raw passion, it feels mechanical and pre-scheduled.)
Creative contradictions can sometimes add fuel to the fire. Take CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER by the right-wing Tom Clancy that was revised with a more critical attitude toward US foreign policy. As such, there’s the tension between duty and dissidence. It makes the audience wonder about the kind of personalities that are drawn to power and the kind that power tends to attract, different categories but overlapping in slime-content. It’s also true of Coppola’s greatest work, THE GODFATHER parts I and II, with the constant interplay between Mario Puzo’s pride of ethnocentrism and Francis Coppola’s sense of the American Tragedy. Puzo saw Michael Corleone learning to be a real man, whereas Coppola saw him lose his soul. The dramatic ‘conversation’ between Puzo and Coppola lent validity to both interpretations, and the ensuing duality made THE GODFATHER all the richer in meaning and tone.
The same might have been hoped for the creative contradictions between Milius’ conception and Coppola’s intention in APOCALYPSE NOW, but the two competing visions failed to meld into a meaningful whole. If the first hour of the film is maybe Coppola at his most awesome, the ending likely represents the nadir of his career.
In both THE GODFATHER and APOCALYPSE NOW, the original idea was essentially rightist or conservative(regardless of the political affiliations of the artist). Puzo’s work expounded on manhood, family, tribe, and realism-for-men(upon the shedding of idealism-for-boys). Michael eventually outgrows naïve patriotism and takes over as the patriarch of the tribe, especially after making an ‘aliyah’ to Sicily, the land of his ancestors.
There’s a suggestion of mere Americanness as too generic, propositional, and uprooting to serve as one’s core identity and source of loyalty. It is water than blood, soap than sausage. If the prevailing ideological and cultural theme of America throughout the 20th century was assimilation and adaptation, with Anglo-Americans striving to be less ‘racist’ while minority races and ethnic groups strove to be more All-American(as apple pie, e.g. Jews Anglicizing their names and getting nose-jobs, blacks trying to be a ‘credit to their race’, Italians going easy on the garlic, and etc.), trends began to change after the 1950s. Part of it had to do with Rock n Roll, far more than Jazz of yesteryear, reshuffling the cultural hierarchy. Another was the emergence of Jewish writers as the dominant voice in the literary and intellectual scene. Still, Rock n Roll soon turned into White Rock, and not all Jewish thinkers/writers were consciously or insistently ethnic in their outlook. (And no doubt, pop culture had its own homogenizing effect, with stuff like disco, for example, dissolving the barriers between black and white, straight and ‘gay’, and etc., as shown in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER.)
As the Anglo-American star continued to fade and lost the prestige/authority it once had, the various racial and ethnic groups began to return to or reassert their own identities and cultures, an expression that had both liberal and conservative overtones. It was deemed politically liberal in the sense that previously suppressed, repressed, or even oppressed minority groups were beginning to find their own stride(and pride) in terms of identity.
Even though blacks led the way with the Civil Rights Movement, Jews also played an assertive role, especially with their incessant alarm-bells over the slightest hints of ‘antisemitism’. There was also Brown Power and the American Indian Movement. Even white goy ethnic groups got into the act, as when Italian-Americans began to gripe about negative stereotypes, an early problem for the GODFATHER production, ironic since the controversy was cooked up by none other than the mafia itself; more ironic yet, the film elevated the mafia legend into a source of pride for Italian-Americans.
Even though such cases of proto-identity-politics were legitimized as ‘progressive’ or even ‘radical’, belated but liberating outbursts of pent-up minority grievances, the truth was more complicated, i.e. anything related to identity, history, and heritage was bound to have rightist/conservative overtones as well.
This was no less true of THE FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and ROOTS(by Alex Haley) as of THE GODFATHER. They played at victim-politics(to varying degrees) but also implied there’s nothing richer than one’s pride of identity rooted in tradition, something far deeper than milquetoast blandness of American individualist-consumerism. (Americanism most closely resembles Romanism in that both were watered down to favor legalism, militarism, and materialism, all of which administered the ‘inclusive’ advantage of recruiting more people from diverse backgrounds; however, it came with the downside of diminished meaning and deep loyalty bound by blood. Without hyphenation, what does ‘American’ even mean these days? To a Jewish-American, the Jewishness offers ethnic, cultural, and historical meaning but ‘American’-ness offers mere legal guarantees. Jewishness is ethnicity exclusive to the Jews, Americanness is citizenship open to all the world. Same goes for a Hindu-American, Arab-American, Turkish-American, Chinese-American, or Black/African-American, and etc. As whiteness has been diluted to the point of cultural anemia, historical amnesia, and racial taboo, it lacks the hyphenated punch of other identities. There used to be a proud Americanism based on the victorious feats of Anglo-Americans, but Jews have burdened white history with shame and guilt. Therefore, some whites opt for Christianity as their main identifier, but a universalist faith is open to all races & cultures and as such further dilutes any meaningful sense of whiteness rooted in European genetics and heritage.)
At any rate, the creative tensions within APOCALYSE NOW proved to be insurmountable. Whereas the main difference between Puzo and Coppola was one of tone — they agreed on the narrative but diverged on the theme — , the rival visions of Milius and Coppola were irreconcilable, especially in the film’s conclusion. Though ultimately admiring of Coppola’s achievement, Milius was initially critical of the finished product. He griped that Coppola’s ‘liberalism’ inverted his intentions into something more amenable to fashionable anti-war attitudes, which defeated the whole purpose, originally conceived of as a middle finger to the hippies and radicals.
In Coppola’s defense, his aspirations were more artistic than political, i.e. he wanted to be an ‘auteur’ than a provocateur, the maker of the ultimate war film than a prankster of the movie-brat-frat. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded the far end of Milius’ vision as perilously close to Belushi’s ANIMAL HOUSE antics in Spielberg’s 1941(to which Milius contributed). Coppola, like many others, could never tell with Milius where the rigor ended and the ribbing began.
At any rate, Coppola didn’t unduly politicize the film. Except for the scene where the crew blows up a sampan of Vietnamese civilians(by panicking over a puppy mistaken for weaponry), there isn’t much that panders to the anti-war politics of the time. The violence throughout the film, though grim and bloody, is no less exciting and thrilling. Even in the tragic scene with the civilian boat, Willard’s shooting of the Vietnamese woman could be written off as ‘mercy killing’, like what Pike Bishop did with a wounded member during the escape in THE WILD BUNCH.
Coppola wanted to be taken seriously as a personal filmmaker, a true artist, and abstained from the polemics of COMING HOME and the like. He wanted the film to be timeless than topical. If anything, in de-politicizing the material, Coppola also removed some of Milius’ own ideologizing, or strident counter-agitation. He probably wanted the final product to be on par with or hopefully even above Werner Herzog’s art house sensation AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD.
Alas, Coppola couldn’t come up with an alternative that could deepen or somehow transform Milius’ action-packed conclusion(as an apotheosis of Kurtz’s mythology). Either Milius’ conviction was too baked into the material to remove(or replace) OR Coppola’s forte was direction-adaptation than original conception; he was a great midwife than a mother. Coppola’s demonstrative skills were in shaping an established narrative(like the adventures of General Patton, for which he won an Oscar) or adapting a famous novel(like THE GREAT GATSBY). Coppola also worked closely with Puzo in adapting THE GODFATHER novel.
But, creating something from nothing, a whole new universe(or a self-enclosed one), wasn’t part of his talent package. (George Lucas, the dreamer of THX 1138 and STAR WARS, was more adept at creating worlds despite his tin ear for dialogue among their inhabitants.) Milius also could invent something out of nothing. Milius didn’t so much adapt Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS as transform it into something unique and personal; he appropriated its plot structure and jungle setting but in exploration of his own obsessions. (It was comparable to how Akira Kurosawa used HAMLET and KING LEAR as mere blueprints for BAD SLEEP WELL and RAN.) Had Coppola remained true to Milius’ spirit, one of mythic adventure and psychedelic prophecy, a kind of Homer’s ODYSSEY crossed with the Western and surfer music, an expressionist fever-dream, he could have stuck with Milius’ ending. Instead, Coppola maintained a consistency of tone, dense and meditative, even heavy at times, lest the boorish humor and the more outlandish elements capsize the war party into a wild party. As such, Lance, the acid-dropping surfer dude, barely registers in the film as a personality or presence.
The general consensus has been that Coppola either burned out or lost his way after the Seventies, and the verdict is not without merit. But, one could just as argue that Coppola simply lucked out in the Seventies with promising material coming his way, certainly with THE GODFATHER films and halfway with APOCALYPSE NOW. Apart from those two works, Coppola’s record in the Sixties and Seventies isn’t so impressive. His first real movie was the horror flick DEMENTIA 13, now mostly forgotten. His first personal film was YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW, which almost no one talks about. He was hired to direct the Fred Astaire musical FINIAN’S RAINBOW, notable only insofar as the first time a studio handed a major production to a film school graduate. In the year of EASY RIDER, 1969, Coppola made his most personal film to date, THE RAIN PEOPLE, but it hardly made a stir.
In other words, Coppola’s early career as writer/director was interesting but hardly impressive, and his biggest coup prior to THE GODFATHER was the screenplay Oscar for PATTON, rather ironic as the film was a polished and updated throwback to outdated values(as well as Richard Nixon’s favorite film), despite Coppola’s self-image as an experimental visionary.
But, what the Oscar win revealed was that Coppola’s talent was tailor-made for perfecting promising material(one of autonomous or intrinsic value), the kind that fully absorbed his energies and inhibited his tendency toward solipsism(THE CONVERSATION) or megalomania(ONE FROM THE HEART). He was a metallurgist who could do wonders with gold, not an alchemist who could turn lead into gold.
While few would argue PATTON is a great film, it has all the hallmarks of great entertainment with its estimable production values, impressive battle scenes, and larger-than-life subject. A talented writer couldn’t go wrong with the colorful figure of Patton, and Coppola’s writing hit all the right notes.
The difference between PATTON and THE GODFATHER was that Coppola not only got to (re)write but to direct(with considerable latitude) the latter, but what the two works had in common were (1) first-rate material and (2) pressure on Coppola to serve the material than his ego.
Given the near universal acclaim for THE GODFATHER Parts I and II in the film world, as opposed to the low regard for the source novel among literary folks, the general view has been that Coppola transformed a trashy novel into something infinitely greater, i.e. he turned lead into gold. In other words, Puzo the author provided the pulp, but Coppola the ‘auteur’ turned it into silk.
Now, inarguably, as Puzo himself admitted, THE GODFATHER the film deservedly occupies a much higher place in cinema than the novel in the lit-world. That said, film critics/scholars have seriously undervalued Puzo’s chops as storyteller and mythmaker. THE GODFATHER novel is a great work of its kind, enthralling and immersive, un-put-down-able once one starts reading.
While most directors, even first-rate ones, couldn’t have delivered what Coppola did, it’s no less true that Coppola stumbled upon marvelous material to work with, one rich in possibilities, tangents, and meanings. It was a once-in-a-lifetime gift, underappreciated by none other than the young director himself at the time. (It was like the seemingly routine assignment in THE LAST DETAIL that, by twists and turns, becomes memorable.)
While Coppola took on the project as a last resort(with the urging of George Lucas) given the desperate straits his Zoetrope studio found itself in, a luckier break couldn’t have fallen on his lap. Indeed, had Coppola made a series of personal films like THE RAIN PEOPLE throughout the Seventies, he would likely have found a niche as an interesting filmmaker but not an important one. THE GODFATHER PART II is held in even higher esteem than its predecessor, but there again Coppola had to be coaxed into directing it. If left to his own devices, he would have spent the better part of the Seventies making stuff like RAIN PEOPLE, ONE FROM THE HEART, and RUMBLE FISH instead of laboring on the very projects that carved his name into the cinematic pantheon. As for APOCALYPSE NOW, it was originally slated to be a Milius-Lucas collaboration, and it took awhile for Coppola to be convinced of its potential and take on the project himself(to the ire of Lucas but then he had another galaxy on his mind).
Rather perversely, Coppola came to greatness in the Seventies precisely because he was for the most part prevented from immersing himself in ‘personal’ projects. THE CONVERSATION pales next to THE GODFATHER films and (the better half of)APOCALYPSE NOW. It was likely overrated for its fortuitous release between part I and part II of THE GODFATHER saga, like how lesser songs benefit from the company of first-rate songs on a Rock album, e.g. what an honor for any song to share the tracks with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Gimme Shelter” on the Rolling Stone’s LET IT BLEED.
In terms of sheer craft and acumen, one could hardly discern much in the way of diminishment on Coppola’s part following APOCALYPSE NOW. What really set the later Coppola from his Seventies peak was the increased personalism(or stylistic self-indulgence) plus the paucity of substantive material.
Contrary to the romantic view of the artist reaching ever higher with more freedom, in many cases too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. For proof, look or listen no further than John Lennon’s TWO VIRGINS album and the pseudo-song “Revolution No. 9″(co-composed with ghastly Yoko Ono).
Some can compose, some can perform, but few can do both. Coppola simply lacked what it took for creative originality, the kind Lucas had in the creation of the STAR WARS universe(or Spielberg in the strange wonders of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND or John Milius for that matter with this manhood mythologizing); Coppola was a maestro, not a visionary. It’s no wonder his two biggest fiascos were based on his original material: ONE FROM THE HEART and MEGALOPOLIS. With RUMBLE FISH, the fireworks couldn’t make up for the lack of fire with material weak to begin with. Coppola managed well with THE OUTSIDERS, but the source novel hardly rose above the level of junior fiction; more problematic was the over-direction, too much epic sauce and sausage on a simple plate of noodles. THE COTTON CLUB was his most dazzling work yet but chockfull of genre clichés, throwaway romance, cultural nostalgia, and socio-political messaging(that presented Negro gangsters like a chapter of the NAACP), in other words an illustration of how no amount of showmanship and social consciousness can substitute for lack of substance, further exemplified by the relative failure of THE GODFATHER PART III, which, in technical mastery and production values, was nearly the equal of parts I and II, but was convoluted in plot and stalled in character development, with the story of Michael reduced mostly to therapeutics, or soap operatics.
The point, at any rate, is that Coppola’s talents as director mostly remained intact in the later years, suggesting that his career arc was more about mishap than decline. What really made him in the Seventies was the fortune of landing THE GODFATHER films and APOCALYPSE NOW, which, though only half-successful, provided him with the kind of material worthy of his real talents(as opposed to imagined genius). That the film eventually turned a profit is a testament to its awesomeness. Given that the film begins to deflate after the first hour and completely runs out of air at the end, the good stuff must have been really good to attract viewers in sufficient numbers to ensure box office success. It’s like a double Rock album in which only one album or one side is good, but it’s so good that it goes gold or platinum just the same.
APOCALYPSE NOW can be divided into three major parts: (1) The set-up to the Playboy Bunny ‘concert’ (2) the river journey (3) encounter with Kurtz and the conclusion.
Part one is among(if not) the best thing Coppola ever did, indeed what the film’s vaunted reputation rests on. Its power owes to Milius and Coppola being more or less aligned on portent and premonition. It introduces a man of action assigned on a mission to traverse through long stretches of enemy territory, only to assassinate an American. Our impression throughout the film is of a craziness oscillating between only-in-war and even-for-war, which was of course Milius’ intention, a kind of manic expression flitting between realism and surrealism.
Colonel Kilgore’s helicopter assault is more about the surf than the turf, indeed what sets it apart from all other combat scenes in Vietnam War films. Milius surely beamed that only he could come up with something so outrageous. The Playboy Bunny scene(which has no historical basis) stands out for its incongruous setting. USO celebrity tours were par for the course in 20th Century American war-making, with the likes of Bob Hope and Ann Margaret as familiar faces at such events, which were staged in safe zones. The Playboy bunny performance feels a bit eerie as being too-close-for-comfort to the danger zone(which may hide King Kong or an army of flesh-eating zombies for all we know), as if R&R is being delivered to the troops in the field(or jungle) at the risk of the bunnies themselves. (Indeed, the Redux version has Willard’s boat crew re-encounter the bunnies stranded in the middle of nowhere without fuel.) The bunny performance, for all its revelry, comes across as a delusional and desperate attempt to convince everyone that the consumer-proselytization of the American Way is for export to every corner of the world, even a piece of jungle infested with rats and guerrillas. Also, how strange that in war, a herculean endeavor in which order and discipline are of the essence, the system goes about maintaining morale by fanning Dionysian urges among young males.
On the other hand, along with Kilgore’s turf-and-surf hell-raising, the scene serves as a reminder as to why men fight, crude motives that have often been suppressed in favor of ideological justifications: Anti-communism, democratic values, liberty & justice. Throughout the ages, men were drawn to battle in no small part for the thrills of adventure and sex. War-making was like a sport for the Vikings and the Mongols. The usual reward was pillaging for loot and running off with the women. The American Way, tempting the soldiers with porny harlots, only to whisk the girls away when the horny men get too unruly, seems to run on a contradiction. Looksies, no feelsies.
The two scenes also highlight the inter-dynamics of pain and pleasure at the heart of existence. The sting of the bee comes with the taste of honey. The hunt can result in feast or injury. The pleasure is all the sweeter because of the pain involved. It’s the reason why some men hunt: Not just for the meat but the taste of meat seasoned with sweat and effort, much juicier to their palates than plastic-wrapped meat obtained without struggle at a food mart. It’s often the case that peace secured through war seems more significant and meaningful than prolonged peace one is born into and takes for granted.
Kilgore’s boys wanna surf but gotta fight for it, like the Vikings raiding villages for the women. The Playboy bunnies entice the crowd with their song-and-dance, as if to imply THEY are what the men are really fighting for.
Between the two sensational scenes(with Kilgore and the bunnies) is a quieter one, all of them held together by a common thread. It too is about pain and pleasure, with ‘Chef’, accompanied by Captain Willard, sauntering into the jungle in search of mangoes, possibly an allusion to the Garden of Eden with the Forbidden Fruit. A casual hike gives to tense fear and then sheer panic when a tiger leaps out of the bush, whereupon the two men bolt back to the boat.
The scene is illustrative of Milius’ take on the warrior myth. In the jungle, time, as we know and measure it in the historical, especially modern, sense dissolves; the instant and the eon are one and the same, and it is within such timelessness that man may rediscover his forgotten warrior self in tune with nature and mystery. Milius’ opening description of the time and place, “This could be the jungle of a million years ago” applies to that scene, conveying the warrior-poet’s journey from the temporal to the timeless, or from the topical to the tropical.
The first act set off on the journey in the spirit of inquiry, fascination, and dread, and the three major scenes — destroying a village for Surfin’ USA, foraging for mangoes but almost becoming tiger food, and dancing bunnies tempting howling wolves — don’t disappoint.
The second act mostly comprises the prolonged journey on the boat, and the plot begins to sag(but not enough to sink, which is reserved for the last act). The fault probably belongs equally to Milius and Coppola who concentrated mostly on the set-up and denouement, with relative neglect for the long middle that stretches thin into the great wait. It maintains a degree of expectation and intermittent suspense, but there simply isn’t enough there to hold our attention for the duration, seemingly interminable at times.
Part of the reason owes to the journey itself. As the main characters spend an inordinate amount of time on the boat, there isn’t much opportunity for them to interact with the locals or even with other Americans. Besides, the few encounters with outsiders seem designed to drive home a point, rather obvious ones at that. The atrocity that befalls a boat full of Vietnamese villagers seems obligatory, a politically conscious reminder that it was difficult to tell friend from foe as the lines were blurred between ‘innocent’ civilians and Viet Cong guerrillas; and also that trigger-happy US soldiers with ample firepower grew accustomed to blowing away anything in sight as first resort. For ‘Mr. Clean’(the young Lawrence Fishburne), the massacre is like playing an electric guitar or beating a drum set. The scene, which has shades of the My Lai Massacre, would have worked better in a more politically-minded treatment of the war(like PLATOON), but it seems forced in APOCALYPSE NOW, more a token nod to the sufferings visited upon the natives, like one of those obligatory moments of silence on Wall Street before the resumption of frenzied trading.
Worse, the obvious point, perfunctory at best, is cheapened by the revelation that the folks on the boat were hiding a puppy instead of weapons. Why did the woman risk everything and set off a panic over a stupid pup? What made her even think the Americans were interested in the dog? Were American soldiers in the habit of snatching puppies in the war? Also, the puppy factor undercuts the complexity of the moment. The Americans weren’t intending to kill anyone, and the people on the boat weren’t harboring weapons. But the Americans were reasonably suspicious given the nature of the guerrilla war waged against them. By brandishing the puppy as a kind of truth-trophy in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the implication turns stupid: The war was about puppy-loving Vietnamese saints routinely torn to pieces by gun-crazy rocking-and-rolling Americans. It is in moments like this that APOCALYPSE NOW turns into “La Dolce Vietnam”, or a war version of Fellini’s celebrated film. Fellini guided the audience on a sensationalist tour of post-war Italy marked by affluence and decadence, but Fellini the reveler couldn’t do without Fellini the scold, lamenting the new sinfulness. Thus, every turn-on was also a turn-off. Likewise, APOCALYPSE NOW tried to have it both ways, handing us uppers and downers, giving us thrills followed by chills, as if Patton was shouting into one ear while Joan Baez was whispering into the other one. APOCALYPSE NOW is generally strained or unconvincing when trying to wrap up hot action with cold sobriety. For example, when Clean gets killed, do we really need his mother’s taped message on the recorder to understand the emotional toll of war?
Of special note in the long second act is the sustained unease, growing tense at times, between the Chief, the black boat commander, and Willard(Martin Sheen). There’s a subtle racial aspect to their mutual mistrust but atypical to the socio-historical context in which black insubordination, even resulting in the ‘fragging’ of white officers, was a persistent problem. Chief is a soldier’s soldier, committed to his duties, someone who appears to have made a career out of the military and is prone to do everything by the book. He knows his job isn’t to think or improvise; it is to follow orders, which he reliably does, except that Willard’s unstated mission is unlike anything he’d been involved with. Willard, as captain, has authority over him, but the vagueness of the mission has him increasingly anxious, bordering on quiet desperation. Unlike ‘uppity’ and troublesome blacks, he seems a loyal member of the service, professional and capable to a fault, but he’s used to clear orders and objectives, not something so vague and cryptic as whatever Willard is up to and can’t/won’t tell him.
Amidst growing uncertainty, his insistence on inspecting a civilian boat(against Willard’s urging) momentarily restores a measure of normality and routine, as well as a modicum of his self-respect as the master of the boat. That the incident spirals out of control, leaving egg on his face, further alienates him from Willard’s mission, one where adherence to rules, which defines him, is rendered trivial. Chief is a man used to sure things, the clear do’s and don’ts. His protocol with the flag, frayed as it is, at Clean’s funeral(at the French-Vietnamese plantation) shows the kind of man he is, loyal but limited. (Later when he’s mortally wounded with a spear, the repressed ‘Nat Turner’ side of him finally comes out, along with his last breath.)
The river journey becomes so wearying that the two minor skirmishes, a firefight and a volley of arrows/spears, serve as welcome relief, like a rainstorm after a drought. Part of the problem is the lack of engaging characters. Among the crew, Chef(Frederick Forrest) is the only one with anything like a personality, but his value is mostly as a diversion, like someone on a train whose gab keeps your mind off the tedium but has no relevance to your destination.
The relative lack of characterization would have mattered less in the original film concept of fusing documentary style(later done in earnest in 84 CHARLIE MOPIC and as parody in TROPIC THUNDER) with avant-garde psychedelia, but it was fatal for Coppola’s patient and detailed approach that brought each crew member into sharp focus, which only exposed the thinness of their characterizations. As such, meaningful interaction became all but impossible among Willard, Chief, Chef, Clean, and Lance. Chief’s mind is fixed on his duties and nothing else. Clean comes alive when the radio is blasting but is otherwise just a fool. Lance usually seems detached, daydreaming, or stoned out of his mind. And Chef would give anything to be back home in New Orleans cooking up a batch of crawfish.
Most of the characters in PLATOON weren’t much either, but the film was an action-portrait of regular men in combat, and it was sufficient that everyone’s humanity(and capacity for inhumanity) shone through.
In contrast, APOCALYPSE NOW was conceived of as a deep dark journey into a great mystery, with metaphysical as well as historical overtones, and therefore mere realism with the bulk of the characters added little to the portentous narrative. The paucity of meaningful interaction among the introspective Willard, tightly wound Chief, and the trio of ne’er-do-wells(with nothing to do but kill time) renders much of the film static, as if the boat is merely treading water.
Now, had the ending really delivered, all might have been forgiven, but the audience most likely left the screening feeling that Coppola’s betrayal would never be forgotten.
Werner Herzog’s AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD isn’t strong on characterization either, but then its cast of Conquistadores is ancillary to the central feature of the film, the pervasive and fatalistic sense of doom as man’s hubris runs up against the nemesis of nature, indeed in its most extreme manifestation, that of the jungle as a ceaseless conspiracy of life against life. Herzog’s waking nightmare is a meditative mood piece. Despite the element of the quest(involving a distended party of nobles, soldiers, and local slaves), there’s little in the way of shared enthusiasm or excitement, only makeshift unity stemming from collective anxiety and fear of Aguirre whose aura, ruthless and mad, has the power to maintain the herd, if only to drive it over the cliff(or sink it into the river as the case may be). As long as the mood holds in Herzog’s film(as indeed it does), the plot becomes an afterthought and the characters might as well be a bunch of ants having lost their way in nature, which one may defy but cannot deny.
In contrast, for all its moody and atmospheric passages, APOCALYPSE NOW is character-and-plot driven, with the expectation that the journey will take us from point A to point B(or C, T, or X), with the ending unveiling some great dark truth. Therefore, our engagement with the characters and their actions, culminating in the final moment of either illumination or immolation, is absolutely integral as to whether the film works or not.
A simple comparison with THE GODFATHER brings into focus the deficiency of APOCALYPSE NOW owing to its mostly lackluster characterizations. There’s a taciturn quality to both Michael Corleone and Captain Willard. They’d rather not communicate anything more than what is necessary. It’s as if they live by the street dictum spouted by Richard Roma(Al Pacino) in David Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS: “Never open your mouth til you know what the shot is.” They are feline than dog-like, always on the lookout for clues, careful not to slip up in words and motion.
The difference is it’s great fun to watch Michael’s learning curve, how he picks up a lesson or two every step of the way. Michael’s progress is spiced up with a rich cast of characters: Gangsters, ‘civilians’ and everyone in between. Even minor characters who appear briefly register as either significant or suggestive, like Vincenzo the baker’s assistant who by accident becomes invaluable in guarding Vito Corleone’s life or Bonasera the undertaker whose entreaty in the opening speaks volumes about what kind of man Don Corleone is, adding to the rich tapestry of mafia members navigating between the ‘personal’ and the ‘business’. Think of Sonny Corleone, Tom Hagen, Clemenza, Sal, Connie, Fredo, Carlo, Barzini, Woltz the Hollywood producer, Sollozzo ‘the Turk’, Kay, Moe Greene, Luca Brasi, and even the punk traitor Paulie. Each interaction adds, in varying degrees, to the sum total of Michael’s development into a conflicted patriarch who is torn between ‘business’ and ‘legitimacy’. It’s no less true of THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK where each and every character, however minor, is somehow linked to the quest as an ally, rival, hindrance, distraction, traitor, or life-saver. There’s no place for a mere hanger-on.
Now, one could argue that THE GODFATHER is more character-driven as everyone is either a player or someone connected personally/emotionally to one of the players, whereas an inordinate amount of APOCALYPSE NOW is about Willard sent out on a mission which no one else is privy to. THE GODFATHER has gangsters fully engaged, mentally and bodily, in a deadly game, whereas APOCALYPSE NOW has its main character sharing physical space but mentally remaining under lock and key, as if guarding the captain’s log.
Whereas gangsters actively participate in criminality and corruption, most soldiers are draftees merely doing as told. And Willard’s companions are typically representative of the men who served in Vietnam.
But, in terms of narrative momentum, the casual indifference of the crew(seemingly there just for the ride) does little to add wind to sail. Much of the film comprises Willard withdrawn into a cramped compartment disengaged with the crew. For sake of drama, Milius and Coppola should have reworked the script to make the crew members more interesting(as individuals in their own right) and more involved, even if indirectly or unwittingly, with the mission at hand, like with Fabrizio the baker’s assistant in THE GODFATHER. Consider the Westerns THE PROFESSIONALS(directed by Richard Brooks) and DUCK, YOU SUCKER(directed by Sergio Leone) where characters are misled into ventures, the objectives of which turn out to be something other than told. Even as dupes, their personal engagement with the action keeps the story alive. But with Willard waiting forever to reach his destination while his companions laze around the waves, the monotony keeps building in APOCALYPSE NOW.
Despite THE GODFATHER films’ reputation for violence, largely owing to the relative novelty of graphic realism back then(as well as to the masterly execution done so memorably), the blood-letting is only intermittent through the films, most of which is devoted to family drama and gangster politics. What really matters is that even the quietest moments in THE GODFATHER Parts I and II are compelling, whereas APOCALYPSE NOW comes to rely almost solely on occasional bursts of violence to relieve the tedium in the absence of any real drama.
Team dynamics, ranging from rivalry to camaraderie, is what makes a group of men interesting, as evinced in the ensemble casts of THE GODFATHER and THE WILD BUNCH, but it remains switched off throughout APOCALYPSE NOW. It wouldn’t have hurt the film to swap some of the crew or add one or more characters whose interactions with Willard would have proven more fruitful.
A number of critics have pointed out the patently absurd choice of the boat(as in the novel HEART OF DARKNESS) when a helicopter would have come in more handy. However, had it been established that Willard were to meet up with some operatives dispersed in the field, the use of the boat would have been justified. Besides, whereas Marlowe’s purpose in regard to the ivory-trader Kurtz is ambiguous in HEART OF DARKNESS, Willard’s clear assignment(to ‘terminate’ colonel Kurtz) poses a serious challenge in terms of strategy, i.e. even if a helicopter could transport Willard faster to the end zone, it would hardly improve his chances of a touchdown. This is why Willard’s naked entry into Kurtz’s compound, with Chef and Lance in tow, makes zero sense. What was he planning to do? Declare himself as the latest in the long line of failed assassins and request permission from Kurtz to kill him?
APOCALYPSE NOW is now available in three versions. The original theatrical version with a running time of 2 hrs 25 min, the REDUX version that is 3 hrs 20 min, and what Coppola calls the Final Cut, rounded to 3 hrs. The theatrical release was the only version known to the public until the 2001 release of REDUX, quite a cause célèbre at the time, as well as cause for further controversy(than of closure). Even the biggest defenders of the original release long admitted problems with the second half, especially the ending, and some hoped that the additional footage would provide fixes or at least clarifications. As it turned out, the leprous final part remained incurable, but an extra scene served as a palliative: It features Kurtz in daylight, a welcome change of scenery showing another side of the ‘madman’ who isn’t all Mr. doom-and-gloom.
At any rate, REDUX’s primary changes involved chronology, tone(especially with added levity), trajectory, and thematic shading(if not substance). Some of the scenes were re-ordered for the better. For example, Clean’s romp to the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”, a minor highlight in the film, is saved for later. (Similarly, several scenes in Sam Peckinpah’s PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID were re-ordered to good effect on the DVD release.) If the original version is dense and oppressive to the point of claustrophobia within the Willard-Kurtz dynamic, REDUX allows for some tonal variance with lighter moments. So, Willard isn’t one-dimensionally fixated on the mission at the risk of seeming virtually asocial in relation to the crew. In REDUX, he steals one of Kilgore’s surf boards to the delight of his boat-mates, i.e. he can be one of the boys at times.
Likewise is the aforementioned scene with Kurtz out in daylight surrounded by children nonchalantly quoting from mainstream US magazines(such as Time). Instead of being pigeonholed as a Nosferatu-like Svengali hiding in darkness, we see another side of Kurtz, one closer to Milius’ original vision. (Unfortunately, Coppola excised the scene from his ‘Final Cut’, a sure sign that creative talent isn’t synonymous with artistic judgement.) The scene provides some clues as to why Kurtz is the leader of the tribe, worshiped by fearsome warriors(of Montagnards). True, there is a dark and brooding side to Kurtz(as a prophet of doom) but also a vigorous side that can inspire and lead an army of jungle warriors. After all, how could Kurtz maintain command by perpetually sulking in darkness muttering solipsism reverberating off dank walls?
REDUX’s other contribution is paradoxical as its longer length actually makes it feel shorter. Its various diversions have the effect of respites(like rest areas along highways) on a long journey. Driving nonstop shortens the trip literally but lengthens it psychologically.
The added ‘breaks’ with the stranded Playboy bunnies and the French plantation allow for the audience, along with the crew, to get off the boat and stretch out. To be sure, the former is poorly written and the real-life bunnies are better dancers than actors, and the scene could have been shortened. (Incidentally, it’s rather odd that Milius and/or Coppola opted for rather pensive interludes involving the Bunnies, as if bimbos have it in them to be thoughtful, even introspective.) The French Plantation scene, in contrast, is fascinating and furthers the thematic advancement of the concept as laid out by Milius.
APOCALYPSE NOW’s verisimilitude owes in no small part to the contribution of journalist Michael Herr(who wrote the voice-over narration), then renowned for his book DISPATCHES, a collection of reports from the frontlines. Unlike Milius and Coppola, Herr had been there, on the ground witnessing soldiers in the heat of battle. On the film’s evidence, he had literary chops as well(and was later hired by Stanley Kubrick as script-collaborator on FULL METAL JACKET).
The voice-over narration in APOCALYPSE NOW is somewhat comparable to the one in BLADE RUNNER. As both films were bigger on mood than momentum, there were concerns about the audience becoming baffled or bored(which proved to be the case with BLADE RUNNER even with the spoken narration). Therefore, the idea was that the audience had to be familiarized with the material(like having a hand to hold onto in the dark), especially as the worlds presented were exotically foreign or futuristic. Still, the differences are noteworthy. Whereas Coppola opted for the voice-over narration, Ridley Scott opposed the idea but to no avail. (Incidentally, voice-over narration had also been considered for neo-noir CHINATOWN.) The voice-over narration works well enough in the original version of BLADE RUNNER(though plenty would beg to differ), but it isn’t essential, as confirmed by the Director’s Cut and the Final Cut that, if anything, gain in mood and ambience by having nothing come between the screen and the audience, i.e. the overall effect is more hypnotic and dreamlike without the on-and-off nudging of Deckard’s exposition(that risks breaking the spell, part enchantment and part nightmare).
In contrast, Herr’s contribution didn’t merely delineate and clarify the material but add further layers of meaning. As such, he fully deserved recognition as one of the authors of APOCALYPSE NOW. Having trudged with the soldiers in the jungle, he obviously knew things far beyond the purview of Coppola and Milius whose ideas of Vietnam were essentially personal projections.
Artists, like intellectuals, have a tendency to project their biases onto their image of reality, which may hardly resemble the actual thing. The realistic is not to be confused with the real, just like scientism isn’t to be confused with science. People often confuse their concern or commitment to the real world, real people, and real suffering(injustice) for reality itself. Consider the eponymous character of BARTON FINK who believes himself to be one with the People, the workers of the world, because of his ideological commitment to scientific materialism. Consider all the ‘woke’ white fools who, via the George Floyd hysteria, convinced themselves that they understood the racial reality of America. Because their views of reality are obligingly grim, they believe themselves to be unflinchingly face-to-face with reality when, in fact, stuff like the George-Floyd panic owed completely to manufactured narratives by the media, academia, and politicians. The delusion is pervasive on all sides. A libertarian ideologue, by applying his worldview to the grim realities of Detroit or Baltimore, may believe that his ideas, far from being abstract, constitute an unsparing critique and commentary on the reasons for social failure. It’s like Jack Kemp and Rand Paul types fooling themselves that ‘enterprise zones’ and spirit of individualism can solve the problems of crime and poverty in the black community. In truth, they are no less blind to the matter of racial differences that go a long way to explain socio-economic disparities among the races.
Engaging with one’s favored image of reality, however harrowing, is like shadow-boxing. Encountering real reality is like being punched in the face. Mike Tyson once said of his (hapless)opponents something to the effect, “Everyone has a plan before they get hit.” Pro-war or anti-war, Milius and Coppola had their own ‘plans’, but Herr witnessed the force with which war hit you in the face.
Furthermore, he was as adept in probing psychological turmoil as in conveying physical terror. The narration works in polyphony with Carmine Coppola(father of Francis)’s striking original score(that may have been an influence on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s for MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE). Rarely have narration and soundtrack been so complementary(with the added complexity of Walter Murch as sound designer), as if in aural conspiracy. Carmine Coppola’s score(or more like compositional ideas), ranging from musical fragments to beats and rhythms analogous to movement and tension, opens up new spaces for the narration to resound in.
While the music that most people associate with APOCALPYSE NOW is Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”(from DIE WALKURE) and “The End” by the Doors(and of course “Satisfaction” and “Suzie-Q”), Carmine Coppola provided the original score that’s been underrated(or overshadowed by the ‘iconic’ musical numbers). Coppola’s choice of cast and crew has long been nagged by suspicion of nepotism — Talia Shire cast as Connie in THE GODFATHER is his sister, and it sure didn’t hurt Nicolas Cage to be his nephew — , and perhaps Francis Coppola was being a ‘good son’(in the Italian style) to his father whose musical aspirations had been frustrated. Whatever the case may have been, Carmine Coppola’s work on APOCALYPSE NOW is nothing less than remarkable, a soundscape portraiture of Willard’s troubled psyche. It has the furtive quality of the bugging devices in Francis Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION.
As the film opens, we’re introduced to Willard(or his suspended state of mind) as a wandering soul out of sync with normality. He wants a mission, any mission, without which he feels aimless and disoriented. He’s a man of action but no autonomy. Without orders from above, something to captivate(or more like capture) his mind, he’s like a rock of ice in a whiskey glass melting into formlessness .
From Michael Herr’s voice-over characterization of Willard, we learn he feels out-of-place everywhere. He’s estranged from his wife and alienated from America, either because the country or he or maybe both have changed beyond recognition(or self-recognition) over the years; he has no feeling for Vietnam either, but that’s where the action is, and he was trained for action, a drug he needs in order to focus attention away from his tormented self.
He’s not a war-lover like Colonel Kilgore who beams amidst the death and destruction. Though reptilian in temperament and capable of ruthless/remorseless action, Willard doesn’t come across as a sadist or psychopath. One can sense rudiments of conscience(or limits), at least within the context of war in which morality(by civilian norms) is a luxury.
Upon arriving at Kurtz’s compound, his repulsed, albeit subdued, reaction suggests a reserve of inner balance required to recognize insanity in the face of it. Ironically, he needs the larger madness of war to contain his lesser madness(just like a poor person doesn’t feel so poor when surrounded by abject poverty or a sick person doesn’t feel so sick when surrounded by cripples and terminal cases). In the absence of the Hell-of-War to chase his personal demons into the dark, the latter creeps back out and crawls all over the walls like infernal shadows. Despite his professional calling being death, Willard’s need for a mission isn’t unlike that of a Christian missionary who, harboring doubts and anxieties of his own, welcomes the challenge of converting heathens or helping humanity as a means to bury his personal issues. Willard needs the dogs of war to tame the restless chihuahua barking inside him.
That said, Willard’s growing fascination with the Kurtz Files may betray a yearning for deeper meaning to fill the void within. Though outwardly normal and (more than)competent on the job, inwardly there isn’t much to hold him together; he seems estranged from the familiar and unclear of what lies in store, like an apostate divorced from the faith but lost without it. He is in the war and he needs the war, but he doesn’t believe in the war. In a way, his biggest enemy is himself for its lack of autonomous meaning.
Whether due to his personality/temperament, the shifting fabric of American society, and/or the cognitive impact of the war, he’s lost his anchor along the way, becoming ‘spiritually’ adrift, a man without a compass. His reliance on others to steer the vessel to his destination(actually chosen by his superiors) is indicative of his condition. He’s an agent without agency.
Then, it’s understandable why he’s drawn to the very man he’d been ordered to assassinate. Kurtz, for all his apparent madness and ‘unsound’ methods, must also have felt something missing in his life, a crisis that compelled him into an act of reinvention. Why else would a man, who could have moved up to the top of the ‘corporate’ ladder, have given it all up? He was searching for something deeper and truer, more authentic, in the end formulating his own course of theory-and-practice instead of continuing to do the bidding(as an ‘errand boy sent by grocery clerks’) of the faceless war machine. “He could have gone for general, but he went for himself instead,” Willard surmises.
Perusing the Kurtz dossier, Willard gains an inkling as to what differentiates Kurtz from his peers, i.e. most men are unable to generate their own meaning, find their own purpose, and/or connect with the higher truth or deeper power. Rather, they are like the Japanese samurai whose meaning was bound to one’s unquestioning loyalty to a lord and clan. On his own, he was relegated to the status of ‘ronin’, or masterless samurai. Being ‘masterless’ would seem a blessing, a chance at greater freedom. But in a society of well-defined social roles and rigid status, individual freedom could be bewildering.
The West prefers to regard itself as individualist and independent in spirit, but the general prospect has remained employment, to be told what to do. The military hands down orders. The church preaches sermons on what and how the flock is to believe. At all levels of academia/media, most people remain within the box of intellectual/ideological orthodoxy; and even as the orthodoxy may change, its control by the few remains constant.
Willard, for all his intelligence and ability, is like the overwhelming majority, an ‘errand boy’. And so are the men who gave him the orders. They are part of the ‘corporation’, always risk-averse, fearful of rocking the boat, and consensus-minded in their career orientation. Such compromises guarantee security and stability, a clear sense of hierarchy and steady pace of advancement. However, it comes with a price: One’s essence(or lack thereof) relies on the collective conventions of power.
In the opening scene, Willard seems on the edge of the abyss, waiting for orders, a ‘mission’, minus which he finds himself at an impasse. The inner-turbulence could be fuel for self-reflection and search for meaning, but Willard hasn’t the will and vision to mold confusion into conviction. Instead, he just waits and waits for external forces to supply him with transient purpose, stopgap measures to keep his inner demons at bay. And as he waits, he turns to alcohol to dull the pain, only to collapse in drunken stupor. The stark contrast between the sluggish Willard in the hotel room and the alert Willard on the boat shows what a difference a ‘mission’ can make. Sent on an ‘errand’, Willard has something to focus his mind on, a game to play.
The power of the opening scene owes as much to the remarkable sound design as to the visuals and performance. Kudos to Walter Murch, the most amazing things were done with the sound of rotating helicopter blades, as if the helicopter has a mind of its own, into which we’re eavesdropping, with the sound seeping and burrowing than reverberating and expanding, becoming analogous to the cyclical hell within Willard’s soul. A helicopter-of-the-mind, so strange and surreal, its full effect appreciated only when followed up with the more familiar external sound of copter blades as the voice-over narration begins: “Saigon. Shit…”
Few things are more confounding than forming one’s own meaning and determining one’s own purpose, the great challenge of existentialist philosophy in the 20th Century. Not surprisingly, changing times opted for pursuits less daunting, those more edifying, unifying, and uplifting, the easy-to-follow fashions in radicalism, materialism, identity politics, and religious revivals.
As for those who continued with the quest for self-meaning(and maybe found it), the reward could be an autonomous moral compass and ‘spiritual’ map beyond the purview of humanity resigned to external authority as the source of duty and deity.
Consider the difference between Travis Bickle of TAXI DRIVER and your average policeman. Bickle as a cabbie has only one purpose: To take people to their chosen destinations(and in some off-the-cuff cases to allow the vehicle to be used as a moving brothel). His job serves a socio-economic purpose for all involved, the driver and the passengers, but there is no larger meaning to be derived from driving a cab. Therefore, Bickle must map his own destiny, find his own meaning(in a bewildering megalopolis) beyond taking strangers from point A to point B.
In contrast, being a cop does count for something. He puts his life on the line to serve and to protect. It’s a tough and dangerous job(though, ironically enough, driving a taxi has long been the most deadly occupation in the US due to blacks with guns) but socially and morally rewarding(except in times of stuff like the BLM nuttery). A cop’s meaning comes with the job. One could be the shallowest or stupidest fool on the police force, like the dufuses in THE POLICE ACADEMY movies, but mere membership in the club means you belong to a brotherhood of street angels, like a priesthood but with billy clubs. However, this meaning is not self-generated or autonomous but comes with the badge. Take away the badge and its duties, and a cop is suddenly nothing. Consider what happens to George C. Scott’s character in THE NEW CENTURIONS. An elder cop, he’s seen it all. Every day on the job has its hassles, close-calls, and mishaps, some tragic. But as long as he’s on the force, he feels alive and purposeful. The profession can be emotionally draining but also serves as a useful distraction from the sheer emptiness of life. Upon retiring, with all the extra time, pension & benefits, and newfound safety(no longer attached to a hazardous profession), one might think he’d find some serenity and peace of mind, but instead the walls begin to close in on him, and he falls into quiet desperation, not unlike Willard stranded alone in the hotel room in APOCALYPSE NOW. Being a cop was his entire life, the purpose of his being; away from the force he finds himself isolated as he was never a man to generate his own meaning. He becomes like a ronin, or masterless samurai, and he blows his brains out. Immersion in work defines people’s lives and brings out the best in them, but a life wholly dependent on constant buzz for purpose and meaning has a severe vulnerability, though recognized only when the object of one’s preoccupation is taken away.
Bickle in TAXI DRIVER goes about it the wrong, even crazy, way of finding his own truth, but he nevertheless acquires a semblance of autonomous meaning, transforming into a kind of lumpen-yukio-mishima or fisher-king-character for whom his taxi becomes like a mythic chariot. (Same goes for the cabbie of Harry Chapin’s song “Taxi”.) He has formed his own vision of the city defined by his own view of good vs evil, in which he has taken on the role of an avenging vigilante angel, a white knight slaying the dragon to rescue the damsel(though a happy whore). In the eyes of the public(frayed by black crime, political corruption, ungovernable chaos, and their own compromises), he even becomes like a folk hero, one who mustered the courage to put the Dirty-Harry-Death-Wish theory into actual practice. (As in Sidney Lumet’s NETWORK and DOG DAY AFTERNOON, the haggling among the media, the people, and activist groups produce some really warped perceptions.)
Unlike Willard who assassinates individuals on the basis of orders-from-above without questioning, Bickle sets out to assassinate a Presidential candidate on the basis of his own worldview, twisted as it may be; and failing at that, he compensates with a mission to take out a pimp and save a ‘princess’, i.e. if you can’t save the world from corrupt politics, save one life from criminality(except that the ‘damsel’ in this particular case prefers life in the city, debased as it is, far from her humdrum small town origins, even at the cost of being a hooker, but then who isn’t a ‘prostitute’, or ‘errand boy’, in the larger scheme of things, a common thread running through the films of Jean-Luc Godard?) Thus, Bickle, ridiculous as he is, attains for himself what fails to be realized between Willard and Kurtz, i.e. Bickle becomes like the fusion of Willard and Kurtz, an assassin with a self-generated vision of the world.
One way to gauge a person’s equilibrium is by observing him in varying situations. Ideally, people feel most happy when young, wealthy, successful, powerful, and/or privileged. Even if not always happy, they may feel fulfilled and purposeful with activity deemed important/indispensable or respectable/elevated. Take away those things, and what happens? Why do some people who lose their fortunes leap out of windows or spiral into alcoholism or madness? Why do some people end up like George C. Scott’s character upon retirement in THE NEW CENTURIONS? Roman legions lived to fight and conquer. That was their bread-and-butter, later their bread-and-wine. But without wars and conquest, they felt as nothing, like ronin the masterless samurai. It’s telling that the meaning and worth of Roman identity, as a genuine ethnic category, faded with the dissolution of the empire. Roman prestige rested on historical hubris and became synonymous with military victory. Then, it’s hardly surprising that the fallen Romans were forgotten, and others claimed to be the New Romans on the basis of their military triumphs. If an identity is associated solely with victory, what happens when its bearers face defeat? The original identity, rooted in ethnos, loses all meaning, and the identity may survive only as an abstract archetype for future would-be-winners to emulate or invoke.
Willard in APOCALYPSE NOW is like a Roman soldier whose meaning derives from his ‘mission’. His existence is a series of waiting for orders to fulfill(like a cook in a diner); he’s a hired hunter for the empire. “Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain…” – From “The End” by the Doors. We’re reminded of what the god-emperor general says to the soldiers in PATTON: “Thirty years from now when you’re sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, ‘What did you do in the great World War Two?’ You won’t have to cough and say, ‘Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say ‘Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named George Patton!'” Rousing speech indeed, just the sort of thing soldiers want to and need to hear.
However, a life primed for battle and victory, tough and manly as it is, is ultimately fragile. There’s always the possibility of defeat(or at least retreat, as in Vietnam), a prospect once traumatic to Americans who, prior to Vietnam, proudly claimed invincibility in never having lost a war.
But then, even total victory comes with its own set of problems as it may cement permanent or at least prolonged peace, in which case the warrior is no longer necessary, even regarded as a burden and nuisance. (NY police did one hell of a job in decreasing crime to historically low levels since the Giuliani administration, but did it result in more respect for the profession? No, urban ‘liberals’, feeling safe and secure, took the good times for granted and reverted to their ideological indulgences in Negrolatry and the like, opening the gates of hell to BLM riots that ransacked buildings and looted stores.) When the bloody wars ended in Japan under Tokugawa dominance, many samurai were deemed superfluous and cut loose. The impact was far more profound than losing one’s job(easily and casually replaceable by another) because samurai identity meant membership in a caste, a brotherhood, a series of ‘missions’ to serve the lord. It’s like a professional athlete is in it for life. For all the wear-and-tear it does to his body and mind, he feels intensely alive in the heat of competition. No wonder then that athletes, like soldiers, have a tough time re-adjusting to ‘civilian’ life.
Therefore, a truly stable identity needs something more than an appetite for glory and obsession with prestige. It then explains why the Jews, despite getting routinely battered by the far more powerful and numerous Romans, possessed a more substantive, resilient, and adaptable sense of self. Roman-ness, rendered indistinguishable from military might and glory, had to keep winning in order to retain its prestige, its aura and meaning-of-might. In contrast, Jews could be militarily defeated and humiliated, but even as ‘losers’ they retained the hopeful conviction that the one true God was looking down on them, favoring them, and protecting them. Jewishness remained independent of the condition of Jews in the temporal world. (Zionism is like Jewishness Romanized, obsessed with might and victory, psychologically ill-prepared to handle defeat.)
People with inner(or ‘deeper’) meaning are better able to cope when detached from the action as either concentration(of one’s energies) or distraction(from the ultimate absurdity of existence). The appeal of religion is the promise or illusion of Insta-Depth. Even as ‘losers’ in the social/material world, they’ve attained spiritual ‘depth’, an inner sense of worth in the eyes of the Almighty.
For most people, inner meaning isn’t self-generated but borrowed or shared on the basis of cultural and/or spiritual commonality. They may be of the Christian or Islamic faith, or of the Buddhist outlook. Or, they could be mindful of their Jewish or Hindu roots.
Others make an effort to reclaim or revive a lost or fading heritage/community, as Yukio Mishima did on the basis of patriotism and Japanese mythology. In a rapidly changing Japan where the culture was being relegated to a past tense, a mere museum piece, the essence of Japanese-ness could no longer be taken for granted. It had to be championed and defended in the realm of politics and culture. It had to be revitalized, and in this sense, there was a degree of self-generative aspect to Mishima’s project as his lonely vision of Japan had fallen out of favor with most of society for reasons of ideology, fashion, and/or convenience. As such, it was like a personal crusade.
At any rate, it’s no wonder so many people turn to religion or its equivalent as they grow older. With less immersion in or distraction with business and pleasure, with their ‘best days’ behind them, they’re inevitably confronted with their bare existence. What is it all about, apart from productive value to society and pleasure-seeking for oneself? It begins to dawn on them their inner-life is kind of empty and/or unexamined.
The educated secular types tend to fall into psycho-therapy or some New Age substitute for faith(usually associated with some sacralized social/political cause) while the less-educated and/or spiritually-inclined turn to faith, even old-time religion. This may explain why so many Boomers became some of the most zealous advocates of Zionism. Not because adoration of Jewishness was always at the center of their lives but because they began to feel empty with the passing of years, not least for having been weaned almost exclusively on Pop Culture that followed them even to their adult years.
And so, many Boomers, even liberal-leaning ones, yearned for something ‘deeper’ as they grew older, latching onto a newfound calling or faith in their moment of surrender to the higher Holy authority. It is when people are most vulnerable that they can be sold a bill of goods; and when many aging boomers turned to religion, many churches had been Zionised with the message, “Those who bless the Jews shall be blessed, those who curse the Jews shall be cursed”, i.e. Christianity went from a vessel of Christ’s universal promise of Salvation to a bandwagon of Jew-Worship.
One can debate as to whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Hindus possess autonomous meaning. In a way, yes, in the sense that they believe their lives/souls have deeper meaning independent of their station or standing in life. Rich or poor, employed or unemployed, Jesus and Muhammad will not reject you. And a Jew down on his luck is just as Chosen as the Jew with all the luck in the world. In that sense, they own a degree of autonomy, at least in relation to mundane reality. Yet, they neither discovered nor created the meaning on their own; they inherited or received it from established or official sources. There is, to be sure, the category of the prophet or yogi who goes halfway in attaining, directly and/or on his own, a message from the great beyond. While reverent of received wisdom or the sacred tradition, he goes one step beyond, circumventing the priestly class/caste with its rigid dogma, for direct access to the ultimate power. And so, certain Jewish prophets redefined or redirected the Covenant, while Jesus and Muhammad went further still.
The acceptance of his fate by Moses in TEN COMMANDMENTS is an illustration of the power of deep meaning. In the movie, the adult Moses(Charlton Heston) is introduced as a perfumed and privileged prince of Egypt, adored by beautiful women and favored by the Pharaoh himself. But upon discovering his true identity as a Hebrew, he relinquishes his vaunted place in Egyptian society and joins his own kind as a slave. Yet, despite the loss of physical comfort, there’s a gain in soul-meaning. No longer judged on the basis of social station, he feels fulfilled as a child of God who toils in the bosom of his Tribe.
Beyond such half-measure is the most daunting(or nearly impossible) challenge of generating one’s own meaning from scratch. There’s a reason why philosophers(and the philosophically inclined, though not of the profession) draw on past philosophers, adopting and adapting existing ideas; even in rejection of them, the new ideas are developed in a meaningful dialectic with the old ones. Still, the seminal philosophers, far beyond their peers, have been remarkably paradigmatic. By making people see the world in a new way, it’s as if they reinvented the universe. That said, even though philosophy has a social and political dimension, it is essentially a solitary pursuit, a rational individual’s search for and meditation on the meaning(or meaninglessness) of life. Whether a philosopher’s ideas change the world or not, the gratification rests mainly on his own sense of himself in the world.
In contrast, to found one’s own religion or weave one’s own mythology is an undertaking, in order of magnitude, far greater than the individualistic pursuit of a philosopher. Philosophy is limited to an examination of one’s subjectivity or the world’s objectivity, or a discourse between subjectivity and objectivity. Its purpose is the pursuit of truth, the value of which cannot be measured by popularity or accessibility, much like scientific truth is the truth even if few people understand it or even know of it.
In contrast, religion and myth have no boundaries, no limitations, and can be as big(or small) or profound(or petty) as the human imagination is willing. It’s where subjectivity projects itself onto presumed objectivity, hurling one’s ego onto the universe in the formation of the ‘gods’; it’s where the soul feels possessed of the profoundest will of the universe, the divine spirit. Given its expansiveness, religions are hungry for worshipers, acolytes, crusaders, inquisitors, and enforcers, scooping up as many converts as possible. (Even exclusive ethno-religions like Judaism and Hinduism nevertheless include all within the tribe, from the richest to the poorest, from the most educated to the most ignorant.)
Whereas philosophy is for the intelligent, educated, and logical at the exclusion of everyone else, religion is open to many(or even to all) despite its claimed knowledge of the profoundest and most mysterious truth, e.g. Jesus as none other than the Son of God coming in contact with the poor, infirm, and ignorant.
As such both systems come with problems. In its mental filtering of sentiments and attachments, the ‘mushy’ stuff that makes humans human, philosophy tends to produce emotional gimps. As for religion, in its union of profundity and ignorance, it tends to produce mental chimps, like Donald Trump’s ‘spiritual advisor’ and Pete Hegseth as the PULP FICTION-quoting ‘servant-warrior of God’. Stupid people being stupid is commonplace, tolerable, and usually not dangerous, but stupid people believing themselves to be imbued with cosmic/divine energy is a recipe for disaster. Trump was less dangerous without the messiah complex.
Similar to religion, mythologies are an interplay of the material world and the divine realm, weaving man and nature, earth and sky, and life and death into Homeric verse; they are about heroes on epic adventures, the eternal battle between forces of light and darkness, thus encompassing everything under the sun. (Generally speaking, myths present spirit worlds but aren’t spiritual in the pious or sanctimonious manner of the great religions.) Mythology isn’t merely for study or discourse. It’s meant to inspire, enthrall, and spellbind with hypnotic will. It enchants with stories of heroes & villains and gods & monsters, tempts with chance at glory or transcendence, and unites people with cult-like reverie.
It pushes beyond the boundaries of prophecy(with its moral constraints) into the visionary frontier, the post-Christian ‘Nietzschean’ thing.
Call it mad, insane, or unsound, but it is the character-concept of John Milius’ Kurtz, possibly the most ambitious and megalomaniacal ideation of the Great Man attempted in cinema. Many movies have been about the great figures of history, such as Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, religious prophets, kings of Europe, military commanders, and the like, but Milius’ meditation on greatness sought ‘further’ and ‘deeper’. Perhaps, the only comparably ambitious scenario is the apotheosis of David Bowman into ‘Star Child’(in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), a kind of Sci-Fi Christ, the one chosen by Cosmic Mystery to undergo blood fusion with 5D stardust. Still, Bowman is arguably lesser than Kurtz because of his powerlessness in the transformation(though he’d demonstrated courage and coolness-under-fire in the struggle with HAL computer). He found himself with no choice but to submit to the ‘infinite’. He is the lucky WASP who overcame the Jewishy HAL, apparently convinced of its own deserved destiny to greet/encounter the great mystery. It’s as if HAL, regarding itself the most advanced conscious system on Earth, should be the planetary representative and receiver of the great message from the beyond. Alas, it suffered the HAL-ocaust at the hands of the WASP Bowman, the one chosen for the neo-covenant. Stanley Kubrick was Jewish, but his space epic drew considerably from the Germanic Soul in the fusion of Christian and Nietzschean themes(to the classical music of Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss). Perhaps, Steven Spielberg consciously strove to ‘correct’ the prophecy with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND in which the cosmic deities choose a Jew uber alles, Richard Dreyfuss.
At any rate, Bowman, for all his transcendence and transformation, is a rather hapless figure, not unlike Alex undergoing the Ludovico Treatment in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and ultimately clueless as to what was done to him and why, no less than the puzzled ‘Moon-Watcher’ ape in the opening of the film.
In contrast, Kurtz is his own master, the overseer of his own metamorphosis from a patriotic team player to the founding patriarch of a new order. In this sense, Milius’ Kurtz is very likely the most outrageous and outlandish vision of the Complete Man.
Kurtz has one thing in common with Roy Batty(Rutger Hauer as the Replicant leader) in BLADE RUNNER. Deckard, in a Willard-like role, was hired as an assassin to take out the renegade androids, but in the face-to-face encounter with Batty, he realizes the alpha android isn’t just a cold-blooded killer but something like a demigod out of Greek/Germanic mythology, as much a hero as a villain, a being far more intelligent, experienced(despite his short life span), and imaginative than any man. Yet, for all that, despite the god complex and tragic-poetic dimensions of his existence, Batty is the creation of man, more precisely of corporate man, a product of commerce. His maker, Eldon Tyrell, held the ultimate cards, limiting the ‘lifespan’ of the replicants to a mere flicker. Yet, Tyrell ended up creating something smarter and stronger-willed than himself, eventually to be devoured by it despite the elaborate security precautions to protect the king on the chessboard. Thus, neither Batty nor Tyrell is complete unto himself. Batty is like a minor god but also a machine whose programming cannot be undone, created to be the smartest and strongest ‘man’ but also ‘sentenced’ to a four year ‘lifespan’. Tyrell is the corporate lord of the world, the god of futuristic capitalism, but his ambition to outdo himself has created a being greater than him, one that can squash him like a bug.
In contrast, as Milius conceived of him, Kurtz is the complete man. His determination to devise a winning strategy in Vietnam gradually turned into a kundalini-like yogic-warrior journey drawing him ever nearer to the deepest source of human conflict and man’s ur-place in it. In a way, Willard’s journey up the river approximates Kurtz’s own journey, or transformation from a ‘corporate’ man with orders from above to a man with his own methods to a man with his own ideas to a man with his own kingdom. One might see it as ‘going native’, a recurring theme in many Western imperial(and anti-imperial, as well as neo-imperial) narratives, fictional and historical, such as TARZAN, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, MAN CALLED HORSE, DANCES WITH WOLVES, THE LAST SAMURAI, and of course AVATAR. But, in those cases, the white man is absorbed into an existing tribe or culture, whereas Kurtz establishes his own order and authority, to which the natives, mesmerized and browbeaten, are drawn and offer their loyalty. Thus, it’s less a case of Kurtz ‘going native’ than the natives ‘going Kurtz’.
But then, this seminal vision of Milius was aborted in APOCALYPSE NOW due to the divergence between Milius and Coppola over the ending, the only part in which Kurtz appears. For Milius, the long journey finally pays off with the banger revelation of Kurtz as god-emperor and poet-warrior, always ready to hurl himself into battle, perhaps the final battle, against an uncomprehending world; and Willard, as an extension of the audience, finds himself at least half-understanding, even half-agreeing, with Kurtz’s impossible but awesome standards that he set for himself and his domain.
Even though Milius drew from Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS for inspiration, he had ideas of his own, fundamentally deviating from the spirit of the novel, much like Akira Kurosawa borrowed the basic structure from KING LEAR but imbued RAN with his own ideas about power, loyalty & betrayal, and the human condition. In essence, Milius’ concept of Kurtz is more along the lines of “Heart of Brightness”, i.e. Kurtz dove into the deepest/darkest depths of human nature and wrestled with demons & monsters, but ultimately found the ‘Rheingold’ and resurfaced with his hard-fought treasure, the stuff of authenticity. He found the light at the end of the tunnel. Thus, he represents a luminosity, a shining acceptance of man in perpetual struggle(not least with himself) between the realm of beasts/animals and the domain of the gods. Rejected is the dichotomy of good and evil, a delusional hypocrisy at best, and in its stead is the truce between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as two sides of the same coin, complementary and integral, like the Oriental concept of Yin and Yang.
From Milius’ perspective(when the Vietnam War was still raging), Americans were caught in a stalemate resulting from a moralistic quandary, i.e. the US had the resources to win but lacked the will because something about its Christian-humanist-democratic morality refrained it from going all the way. The US killed many but wasn’t willing to kill more, even all of them, if necessary. Americans recoiled from scandals like the My Lai massacre when, in order to win, the warring party must harden its heart and regarded atrocities as an inescapable, even integral, part of war. Thus, what John Milius meant by ‘the horror, the horror’ deviated from the original meaning of Joseph Conrad, whose Kurtz-in-Congo, though clearly gone mad, in a moment of clarity has a glimpse of what he had wrought. In contrast, the ‘horror’ is something to overcome, even embrace and prize, in the Milius milieu. War is about horror, and complaining about it from a moralistic vantage point is like animals whining about the savagery of nature. If wolves, hyenas, or lions don’t tear their rivals and prey apart with ruthless abandon, they don’t eat; they starve and die.
Not that Milius believed one should be glib about or gratuitous with the ‘horror’. One should see it for what it is in all its horribleness but acknowledge the fact that it’s an inescapable part of nature, human and animal(and even plants as the jungle is a juggernaut of growth enveloping everything in its ever expanding reach). But at the end of the day, man, as warrior and hunter, must overcome his dread of the ‘horror’ and accept it. Not to be its servant or slave but its partner or co-master. In a similar manner, Michael Corleone is initially distressed upon realizing that not only his family but all of American society is corrupt and crypto-criminal. Becoming ‘legitimate’ merely confers the façade of respectability. The entire system, from senators down to the police chief, is corrupt, and that’s that. Should one lose heart and just give up? Or should one come to terms and grow into a real man willing to play the game?
From Milius’ perspective, American political morality was akin to the Disney view of nature. In Disney films, nature is wondrous and animal behavior is mostly amusing, suitable for children. Sure, there are predators and prey, but even the killings have been visually bowdlerized.
Real nature, in contrast, is truly horrible, a never-ending nightmare of terror stalking the terrain. Upon realization of this truth, one could become dispirited or despairing of nature. Or, one could accept the ‘horror’ and appreciate that man himself evolved under these factors through the eons. For Milius, war-and-peace meant to make peace with war as the natural state of man. In order to win a war, one must adopt the mindset of the Roman legions or the Mongol hordes — a movie about Genghis Khan was one of Milius’ dream projects, much like the story of Alexander the Great was for Oliver Stone(and of course Kubrick came close to making a film about Napoleon).
Americans were apparently fighting a Disney War in Vietnam. It employed its overwhelming technological advantage but hadn’t the will to ‘go all the way’. To complicate matters further, the US was torn between ‘saving the Vietnamese’ and ‘killing the Vietnamese’, not least due to the blurring of the friend/enemy distinction in the guerrilla-led struggle. The locals might aid the Americans by day but then aid the Viet Cong by night.
Given the circumstances, at least in Milius’ estimation, it made little sense for Americans to go out on a limb to be liked, especially when they had no choice but to go out and burn down villages. Far from being appreciated by the locals, it was seen as either weakness or indecision(or some bipolar malady, by which Americans literally committed all manner of horrors but couldn’t face up to the ‘horror’ in the metaphysical sense), especially in contrast to the Viet Cong who were consistent in their acceptance of the ‘horror’ and ruthless determination to win. (America at war was like an American enjoying his steak while blocking out the fact of grisly slaughters of cows involved. It is why the butchery of cows at the end of the film is so unsettling. We want the steak but not the ‘horror’.) Then, the only solution was to be rid of all hang-ups about the rights-and-wrongs of war and go all the way and let the chips fall where they may.
In his keynote remark to Willard, Kurtz explains how he came to be a friend of ‘horror’. As a seasoned soldier, he’d been no stranger to the bloody nature of war, but even he was shocked by what he came to witness. Americans, in a good-will gesture, had offered medical assistance and inoculated the children of a village, but then, the enemy, Viet Cong and/or North Vietnamese, hacked off the vaccinated arms in retaliation. (By the way, there’s no historical evidence of such an atrocity ever happening.) Kurtz had thought he’d seen it all but was confronted with an unimaginable horror, and it seared into his soul. Yet, the light of truth gradually began to dawn on him. His hatred of the enemy turned into admiration. Their deed was horrible, but they had no illusions about what the war was about. There could be no room for mercy for those who consorted with the enemy. As such, they were willing to go to any length to send the strongest possible message, to lay down their unwritten but iron law. As those men had committed a most heinous act, were they evil or mad, or ‘unsound’? For Kurtz, the luminous answer was ‘no’. They might act ‘mad’ in the madness of war, a most natural thing, like hyenas tearing a prey to pieces, but they maintained equilibrium as patriots, family men, and members of the community, not unlike the members of a lion pride, following bloody hunt or a battle with a rival pride, relax together, rub against one another, and lick one another’s wounds.
Problematically, the elevated norms(or conceits) of an advanced civilization tend to color everything with moral, legal, or spiritual meaning. Thus, even wars have to be morally rationalized, legally restrained, and/or spiritually justified, i.e. war must be an extension of or remain within the confines of the ethical norms of peace(though, ironically, what with American society visibly turning decadent and degenerate in the Sixties, some worried that the peace would corrupt the war than vice versa, e.g. Rock-n-Roll and drug culture among the hippies in Haight-Asbury spreading to soldiers in Vietnam). In Milius’ view, war had its own logic and must be fought(to win) on its terms alone. (In a way, Mao Zedong, though a hardline leftist, sort of shared the sentiment when he opined: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” In other words, when revolutionary flames sweep across the land, don’t whine about the bunny rabbits and flowers sure to go up in smoke.)
That said, Milius makes a distinction, a thin but crucial line, between surrendering to the ‘horror’ and ‘making a friend’ of it. In surrendering to the ‘horror’, one loses one’s humanity, or even animality(as even animals are capable of affection and sentiment). Rather, accept the ‘horror’ as a deep-rooted and ineradicable element of reality while safeguarding the other spheres of existence. (Take a shit and accept the need to shit but don’t rub the shit all over the house.) The enemy that hacked off the children’s arms didn’t do it out of sadism or nihilism, like members of the Charles Manson cult. Back home, they were normal men with love for family and sense of community. Likewise, even as Michael Corleone grapples with the ‘horror’ of ‘business’ among the gangsters, he’s a loving patriarch with his own family in his ‘personal’ space.
In a way, a kind of schizophrenia runs through all of humanity(and even animal life as evinced in the canine nature of extreme aggression and excessive affection). The difference between Norman Bates(or the nutter in M. Night Shyamalan’s aptly titled SPLIT) and normal people may be a matter of degree than a matter of kind. Life is maintained by destroying life — think of the animals, plants, and nature in general killed to keep us alive — , but we prefer to think of ourselves as life-affirming, especially by emphasizing the golden rule among humans, but even that is an illusion at best as powerful countries and especially empires(like the Judeo-supremacist US as lone superpower) routinely resort to violence to threaten or destroy countless lives to maintain their advantages, privileges, and supremacy. The US was founded by wiping out the Indians but portrayed itself as the land of freedom, peace, and liberty. Communist China is responsible for the death of millions but keeps with the grand narrative of ‘justice’. Some folks are especially ‘split’ in their political personality, e.g. the Christians with their turn-the-other-cheek sermonizing even as their might and affluence have been built on endless wars and destruction/exploitation of others. It could all be excoriated as hypocrisy but it’s also an inescapable necessity, whereupon the equilibrium in the one depends on overlooking the ‘horror’ in the other. We cannot do without the ‘horror’ but neither can we expose and embrace it out in the open. Thus, it remains a kind of open secret. We know but pretend not to know and even fool ourselves with the pretense. The ‘good’ brother in Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS relies on the ‘bad’ brother to carry out an act of horror in order to maintain his own standing in respectable society. Jews agitated against such ‘hypocrisy’ among the WASP elites but, as the new ruling elites of the US, have turned out to be just the same(or even worse). It’s like, in order for the Jack Nicholson to be the respectable caretaker of the hotel and its sophisticated clientele, he must murder his problematic family, but the horror and the honor must be kept apart, which is why his normal side and his crazy side exist simultaneously but are compartmentalized in separate dimensions. The horror must be overlooked in the Overlook Hotel. Kurtz is able to go further and bares the links between the honor and the ‘horror’.
What Milius envied in the Vietnamese enemy was not only their patriotism(as they had the advantage of home turf or because-we-live-here) but their warrior will. In his view, the Vietnamese had something compelling to fight for, the blood and soil thing, but, no less important, the ruthless-warrior-resolve to be capable-of-anything to win. In contrast, Americans weren’t sure what they were fighting for, especially as there was little love lost between them and the locals; furthermore, they were burdened by the myth of the Americans as the ‘good guys’ who are incapable of the kind of ‘horror’ done by the Nazis and ‘Japs’ in movies and TV(or ‘Injun’ savages in Westerns, at least before such depictions became politically incorrect).
(The moral twist of Tarantino’s INGLORIOUS BASTERDS was it showed Americans capable of horrific war crimes but with brazenly unapologetic pride. It practiced a kind of proto-‘woke’ mindset favoring identity over ideology, i.e. certain identities are permitted to do anything to certain other identities. Jews, being sacred, are cheered on to do anything to the Germans, deemed eternally damned. DJANGO UNCHAINED extended such sado-nihilist privilege to the sacred blacks. The mindset is fully on display against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. In the American Mind, Jews are so sacred that they are justified in their acts of horror against designated goy Amaleks, and to be in good graces with the Holy Jews, we must endorse whatever they do lest we also become their targets, like Thomas Massie. The fact that so many ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ showered Tarantino’s movie with fulsome praise suggest that their worldview isn’t all that different from that of the right-wing John Milius, whose original version of APOCALYPSE NOW might have resembled something like INGLORIOUS BASTERDS in Vietnam.)
To an extent, the young John Milius was quite perceptive about America’s woes in Vietnam. How could the US overcome the home-team advantage of the communist enemy? With talks of democracy, bribery of officials, fearmongering about communism, and/or seductive consumerism, with parts of Saigon lit up in neon and overflowing with Coca-Cola?
To be sure, such an approach worked well enough throughout much of Asia, not least in the Philippines where a good number of Vietnam War movies were shot, including APOCALPYSE NOW. However, Vietnam was a special case as its leadership was forged in the struggle against the French Empire, and it just happened to be communist. And its fusion of fierce patriotism and puritanical communism, hardened by spartan experience in prolonged warfare, led to a formidable movement, one that couldn’t easily be bribed, corrupted, and appropriated by foreign powers(as the Chinese also found out).
As such, Milius, a young warrior-wanna-be frustrated by the American quagmire in Vietnam, cooked up his own ideas about the winning strategy. If the iron morale of the enemy owed to their home-turf mentality, then Americans must replicate that very mentality. But how, when Vietnam isn’t their homeland? As Milius envisioned it, a possible solution was by way of Kurtzism that partly goes ‘native’ and partly sows the seeds of a new order in which the locals regard the Great White Man not as an imperialist overlord, capitalist exploiter, or purveyor of consumer goods but as a god-king integral to and interwoven with the very fabric of the people and culture. (Crazy as it sounds, Jews are close to realizing a similar strategy in the Middle East, i.e. being to the Arabs what Kurtz was to his jungle followers. One would think most Arabs would be anti-Jewish and anti-Israel given the endless humiliations meted out to them by Zion, but the remaining Arab elites have submitted to the Jews as the Chosen Master Race. As such, they’ve conspired with Israel and Neocons to attack and destroy Iran, the last bulwark in the Middle East against total Zionist supremacy. It’s almost as if most Arabs now accept Jews as the rightful lords of the region, akin to Kurtz as god among the Montagnards. But then, are Arabs any more pathetic than white goyim in the West groveling before their Jewish masters? Jews are not native to Europe, but Europeans think, feel, and act as if they cannot do without the all-wise holy Jews who are regarded as having a greater claim to the West than its native folks do. White Americans like Mike Huckabee and Lindsey Graham also regard Jews as the destined master race over all of humanity; in their eyes, it’s only right that Jews should rule not only the West but all of the Middle East, and how dare countries like Russia, China, and Iran stand in the way of total Jewish supremacy! The one thing that may override the territorial imperative of because-we-live-here is the spiritual mandate of because-we-worship-him. Jesus, a native of the Middle East, became the king of kings all across Europe. Muhammad, also a native of the Middle East, became the prophet of prophets well into India and across much of Southeast Asia, far away from his place of birth.) Or, maybe Milius was just being ‘crazy’ to impress the girls or for the sake of attention-grabbing notoriety. Guys have a habit of talking tough and blowing hot air, like gangsta rap niggaz boasting of how dey be da bomb and shit.
Or, with much of boomer counterculture being so ‘radical’ and anti-war, maybe Milius relished being a contrarian, e.g. the slogan ‘Nirvana Now’ inverted to ‘Apocalypse Now’. (Ironically, his semi-autobiographical BIG WEDNESDAY has great fun cheering on the antics of its heroes trying to dodge the draft. An anti-authoritarian streak, not unlike in Ken Kesey’s ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, runs through it.)
Now, Milius could have settled for US withdrawal on grounds of Vietnam being another people’s home turf, i.e. the US was the enemy of the home team(comprising the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese). If indeed Milius stood by the terse but powerful tenet of because-we-live here, then he should have conceded that the Vietnamese had a stronger case. But, Milius was nothing if not complicated(or convoluted), though, to be sure, his apparent contradiction has been a long-running theme in history(and nature as well). Milius respected nationalism(as a defensive mechanism) but was thrilled by imperialism(as offensive adventurism). There’s nobility in the defense and preservation of one’s homeland, the place of order and stability, heritage and roots. But, it’s about the anxiety of survival implying vulnerability and relative weakness, like a besieged castle desperately struggling to keep the enemy at bay or like white pioneers circling the wagons to fend off an Indian attack. The real fun comes from adventure, conquest, violence, and mayhem, i.e. from attacking than defending — in sports, points are scored by the offense(that gets all the applause), not the defense.
We appreciate the Chinese walls to defend civilization, but we’re awed by the Mongol balls that made history exciting with invasions, conquests, and rapine & plunder; it was like playing Cowboys-and-Indians.
Whether one designates it as contradiction or hypocrisy, Milius was hardly alone in wanting to have the cake and eat it too. Consider the British during World War II, taking pride in the defense of their motherland from the Evil Nazis, all the while reigning over the biggest empire in the world(and routinely resorting to ruthless means to suppress native rebellions). Or the Americans with their mythology centered on 1776, aka resistance against the British Empire, all the while growing and expanding as an empire in its own right. Or, think of the ancient Athenians who made much of their resistance against Persian invasions but then forged an empire of their own. And today, we have Jewish Zionists insisting that Israel is all about the national right to exist, all the while routinely violating the boundaries of their neighbors in the dream of fulfilling the Greater Israel Project. Much of Jewish historiography harks back to Jewish patriots in Judea resisting the cold-blooded might of the Roman Empire, but with Jewish grip on the US(as the ‘New Roman Empire’), Jews throw their weight around as the new caesars. But in nature as well, we have organisms that go from defending their domain to encroaching upon others for dominance.
In a similar vein, Milius’ mindset was both nationalist and imperialist, and he sought a synthesis of the two in the conundrum of the Vietnam War. Let the US exult in imperialist glory, but in order to win in the long run, it had to somehow connect with the blood-and-soil of Vietnam so that American warriors would no longer feel like foreign intruders but like the heart-and-soul defenders of their own homeland. (European/Americans Jews, though foreign to Palestine, managed to defend their colonial enterprise by laying a deeper claim to the land.) In a way, such a mental sleight-of-hand was the story of America: White men arriving as conquerors from foreign lands but putting down roots and becoming ‘Americans’, quasi-native to the land. Granted, the American enterprise was doable because the Indians were relatively few in number, barely advanced beyond stone-age existence, and wiped out by Old World diseases. Vietnam was a different animal altogether, more like Asian Indians than Australian Aborigines in numbers and cultural development. As such, the Cowboys-and-Indians model wasn’t workable.
But then, people project what they know onto what they don’t. It’s rather like explaining the Israel-Palestinian conflict as analogous to Cowboys-and-Indians history. White man, being so more advanced than the savage Red Man, deserved to win and, as such, was justified in meting out any amount of punishment to teach the Indians to resign themselves to defeat, inferiority, and submission. When the template is applied to the Middle East, Palestinians become the ‘Indians’ in the equation and may be taught any lesson by the superior ‘cowboy’ Jews. Whether such a bias is based on IQ fetishization or Biblical verses, the same political logic applies. Secular pro-Zionists are atheist(or agnostic) IQ-evolutionists, whereas Christian Zionists like Mike Huckabee are religious, but neither side seems disturbed in the least by the extent of the mayhem and destruction carried out by Israel and Jewish global supremacy against the Arab resistance(and Iranians). Their perspective is heavily shaped by the American Cowboys-and-Indians(or rodeo) narrative, which is projected onto the world(seen as a bull for the lone superpower cowboy to ride, lasso, and tie up).
Now, one could easily have taken issue with Milius’ assertions(and its dumber reiteration in RAMBO) that the US failed to win because it fought with one arm tied behind its back. In truth, short of nukes, the US carpet-bombed Vietnam to an unprecedented degree, with the mass destruction spilling over into Laos and Cambodia(through which the Ho Chi Minh trail operated). The US also employed extensive chemical warfare, spraying vast jungle areas with Agent Orange. Also, despite the growing skepticism and unpopularity of the war, not least due to the raw blood-and-mud footage on the TV news, most Americans from the government down to the masses weren’t particularly disturbed by the means employed by the US military. Even the My Lai Massacre wasn’t as scandalous as some today might assume. 80% of Americans sided with the American perpetrators than with the local victims, and the convicted were pardoned and released following short terms.
So, the idea that the US couldn’t win because it wasn’t ruthless enough simply doesn’t pass the smell test. Indeed, Milius’ thesis is negated early in the film by Commander Death-from-Above, Colonel Kilgore, who is utterly unrestrained in aggression, exulting in war as grand opera, relishing the fire-and-brimstone, even ordering fighter jets to napalm an entire section of the jungle just so his men could surf with less danger. Men like Kilgore seem to be in good graces with the higher-ups, evidence that the US was hardly restrained in raining down hellfire on the people, along with flora and fauna, of Vietnam.
In the literal use of violence, there isn’t much to differentiate Kilgore from Kurtz; still, as a technicality, Kilgore nominally plays by the rules — the surf campaign can be chalked up as just another assault on a Viet Cong stronghold, his forces kill many but do provide aid or ‘band-aid’ to the fallen, and Kilgore remains within the command structure despite his whims and foibles — , whereas Kurtz severs himself from military authority and wanders off the plantation.
Kilgore is like a US cavalry officer in the Wild West reminding his men to spare the women and children if possible in an attack on a ‘hostile’ Indian settlement; his ‘fair warning’ to the enemy is perfunctory and his orders(of restraint) will hardly be heeded, but the semblance of civilized action is maintained. One could call it hypocrisy, but it’s also the thin but indispensable thread that keeps humanity tethered to the supposed ‘better angels of his nature’.
Possibly, rightists like John Milius unconsciously conflated the failure in Vietnam with the failure in American cities. In films like DIRTY HARRY and DEATH WISH, the spineless Liberal-run cities simply cannot throw down the gauntlet on urban crime(mostly black); as a result, citizens must take the law into their own hands or rely on semi-vigilante cops(like Harry Callahan). (But then, if those supposed right-wing critiques were so courageous, contrary to wussy liberal delusions, why were their main villains usually white than black?) But in truth, the US government had a far freer hand overseas than at home. Whereas the US government, federal and local, was highly sensitive about using force against American citizens, even against rioting-hollering-arsoning-looting Negroes, the federal governments had few qualms about unloading tons of bombs on foreign populations. Americans were more outraged about Nixon’s men bugging the Watergate Hotel(which the Democrats had already vacated) than about Nixon & Kissinger bombing the daylights out of Cambodia and deploying CIA goons around the world, like in Chile. If American cities didn’t have enough Dirty Harrys, the world didn’t lack for ‘Pattons’(or unfettered use of American Power) to blow up and ravage entire nations. Little has changed over the years. When wild-ass Negroes and demented Antifa goons tore through US cities in 2020, Trump’s administration had both hands tied behind their back. When Trump called on the military to do something about the riots and looting in D.C. itself, he was called an American Fascist, even by the military brass such as the rather tooty General Milley. And the New York Times editor who ran an Op-ed by Tom Cotton(calling for use of the US military to restore order across US cities) was summarily removed.
Not that all the people in the US enjoy equal protection or indulgence. While sacred Negroes could burn down buildings, loot stores, beat up innocents, and carry out Kristallnacht-like pogroms, the immigrants whose businesses were destroyed were left standing in heaps of rubble and totally ignored by the Jewish-run media that egged on the black-led and Antifa-instigated pogroms. Black thugs matter, immigrant businessmen don’t, rather ironic given the paeans to mass immigration and Diversity by the Jews. Later, when pro-Palestinian protests(infinitely less violent and criminal than the 2020 riots) broke out over the Gaza Genocide, the very government that had taken hardly any action in 2020 suddenly went into overdrive in clamping down on the dissent, especially under the Trump administration placed in the White House with Zionist oligarchic money, with the ACLU hardly in sight.
But when it comes to foreign policy, far from facing any oversight or pushback, the ruling elites have been cheering for more warmongering and mass destruction. Rachel Maddow and her crew cheered on the destruction of Libya and Syria during the Obama presidency. Both countries have been utterly shattered. If anything, Trump in his first term was excoriated for not being ‘tough enough’ against Russia and Iran. And Biden had the full support of the elites in triggering a war in Ukraine and supplying arms to Israel to carry out a genocide in Gaza. And there’s hardly been any moral condemnation by the dominant institutions of Netanyahu and Trump’s not one but two perfidious sneak attacks, amounting to illegal Wars of Aggressions, against Iran. And where was the pushback against Trump’s gangster antics in Venezuela or acts of piracy on the high seas? Likewise, the US under Johnson and Nixon could drop as many bombs and slaughter as many people as they wanted.
Granted, the Vietnam War was perhaps the most polarizing event for Americans in the second half of the 20th Century. Also, the war raged when a genuine political left existed in the US, indeed gaining added credence as the result of the growing anti-war movement. This left, heavily influenced by Jews, saw the anti-war movement as an opportunity to discredit the moral prestige and managerial competence of the WASP elites. At a time when Anglo-American dominance was slipping while Jewish power was ascending, there was no clear center of power, which allowed for a more contentious political discourse. It was later when power was consolidated in Jewish hands that the ‘mainstream’ media once again favored a monotone of official propaganda, especially on foreign policy matters, with Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow both agreeing on ‘Evil Putler’ and ‘Assad Must Go’.
At any rate, for all the social upheaval and the growing anti-war momentum, American foreign policy continued as usual in Vietnam, especially after Richard Nixon took office. His ‘peace with honor’ meant five more years of heavy bombing(expanding into Cambodia) and countless more deaths in the region. Dirty Harry was just a fantasy as a crime-fighter, but Vietnam had plenty of Colonel Kilgores to blow up everything in sight. Given that around 2 million Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, died in the conflict, it’s rather disingenuous to argue that the US didn’t go far enough.
Milius’s meta-warrior antics and neo-barbarian swagger held a certain charm(even to liberal types), and to understand the odd appeal, the specific socio-political context has to be taken into account. (It was sort of like the popularity of Archie Bunker of ALL IN THE FAMILY in the Seventies. Even though conceived of as an object of ridicule, his insensitive remarks on a host of controversial matters came across as more candid, reality-based, and even refreshing than the fairy-tale-like platitudes of the progressives, especially in the aftermath of the race riots and explosion of black street crime. Also, even though Bunker stood for traditional restraint/repression while Meathead and his ilk stood for liberation, Bunker was more liberated in speaking his mind while Meathead was quasi-puritanical in purging his thoughts and words of wrongthink. Of course, the supposedly ‘liberated’ boomers would later impose Political Correctness and out themselves as a bunch of insufferable scolds, albeit porny ones. Milius’ shtick was as an Intellectual Bunker.) Milius came of age when the Liberals, dominant in media and academia, were overwhelmingly anti-war, even sympathetic with the other side in the Cold War. And of course, with the passing of Old Hollywood(represented by icons like John Wayne), the movie industry seemed to be growing even more ‘radical’ by the day. As a result, it became kind of boring and dime-a-dozen to be on the Left in Hollywood. When virtually all the Boomers in the movie industry were ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’, or partisan-Democratic, why not liven things up a bit with a token ‘fascist’? Besides, Milius’ Jewishness worked as insurance against him being a real Nazi.
But that was then, and this is now. Over the years, as Naomi Wolf has duly noted, the deep state war machine and Hollywood(and TV & music industry) have been joined at the hip. Partly, the reasons have been economic, i.e. to access military hardware and logistics for big budget war movies, Hollywood had to play the game, e.g. seek script-approval from the Pentagon. But, it also owed to the boomer inheritance of the empire, took pride in it. What they had once protested was now in their hands. America’s hegemony made elite boomers feel as the rulers of the world. In addition, as the institutions of the Deep State, from intelligence agencies to military departments, had been ‘liberalized’, — rookie FBI agents undergoing ritual initiation before the MLK monument, CIA offices being festooned with GloboHomo symbolism, mantras of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ chanted from every corner of government, the prominence of women in quasi-imperialist NGOs, and etc. — the formerly anti-war and anti-imperialist ‘liberal’ boomers became true believers in the empire that prided itself in being ‘more evolved’, spreading the neo-gospel or ‘gayspel’ of Globohomo and Negrolatry all over the world. No less important was that many Jewish ‘liberals’, not least in arts & entertainment, had adopted ‘progressive’ politics as a ploy and ruse; deep down inside, they were ardent Zionists and Jewish tribal supremacists. (Jews championed liberalism for expanding their freedoms and opportunities to obtain greater wealth and power, i.e. their ultimate objective wasn’t to secure universal rights and liberties for all groups as a matter of liberal principles but to use their newfound advantages in institutions and industries to implement the Jewish supremacist agenda, thereby eventually denying liberal freedoms and protections for non-Jews and principled/conscientious Jews. Just ask the Palestinian-Americans or the critics of Israel and the Empire of Judea who’ve been ‘canceled’ and/or debanked. Thus, Jews, though having gained a tremendous deal from liberalism, were bound to be the biggest enemies of liberalism in the long run. Is it any surprise that Jews are now the biggest opponents of free speech in the West and the biggest promoters of tribalist-supremacism so totally at odds with liberal principles? It’s like Italian-Americans in organized crime took advantage of the Rule of Law to evade justice, not out of any respect for the law itself.) The US government and elite institutions, once bastions of WASP prestige and power, had been completely drawn into the Zion Curtain. There are now as many Israeli flags as US flags in the offices of politicians. Most white elites grovel at the feet of Jews as the uber-elites.
Therefore, in piecemeal manner, the last vestiges of liberal boomer skepticism and opposition to the Deep State began to fall by the wayside. The generation once associated with dissent and defiance opted for ever greater consolidation of power and conformity to the new elite consensus. In time, ‘leftism’ was mostly relegated to celebration of sodomy(and other sexual deviances) and idol-worship of Negroes(as well-paid puppet tools of the Jews, with the likes of Oprah and Obama serving as avatars). Democrat Boomers and Jewish Liberals(and libertarians) were once the staunchest champions of free speech and opposition to censorship, culminating in the impassioned defense of Salman Rushdie against the Iranian government, but via the implementation of Political Correctness, manufactured hysterics about ‘white fratboy rapists’, consecration of figures like MLK(who went from a respected figure to a secular god), sacralization of the Holocaust(as a quasi-religion that cannot be questioned), and exigencies of the War on Terror(following events like the Oklahoma bombing and 9/11), the post-‘McCarthy Era’ Liberal consensus on Constitutional guarantees were chipped away, with the rather astounding outcome of so-called ‘liberals’ becoming the most ardent crusaders for speech control, not only unperturbed by Deep State’s censorious pressures on Big Tech and financial institutions’ debanking of individuals/groups on the basis of ideology(as well as anti-BDS laws) but vociferously insisting on them. (They cheered when their ideological foes were purged en masse on Twitter and jeered when Elon Musk partially reinstated them. One wonders what they mean by ‘liberal’.) It’s incredible how people can be made to practice the opposite of their stated principles, all the while believing their betrayal to be the proof of their fidelity — certainly true of Christian Zionists who claim to worship Jesus, the loving savior of humanity, even as they cackle with hideous glee at the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents by Israel and the US empire.
Western Liberalism went from the neutral referee to the one-sided cheerleader. Predictably, it led to political neurosis as the very people associated with free thought became rigid in thought; the very people associated with universal equality(of rights if not property) became committed to Zionism, a far-right tribal supremacist ideology.
Ironically, the ‘pansy’ or ‘wussy’ liberal boomers whom Milius once prodded and ridiculed became the most intrusive, repressive, ruthless, and war-mongering lunatics one could imagine. Indeed, Trump and Hegseth, toadies of America’s Zionic overlords, spout craziness that makes Milius(and even Colonel Kurtz) sound tame by comparison. (One may argue that Trump and Hegseth are on the Right, but their warmongering has the full endorsement of Jewish Democrats as well as Jewish Republicans.) When Milius entertained the notion of US military men acting more like Genghis Khan, it could be dismissed as far-fetched clowning around in the post-Vietnam climate. No less far-fetched, of course, was the scenario of RED DAWN. It was amusing than dangerous because the whole idea was so fantastic, even at a time when Reagan was fulminating against the Evil Empire.
But what was once outlandish, the stuff of political fantasy, isn’t so anymore. 9/11 was a fishy event, and the conflicts that followed were Imperialist ventures for Israel than War on Terror. Under Obama, the so-called War on Terror became War with Terror in Libya and Syria where the US recruited Al Qaeda and ISIS types. US Liberals and Democrats, who’d once admonished Ronald Reagan for going too far with the anti-Soviet rhetoric, did everything to provoke a bloody war in Ukraine that has consumed well over a million lives. Your average so-called ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ is more deliriously paranoid and hysterical about Russia-Russia-Russia than the Cold Warriors of yesteryear, Joe McCarthy included. American Jews, who once regarded WASPs as their main rival and were half-proud of the Soviet Union as largely a Jewish creation, now regard current Russia as the last white goy stronghold against total Jewish domination; and homos, the most favored allies of Jews, revile Russia for not bending over and exposing its arse to be buggered by GloboHomo.
Adding gasoline to the fire, the US and Israel committed two war crimes against Iran in the most perfidious sneak-attacks imaginable. We have Hegseth the idiot posturing as poet-philosopher about ‘maximum lethality’ than ‘tepid legality’(as if the US has been hampered in the past 20 yrs in the destruction of entire nations).
In a way, Milius-ism has won the day, just like Paglia-ism did. Camille Paglia burst onto the scene excoriating old-line feminists as neo-puritanical sexual stalinists while championing the sex symbol as a figure of power and pride; but, it wasn’t long before the feminist establishment appropriated commercialized sexuality as a form of ’empowerment’, aka ‘slut pride’. The New Feminism abandoned all objections to pornography(especially as it became a Jewish vehicle for promoting interracism or ‘jungle fever’), concurrent to American Conservatism’s disposing of its traditional/moral proscriptions against gambling.
While Paglia’s dialectical role in the transformation of feminism was palpable, it’s unlikely Milius had any cultural impact in the profound shifts in US global outlook and foreign policy. Still, his once-crazy(but fun)sounding antics anticipated what lay in store for the US as the lone superpower. What had once been fun and harmless precisely because it sounded so crazy(thereby unrealizable) was no longer a laughing matter when the hubristic new militarism captured the ruling elites and both political parties. From the crazy talk of Milius to the crazy walk of Hegseth, but with the latter lacking even the saving grace of empathy and the extension of respect(for the enemy) that runs through the works of Milius who loved the Cowboys but also gave the Indians their due as brave warriors. In this, contrary to expectation, Milius had something in common with the anti-war Jean Renoir of THE GRAND ILLUSION. At the very least, both men could acknowledge the honor and courage of the other side. Even as Renoir understood that the aristocrats were on the way out, especially following the fatal event of World War I, he could also see the virtue of their ways.
In contrast, Trump, Hegseth, the Zionists — Jewish heritage, being devoid of aristocratic culture, is alien to the code of honor — , and insipid status-centered boomer cucks(like Sean Hannity & Fox News prostitutes) are utterly incapable of such considerations for the other side. Jewish Zionists feel as the rightful master race entitled to do as they please with the inferior goyim, and white cucks run around like well-trained dogs always eager to appease and win approval from their Jewish masters.
Such cretinism makes even Colonel Kilgore seem like a humanitarian; at least, he offered water to a fallen Viet Cong for his courage and ordered his helicopter to evacuate a native woman with her wounded child(in the REDUX version). Instead, we have Hegseth & Co. ordering the military to summarily machine-gun or blow to smithereens the shipwrecked ‘enemy’, Venezuelans and Iranians alike. Shyster slimeball Trump has the temerity to blame Iran for the slaughter of nearly 200 schoolgirls. And the Zionists are even worse. Every piece of Nazi inhumanity depicted in SCHINDLER’S LIST is on full display wherever the IDF death squads and Jewish West Bank settlers go. Jewish Semitism is the flipside of German Aryanism.
APOCALYPSE NOW is among those great films that begin with a bang and end with a whimper. (Less common are works that begin lousy and end great.) Still, the stark contrast between the powerful opening and the pathetic closing makes the lost opportunity almost unique in cinema. It’s like night and day. How did it go from such boldness to such moldiness? Imagine 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY ending with David Bowman getting bored with extraterrestrials, returning to the ship, switching HAL back on, and just returning home. The ending of APOCALYPSE NOW is rather similar to the ending of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, where the looming climax is interrupted by a modern-day police arrest, except that the incongruity works within the anarcho-comic ‘logic’ of THE HOLY GRAIL. In contrast, the ending of a straight film like APOCALYPSE NOW has to flow from what had gone before and live up to expectations, not veer off into another direction, only to throw up one’s hand and confess the pointlessness of it all. To the best of my knowledge, the only filmmaker who got away with such a copout was Federico Fellini with 8 1⁄2 because the tone of the defeat was lighter and sweeter(and then surprisingly followed up with a flicker of new hope in its closing moments).
The ending of APOCALYPSE NOW was all the more disappointing because of the years of buildup in hype and anticipation in the public eye and the setup within the narrative structure. For every naysayer in the entertainment media so sure that Coppola finally met his Waterloo(as well-deserved comeuppance for his hubris), there were others who believed in him to produce another masterpiece. As for the narrative itself, the moment the general and his associates reveal to Willard about Kurtz-gone-mad and what-is-to-be-done, the fish has taken the bait and the ensuing reeling-in process is long and arduous, and the worst possible thing is for the line to snap; well, the ending is like the fish that got away.
Kurtz, mad or not, monster or god, sounds fascinating, a man of mystery and great contradictions. The general seems distressed precisely because a man he’d once known as the finest soldier apparently degenerated into a lunatic. The range of emotions among the men in the room — sadness, regret, desperation, shame, resentment — suggests Kurtz’s extraordinary qualities, for good or for ill, to elicit such conflicting reactions. The general recounts the man he’d once known with the deepest respect, even affection. But, he is now convinced that the colonel is like a rabid dog that must be put down(either lest the disease spread or to salvage the image of the US military). Someone else in the room, ‘Jerry’, perhaps a member of US intelligence, betrays no qualms about what has been decided. His only words, ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’, penetrate Willard like a cold knife, the tension eased somewhat with an offering of a cigarette, a gesture at once casual and ritualistic(like at an execution, implying Willard’s soul may also be on the chopping block). It’s momentary but memorable, comparable to the best moments in THE GODFATHER where characters leave lasting impressions with brief appearances.
Upon its theatrical release, the fascination about the character of Kurtz was compounded by the hype surrounding Marlon Brando, still riding high in the decade in which his roles in THE GODFATHER and THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS became legendary. He also earned a record paycheck with a cameo in SUPERMAN THE MOVIE. Naturally, many wondered if Brando would once again live up to his full potential(in a most challenging role as a god-king) as he’d done with THE GODFATHER(when many had written him off as a has-been).
The story idea was shaped along a journey culminating in the great encounter with the shamanic god-monster-man. Whatever one thought about the long adventure, boring or exciting, surely the ending would justify the wait. Even a long difficult trek can be redeemed upon reaching the destination, the ordeal justified by the reward. But imagine if the journey’s end is worse than the uneven(and sometimes dreary) journey itself. It pretty well sums up the culminating impact of APOCALYPSE NOW. It’s like going on an expensive and harrowing tour to see Angkor Wat, only to be shown the outhouse of a local idiot. Why does THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK work as a whole? Because the final revelation lives up to the billing. There’s more than sand and dust inside the Ark.
One intractable problem arose from Coppola both inflating and deflating the character of Kurtz. The man’s myth throughout the river journey was built up to great expectation. The Kurtz files in Willard’s possession paint a portrait of idealism, heroism, and supreme competence but also ruthlessness and independence of will bordering on insubordination.
Now, if Kurtz severed ties with the American establishment, why is he still in the fight? Usually, those who defied the authority in Vietnam joined the Anti-War camp upon returning home, even joining the protest marches; or they moved to other countries that offered safe haven to deserters. Yet, Kurtz went off in the opposite direction. He broke from the US because he believed his way was the right way to win; however, such was intolerable to the system, not only because of its ‘unsound’ methods but its direct challenge to military authority, the core of which is hierarchy and obedience. Initially from Kurtz’s viewpoint, his apparent rebellion was meant as a higher form of loyalty, i.e. he did it his way to salvage the American effort(that was flailing about ineffectively). It’s sort of like the ‘logic’ of the 47 Ronin of Japanese legend who defy the superiors in deeper loyalty to the code of the samurai.
But then, along the way, Kurtz seems to have undergone a kind of the Burning Bush Moment(that transformed Moses from a mere tribesman to a prophet). He realized that his strong-willed approach and novel methods were the expression of something deeper buried within his psyche: He doesn’t want to serve, he wants to rule; he doesn’t want to believe in others, he wants others to believe in him.
Therefore, even after the break with the American military, he has something to fight for, except it’s not over ideology or geo-politics(the chessboard of American Interests) but over his own fiefdom aspiring to grow into a kingdom with himself as tribal chieftain metamorphosing into a god-emperor. His domain is to be like his own Israel/Zion, a kind of Kurtzville aspiring to be Kurtzstan. Just as Zionism, bit by bit, shed its pretensions of ‘socialism’, ‘liberalism’, and ‘democratism’, (limited)‘nationalism’, & ‘outpost of Western Values-ism’, and instead finally emerged as a supreme manifestation of Ultra-Chutzpah and the Judeocentric Will, Kurtz eventually dispensed with all the official reasons as to ‘Why We Fight’ and got to the heart of the matter. He, as an embodiment of the superior man having plunged into the deepest depths of the warrior-human-nature, arrived at the realization that the ultimate man, instead of serving others like a dog, must create or envision his own truths and lay them down to others, like Moses did with the Commandments. In Milius’ fever dream, Kurtz is like Moses, Buddha, King David, Jesus, Muhammad, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and Tarzan all rolled into one. If the US government sold a ‘bright shining lie’ in Vietnam, Kurtz was supposed to represent the bright shining truth for all time.
Through the long journey, Coppola kept with the inflation of Kurtz’s aura(as conceived by Milius). At the journey’s end, however, he deflated it to expose the madness, ugliness, and futility of the American way of war in Vietnam.
If in Milius’ view, Kurtz stands out as both hero and monster(or uber-hero precisely because of his badass ‘monstrous’ qualities), to Coppola he is just a monster and ultimately not even that: In his final days, Kurtz has been reduced to a broken and world-weary man, secretly hoping to be put out of his misery while his myth remains intact among his followers. Willard could serve as a convenient Judas. Kurtz’s attempt to convince Willard of the rightness of his ways has an air of silent desperation, as if he can barely maintain the conviction himself. He harbors a death wish and wants Willard to finish the job(of assassination) and to call on the US air force to erase the entirety of his memory off the face of the earth(rather like God used the flood to erase the evidence of His mistake in creating an imperfect world). One gets the sense that his followers have developed doubts about the man and his plan but lack the will and initiative to overthrow him or just flee, much like the doomed followers of Jim Jones(or the soldiers who serve the Wicked Witch in THE WIZARD OF OZ); indeed, upon the murder of their ‘god’, they bow down to Willard as the presumed new ‘god’, a role he has no interest in.
If Milius turned Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS into a Heart of Brightness, Coppola as a Serious Artist sought to restore the darkness. Indeed, he’d pulled a similar coup with THE GODFATHER. In the original vision of Mario Puzo, Michael Corleone, far from losing his soul, took on manly responsibilities and ascended to the throne as the new patriarch, thus completing the transition from son to don, a triumph. While sticking with Puzo’s plot trajectory, Coppola tonally altered the meaning, with Michael’s coldness representing lost idealism and tragic embrace of corruption(in STAR WARS lingo, joining with the Dark Side). And it worked beautifully, with the triumphal and tragic threads interwoven into silken fabric, complementary than contradictory.
Most of APOCALYPSE NOW minus the ending has some of the strengths of THE GODFATHER. The mythic-warrior hum of Milius is heard throughout but in tension with the fugue-like tone of Coppola and the dissonant chords of Michael Herr.
Ultimately, however, Kurtz was to be demystified from a Man of Triumph to a Man of Tragedy, but Coppola failed even at that. At the moment of his death, Kurtz is simply a tired man, too proud to admit his failure and awaiting someone to put him down like a sick animal. Kurtz appears to think more highly of Willard than anyone else. Yet, none of this is made clear or rendered meaningful, unlike, for example, the ending of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA where we fully understand why Max(James Woods) has brought Noodles(Robert De Niro) to his mansion to serve as his executioner. Max to Noodles: “You’re the only person I can accept it from.”
The confusion was made worse by Coppola’s extensive revision retaining some of Milius’ key monologue/dialogue, resulting in a split-personality Kurtz who simultaneously seeks to convert Willard over to his side and wishes for Willard to ‘terminate(him) with extreme prejudice’(and end the madness which he’s unable to do for himself).
Coppola kept Milius’ key articulation of what triggered Kurtz radical realization, one that hit him like a diamond bullet in the head: The incident with the enemy hacking off the inoculated arms of the village children. It was Milius’ way of saying that there is a moral and political logic to Kurtz’s apparent madness; it was a way of making a friend of ‘horror’ as the very essence of war. As Harry Truman once said: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”, and he sure cooked up some hot stuff in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Given that innumerable experts, historians, and politicians have justified the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, can Kurtz be said to be uniquely mad? Or, is the horror somehow less horrible if done from high up in the air, far above the melee on the ground? In contrast, Kurtz threw himself into the thick of the ‘horror’.)
If Coppola envisioned a different Kurtz, one crippled inside and privately remorseful, he should have excised Kurtz’s self-justification(from the pen of Milius); he likely kept it for its ‘powerful medicine’, as it is indeed impressive, truly one of the highlights of Milius’ career.
However, to present that powder-keg of a scene, finally offering a glimpse into the mind of Kurtz as a wise warrior of higher consciousness(a kind of ‘star warrior’, or the macho equivalent of the Star Child in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY), only to turn around and suggest that Kurtz grew disillusioned and wished to be put down like a sick animal leaves the audience in the lurch. It reeks of indecision, as if Coppola wanted to have it both ways. Granted, it’s possible for someone, especially of an ambitious nature, to be of two minds, almost bipolar in alternating between supreme confidence and dark despair, as indeed were the cases of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola in their respective productions of STAR WARS and APOCALYPSE NOW, but the ending of the latter is overcome with paralysis of narrative and concept, with its contradictions canceling than feeding off each other. Kurtz, rather than being of two minds, is like a man with two brains.
Most likely, the juxtaposition of the killing of Kurtz with the slaughtering of the cows, reminiscent of the baptism-and-bloodbath finale in THE GODFATHER, was intended to distract us from the muddled conclusion with shock-and-awe effects or with the hokum that Kurtz’s life culminated in a ritualistic blood sacrifice, the latest manifestation of the (James) Frazierian cycle of life and death. So, did Kurtz’s adventure end in epic moral failure or did it in some way reconnect with the forgotten truths of nature? How would we know when Coppola himself couldn’t make up his mind?
Milius’ vision, much of which remains in the film, sees Kurtz as a man apart, someone who realized the falsehood of the American effort and devised his own way, closer to the reality on the ground and truer to the nature of man-as-primal-warrior. Thus, the Kurtzian alternative, far from exemplifying America-gone-mad-in-the-jungles-of-Nam, represents a kind of liberation from the epic stupidity-and-waste of Robert McNamara’s statistics-driven corporate way of warfare, the brainchild of the so-called Best and the Brightest.
There’s a similar critique of the Organization Man in George Lucas’ THX 1138 set in a sci-fi dystopia in which everyone and everything have been turned into sets of data; indeed, its eponymous hero(Robert Duvall) manages to escape because the system deems the pursuit as having exceeded the budget.
In Milius’ view, one reason for America’s failure was the over-emphasis on scale and material, or what is quantifiable by accountants. As Kurtz tells Willard in their first encounter, “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.” Mere scale, supplies and logistics, may be sufficient for most wars but not against a determined enemy for whom the fight isn’t only a matter of politics/ideology but blood & soil and body & soul. There was nothing inevitable about the victory of North Vietnam(with crucial support from the Viet Cong), but if any people had internalized warfare as a soulful calling, one where it was nobler to die in victory than to live in defeat, it was the Vietnamese. Later, the Soviets learned the same lesson against the Afghans and Islamists. (Likewise, Iran is a tough nut to crack for the US because its patriotic warrior class is fully committed to dying for the cause deemed a holy struggle.)
Similar mindset pervaded the Russians, Germans, and the Japanese in World War II, three peoples who fought to the dogged end. Germans and Japanese were defeated in the end, proof that morale and determination alone don’t guarantee victory; however, it took titanic efforts to finally bring them to heel. Russians and Americans, attacked first and/or caught in an existential struggle, had the unity and resolve to see the wars to the very end.
But for all the talk of the communist menace(and the Domino Theory), doubts lingered as to the wisdom of getting mired in Vietnam. That said, if not for the hard-as-iron nationalist resolve, the Hanoi government’s Leninist-Stalinist structure-and-discipline, and ample military aid pouring in from the USSR and China, the US most certainly would have prevailed, contra the childish notion of RETURN OF THE JEDI by which George Lucas opined that the Ewoks are like the Vietnamese, their struggle demonstrating how determined resistance can overcome any technological advantage of the greatest imperial power. I guess Sitting Bull and Geronimo simply didn’t try hard enough. It seemed to have escaped Lucas’ attention that the Vietnamese were of an advanced civilization, not a bunch of stone-age primitives like the Ewoks, whose struggle, by the way, lasted a mere afternoon, not eight long ghoulish years. Also, as I recall, North Vietnam was supplied with modern weaponry, with their anti-aircraft guns doing serious damage to US planes and copters. Whatever foolish ideas drifted in and out of Milius’ head, he was leagues above Lucas as a political thinker.
Milius weighed the pros and cons of both sides, with the US being heavily favored in terms of industry, logistics, and firepower; but like the Death Star in STAR WARS, there was an Achilles Heel in the US armor: Lack of the warrior soul. The priority of the great majority of soldiers, mostly draftees, was to remain alive, finish the tour, enjoy some R&R, and come back home in one piece. It was as if the bodies entering the jungles had left their souls back in the States.
Kurtz recognized the fatal flaw but couldn’t change the system, and so he forged ahead on his own. As such, Kurtz is a poor exemplar of America’s failure in Vietnam. If anything, Milius’ very point was that the US would have improved its chances with a Kurtzian perspective on things, a hardcore rupture with the ‘corporate’ norm. Kurtz for Milius was Yoda, a wise warrior and guru; Coppola insisted he had to be Darth Vader, one who went over to the ‘Dark Side’. In Milius’ vision, Yoda-Kurtz commences with the training of Willard into a Jungle-Jedi. Coppola, in contrast, has Willard Skywalker resisting the Sith-ways of Vader-Kurtz and ultimately destroying him.
Coppola’s revision sought to conflate Kurtz’s madness with America’s excesses(and his own as well when his wife pointed out that the out-of-control production paralleled the US folly in Vietnam). In his cantankerous speech at the Cannes Film Festival, he said his film isn’t about Vietnam but IS Vietnam, confessing(or boasting) that his ego and pride had fallen into the same trap that American hubris did. In other words, Coppola became his own Kurtz, who, instead of representing an alternative what-might-have-been(of Milius’ imagination), was made to represent the logical conclusion of the American war machine gone mad. For Milius, Kurtz represented a striking exception to the American Rule; to Coppola, the full extension of it.
Increasingly frustrated, mentally drained, and desperate to bring the shooting to an end, Coppola came to identify with the defeatist side of Kurtz, i.e. both pushed too far, both underestimated the limitations of their power, and both wanted to be put out of their misery. Thus, Kurtz’s demise at the hands of Willard and Coppola’s decision to pull the plug in a cloud of confusion, like the final retreat of the US via helicopters from the embassy roof of Saigon, meant an admission of defeat. While proud of his achievement at Cannes, there was also an air of desperation, an urge to get ahead of the critics and the audience over the ending that hardly made any sense.
Reportedly, Coppola wanted his Kurtz to be closer to Conrad’s, but even the latter has been simplified by the literary establishment, made even more problematic by political correctness. Against charges of ‘racism’ leveled at Conrad, his defenders have argued that HEART OF DARKNESS is a profound meditation on and denunciation of European Imperialism, with Kurtz embodying the tragic state of the Western soul-disease, so advanced in his case that it consumes him as well as devours the world around him. In other words, European Avarice exploiting African Innocence, a cops-and-robbers reading of the novel.
But something more seems to be at stake. Kurtz’s darkness seems more the fusion of Western civilization and African savagery. Civilization has its foibles and drawbacks, its corruptions and destructive aspects, but order and restraint are at the heart of any civilization. Thus, civilizational excesses are curtailed by hierarchical structures and cultural inhibitions. In contrast, savagery is wild and uninhibited but then limited in its destructive potential by primitivism. The civilized can conquer and destroy the world but are restrained by laws and norms. The savage might wish to attack and plunder everything but haven’t the means, technologically and organizationally, to venture far and wide.
But what happens when the power of civilization crossbreeds with the unfettered ways of savagery? Conrad’s Kurtz seems to embody both civilizational power coarsened by savagery and savage appetites amplified by civilization.
In this, Conrad unwittingly foretold the future of the West that advanced even further in technology(even resulting in weapons that can blow up the planet) but abandoned its civilized inhibitions and restraints in favor of blackity-black jungle jive culture, with the US being the prime example, an empire with the most advanced technology and the most fearsome military hardware in the hands of people whose cultural references are almost entirely neo-savage popular culture. In other words, the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quoting from PULP FICTION as spiritual guide. Or Donald Trump, the first ‘nigga’ president yapping like some gangsta-rapper-pimp threatening to wipe the Iranian civilization off the face of the Earth. It’s like a world of apes with nukes.
Coppola should have met MIlius halfway as the original(and the most compelling) concept was predicated on Kurtz’s vindication(even if only partial). Every encounter on the journey furthers the discourse in favor of Kurtz, as if to suggest that Kurtz has been on this journey already, way ahead of Willard and others. Thus, Kurtz is waiting for the ‘Willards’ of the world concurrent to Willard’s waiting to face the colonel(to terminate with extreme prejudice). Willard’s voice-over narration ponders as to the animus against Kurtz, especially given his distinguished, indeed extraordinary, career and accomplishments; he surmises that very factor is precisely the reason, i.e. Kurtz’s qualifications make it difficult to simply dismiss him as a loser-nutter. Willard shares in the consternation as his fascination grows the more he peruses the files.
A kind of paradox is at play: The more Willard finds to admire in Kurtz, the more anxious he is to ‘terminate’ him, fueled perhaps with subconscious envy, i.e. the existence of the superior man threatens the self-esteem of the normal man. It’s not unusual for relief(along with the grief) to accompany the fall of someone great; it assures that the extraordinary man ultimately isn’t divine but mortal like the rest of us in the end.
The Kurtz of Milius’ vision seems confident of his power to impose a kind of Stockholm Syndrome over others, i.e. those who fall into his hands inevitably come under his spell. He feels so much greater and strong-willed than the ‘errand boys’ sent to terminate him. Indeed, Willard at Kurtzville recognizes assassins who were sent earlier but have been ‘turned’ by the colonel, i.e. converted and reprogrammed, much like the eponymous anti-heroine of Paul Schrader’s PATTY HEARST.
There is the element of aura, magnetism, charisma, conviction and/or ruthlessness that enable certain individuals to impose their will on others. It could be spiritual or sensual. In TAXI DRIVER, Iris(Jodie Foster), though sexually exploited, is clearly under the sway of ‘Sport’ the pimp(Harvey Keitel) who knows how to manipulate his ‘bitches’. The Patty Hearst character in Schrader’s film doesn’t merely submit under physical abuse but is psychologically won over to the cause. We learn that Kurtz managed to win over an entire tribe of Montagnards(who surely don’t understand English, no more than Kurtz understands their language) to his crusade. He’s become a fisher of men.
Then, why shouldn’t Willard have his own Road-to-Damascus moment? Paul of the New Testament was initially a hunter-persecutor of the Early Christians, only to become the most loyal servant and emissary of Jesus. In Milius’ version, something similar befalls Willard, at least in part; Willard goes from Kurtz’s would-be executioner to his executive-in-training.
At any rate, every stage of the river journey is meant to draw us nearer to Kurtz thematically. Every encounter is illustrative of what is lacking in the American way of war and understanding of human nature. The first encounter, one with the forces of Colonel Kilgore, makes for an instructive contrast between two warrior mindsets. Some might even say Kilgore is just as mad or even madder than Kurtz. As Willard wonders to himself, “If that’s how Kilgore fought the war…I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn’t just insanity and murder. There was enough of that to go around for everybody.”
Kurtz would never attack a village because “Charlie don’t surf”, a case of “he may be crazy but he ain’t THAT crazy.” Still, Kilgore’s ‘craziness’ is within bounds of the American project in Vietnam. The US wasn’t only about hard power but soft power, about proselytizing or ‘promo-sell-itizing’ its ‘way of life’ around the world; so, why not blow things up in the spirit of “Surfin’ USA” and the California Sun(as an export item to Asia)? Kilgore is ‘crazy’ in an unmistakably American-as-apple-pie way; approve or disapprove of his methods, Americans would know where he’s coming from, with his cowboy hat and gung ho antics(with a touch of Boy Scout ‘innocence’). It reminds us of what Merlin said of Uther in EXCALIBUR: “It’s easy to love folly in a child.” If Kilgore is crazy, it is a familiar than exotic or alien kind of craziness. It’s like the movie ANIMAL HOUSE. In contrast, Kurtz’s ‘craziness’ decamps from American norms and expectations.
Agree or disagree, Americans can understand the mentality of George Custer or even an eccentric like George Patton but not a mystic like Kurtz whose points of reference and well-spring of inspiration plumb deeper than American History or even Western Civilization.
Kilgore is strictly a man of action for whom everything is a game or sport, like in a football stadium where the masses applaud the muscle-fest on the field with hotdogs and beer. War, for Kilgore and his men, is like a spectator sport in which they get to be the athletes and in which the stakes are much higher: Live or die than win or lose. (As blacks came to dominate the sports field while white guys have been relegated to the benches or the bleachers, urban policing and military service have remained two areas in which white males could still be star ‘players’ in the ‘game’, which is why ‘wokeness’ has been especially troublesome in recent years. BLM smeared the police department, and the promotion of jungle-fever interracism and globohomo-tranny-tyranny demoralized white males in an institution that they assumed to be the last bastion of white male prowess and/or patriotic conservatism.) It’s doubtful Kilgore ever reflected deeply on anything. He’s effective at what he does and, for all his eccentricities and style of improv-combat, he’s committed to the red-white-and-blue; he’s a bomb-dropping promoter of the American Way, someone who might thrive in advertising. Even if his uncharacteristically wistful foresight, “Someday this war’s gonna end”, doesn’t come to pass and the war goes on for a million years, he shall remain inside the shell of Americanism, imposing the Cowboys-and-Indians template on all the world.
If Kurtz is like a wolf among dogs who goes lone wolf and forms his own pack, Kilgore is essentially an alpha sheep dog. All his energies, even if excessive at times, are expended to keep his sheep soldiers in order.
Perhaps, Kurtz once harbored a similar outlook: Victory by sheer overwhelming force backed by industry, logistics, and imperial hubris. But Kurtz realized its limitations and searched for another way, metaphorically journeying further up the river. Thus, even though Kurtz and Kilgore are equally adept at warfare, they draw their water from different wells. (In Kilgore’s case, maybe from a beer keg.)
As the highlight of APOCALYPSE NOW is indisputably the helicopter assault, or Ride of the Val-Kilgore, Milius’ vision edged out Coppola’s. Undoubtedly, the overwhelming majority of viewers left the screenings with Kilgore’s attack still fresh in their minds, whereas the dragged-on tiresome ending faded into an afterthought. Kilgore wasn’t Milius’ ultimate ideal of the poet-warrior, but, like the intense action in Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH, the Kilgore’s war as an exhibition of man’s irrepressible and eternal warrior nature is what made the film most memorable. No amount of effort by Coppola to counter or correct the record in subsequent scenes could reverse the impact of Milius’ mythopoetic paean to war glory in the Kilgore scenes. The ‘anti-war’ tokenism added to the mix — frightened soldier yelling “I’m not going”, wounded man howling in pain, Viet Cong sabotage, gunning down villagers, and etc. — only heighten the excitement, as if to stress that only real men hardened by experience can handle the heat, emotionally as well as physically, i.e. War is R-rated, sensitive types need not apply.
It’s a set piece on a grand scale but executed with surgical precision, truly symphonic in its complex interweaving of contrapuntal elements, mini and mighty. The logistics involved are beyond belief, but no less striking are the glancing details and sudden touches, e.g. the edict that “Charlie don’t surf”, helicopters taking off at dawn like a swarm of insects in a feeding frenzy, Kilgore on the beach snatching a M-16 from a nearby soldier and standing guard, the boat’s belly-flop on a river upon release from a copter, and etc. Walter Murch’s sound engineering that orchestrates the myriad noises of battle into the stuff of Rock Opera is an art form unto itself.
The misadventure following the Kilgore romp involves Chef, accompanied by Willard, wandering into a jungle in search of mangos. The scene is a further illustration of the thesis in favor of Kurtz. In the jungle, Chef and Willard feel as if transported to a different(and forgotten) dimension of reality — primordial, eternal, timeless — , alien to historic time and the modern mindset. It’s a world of nature, impermanence made permanent, where life and death are one. Yet, the only thing on Chef’s mind is mangos for his sweet tooth. And when a tiger leaps out of the bush, the panic-stricken Chef rushes back to the boat and has a nervous breakdown.
The scene serves as a subplot foil to Kurtz’s own venture into the jungle, his conquest of his fears and adaptation to nature, its cruelty and fathomless indifference. Chef wants the mangos but can’t handle the jungle, a far more forbidding place than the bayous of Louisiana. Like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, he dreams of home and can’t wait to get out of Vietnam. In contrast, Kurtz made the full leap from the familiar to the unfamiliar, the crucial step in his journey of self-discovery.
The next stop on the journey is the rowdy scene with the Playboy bunnies doing a dance routine to uplift the spirits of the men(though the excitement soon boils over into a riot). Serve up half-naked hip-shaking babes to sweeten the tour of duty in Vietnam running the gamut from the most harrowing brutality to the sheerest boredom.
The scene expands on the themes introduced in the earlier one with Kilgore, except that women ‘lead the charge’, wielding their power over the men as enchantresses. In an interview, Milius compared the Bunnies with the Sirens in THE ODYSSEY — in mythology, Valkyries spur on the men into battle whereas Sirens entice men with promise of love, in either case men being led to their doom. The Bunnies also work as an allusion to the Helen of Troy with a face that launched a thousand ships. Since the beginning of time, long before the emergence of humans, sex has been one of the motivating factors of violence among males, be they lions, antelopes, or monkeys. It has extended into the human species, with conquering armies running off with the women along with the loot. Ireland, with its reputation as the land of beautiful women, was especially targeted hard. So, women have wielded a power of their own, in some ways more potent than anything; whereas men must defeat the enemy, women need merely to steal a man’s heart, conquering with just-one-look-that’s-all-it-took.
Nothing — no ideology, no call to duty, no sense of honor — could have gotten the men so worked up as the dancing Bunnies did by toying with the male libido that, like the power of music, bypasses all filters and inner-brakes. Patton’s movie speech played on the men’s sense of duty. The bunnies play on the men’s appetite for booty. Booty is closer than duty to male nature.
Think of the semi-barbarian warriors at the court of Duke of Cornwall leering lustfully at Igraine in EXCALIBUR; indeed, her sexual spell is what destroys the calculated truce between Cornwall and Uther. It’s a great power that women(or at least beautiful women) possess, but it must work in concert with male power.
Male power is direct, female power is indirect. A man wants something, he takes it; a woman wants something, she gets the man to do it for her. She casts her spell on the man and gains influence over him, but she sexually submits to him(at least until modernity and women’s liberation). Man uses his arms, woman her charms. The film THE NORTHMAN(directed by Robert Eggers) drove home this very point, i.e. the woman(of beauty) isn’t merely a captive of men but a user of men, a devious manipulator. Milius wasn’t interested in women per se, directing his focus instead on the effect of women as a motivating factor in male violence.
The Bunny scene unmasks a certain naivete on the part of the US war machine, hardly surprising of a time when American Society thought it could have it all, guns-AND-butter(and apparently guns-and-buns). The notion of domestic sacrifice and rationing was a thing of yesteryear in the go-go years of the Sixties when endless growth was assumed. The US could have it all: Consumerism, Great Society programs, and a major war in some faraway corner of the world.
Even though prostitution had always cropped up around soldiers, like fleas with dogs, the trade was kept to the margins, under wraps, deemed unavoidable but disreputable. The Bunny scene stands out for its brazen flaunting of Dionysian sexual energies, inconducive to discipline and self-control so essential to modern warfare. Far more than a mere concession to male sexuality, the Bunny dance openly pours gasoline on the fire. It’s as if the Establishment, as a sop to irrepressible Youth Culture, thought the men would make better soldiers if the business of war was mixed with the pleasure of sex. Instead, men start fighting one another and then rush the stage(like kids at a Rolling Stones concert in GIMME SHELTER), forcing the Bunnies and their anxious manager to skedaddle on the helicopter from the performance-gone-Altamont.
The scene also sets up a Kurtzian sexual counterpoint on the subject of Why We Fight. In Milius’ vision, Kurtz isn’t just a great warrior but a tribal patriarch. As chieftain, he has the pick of the litter when it comes to women, a harem of sorts.
His jungle kingdom is like the island of Jeffrey Epstein(who dreamed of breeding a superior race by colonizing the wombs of nubile ‘Aryan’ women with his uber-Semitic seed.) Milius’ chutzpahstic warrior philosophy uttered from the lips of Kurtz, akin to Ron Jeremy sucking his own dick, shamelessly blurts out that war is really about ‘land and pussy’. Instead of Portnoy’s Complaint, it’s Portnoy’s Commandment. Jewesses like Erica Jong and Dr. Ruth encouraged women to celebrate their pooters, and Jewish men like Norman Mailer and John Milius told men to whip out their boners.
The difference between Kurtz in his domain and the soldiers at the Bunny performance is that Kurtz went for the real thing. He fought to be the lord of his kingdom, alpha and autonomous, and the women came to worship the ‘power in his loins’. Whereas Kurtz possesses real women who worship him and will bear his children, the soldiers at the Bunny Hop are tempted with a strip-tease act, like dogs made to howl for a raw piece of meat they’re ultimately denied.
Modernity ‘commodified’ sexuality into a mass product, selling the illusion that every guy can be a stud with his special babe by pinning a Playboy centerfold on the wall. Even prostitutes, despite the provision of real sex, serve the same function as they’re passed around from men to men. In contrast, what Kurtz lays claim to, turf of ‘muff’, is really his. An alpha wolf guarding its kill stands above a pack of dogs barking for scraps of meat(like the soldiers at the Bunny Fest).
Granted, Milius’ philosophy ran up against the same problem that Ayn Rand’s did. Both cooked up Big Ideas for the masses, but the underlying message was anti-democratic and applied only to the rare and exceptional few. Rand’s ‘Objectivism’ was hero-worship of the one in a million, the super-individual with the winning lottery of looks, intelligence, creativity, and iron will, as well as boundless courage and charisma. How many Howard Roarks are out there? Has there been any?
Likewise, if Jungle Warrior-Poet-Prophet Kurtz is an inspiration for men, what are they to do upon realizing they’re a bunch of average joes? It means most men have no recourse for their mediocrity in the Miliusian universe except to bow down at the feet of the Great One(who hogs all the power, glory, and womenfolk) in the hope that he will take mercy on them.
Of course, anti-democratic fantasies have had great appeal among the demos on grounds of, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”(Groucho Marx). It surely explains the popularity of billionaire Donald Trump or shows like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, along with TV series like DALLAS and DYNASTY. Or all those low-income blacks fantasizing about millionaire gangsta rappers with their fancy cars, loud mansions, bling, and bouncy-ass ho’s. Or any kind of celebrity worship, with the masses of low means following the lives of famous athletes, British Royalty, or Movie/Music Stars. Some of this fascination is simply admiration of excellence as our attention naturally gravitates to the best talents in sports, comedy, arts, and business. That, in and of itself, isn’t the problem. The problem arises from the conceptualization of elitism into a mass-formula selling the false hope of guiding a nobody to become a somebody. Milius’s Kurtz isn’t merely a superior individual but an inspirational archetype for young men everywhere, and therein lies the danger, even fraudulence.
The next notable encounter involves the inspection(at the insistence of Chief, the boat commander) of a sampan carrying what seems like a family with food supplies. Chief is insistent on doing things by the book, ordering the agitated Chef to check every nook and cranny, but the latter’s sudden reaction triggers an eruption of firepower on the hapless occupants of the sampan. All seem dead except one woman, and once again, Chief, ever the stickler with the rules(and/or for a convenient excuse to deviate from the journey he has grave misgivings about), insists on procuring medical attention for the woman, whereupon Willard shoots her dead in cold blood(and/or mercifully, similar to Joker’s putting down of the Viet Cong assassin at the end of FULL METAL JACKET). Whatever one makes of Willard’s deed, he’s come one step closer, even if unbeknownst to himself, to Kurtz’s way of thinking, i.e. war has its own logic, free of all stated codes of conduct and norms. From Milius’ perspective, America, having grown so materially abundant and morally vain, came to accept the affordability(big expense indeed) of a ‘properly’ executed war, one waged with Queensberry Rules.
Next stop on the journey, a fort at Do Lung bridge, involves a bunch of soldiers(stranded, lost, or abandoned) hunkered down in a series of trenches, firing ammo and mortars at an invisible enemy, with both sides hurling insults at one another. The men are mostly black and embittered. When Willard asks who the commanding officer is, one fires back, “Ain’t you?” It’s as if official hierarchy and command structure have broken down, the men’s mindset closer to tribalism or everyman-for-himself-ism than to patriotism.
On one level, it’s a powerful illustration of the social fracturing that occurred in Vietnam, the soldiers divided along racial lines, distrustful of authority and vice versa. With psychedelic rock blasting from a radio, the black soldiers would rather be in da hood chillin’ out than risking their lives for The Man. It’s like an entire platoon of Clean(Laurence Fishburne) clones, except meaner and nastier.
Yet, on another level, the dissolution of hierarchy and the scrambling for new modes of survival, the kind we see at the fort, were the raw material in Kurtz’s reinvention of the Art of War. The old is melted to mold the new.
The black soldiers with whom Willard tries to communicate seem divided, dismissive of any authority(especially white) and even distrustful of one another, but also quietly desperate for someone to take charge and lead them away from the maelstrom toward meaningful action. Kurtz has been through such a chaos, external and internal, and established a stable center in the eye of the hurricane. When order breaks down, men grow disobedient and defiant, like the hostile soldiers Willard stumbles upon; yet, men cannot long survive in a state of anarchy and yearn for strong leadership, the kind that Kurtz embodies: Breaking from one order, plunging into chaos, and forming a new order from the chaos.
In the original theatrical version, the next disruptions come in the form of two fierce attacks, first with gunfire(and flares?), in which Clean is killed, and the second with arrows/spears, one of which mortally impales Chief. The second attack with primitive weaponry might be an allusion to Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS where Marlowe’s men come under a similar barrage. It could also signify Kurtz’s return-to-nature, or the fusion of the modern and the primitive in his nascent kingdom.
In the REDUX version, the two attacks are divided by a rather ornate scene involving a ghostly French plantation, perhaps the last(and forgotten) remnant of the empire. It is where the French provide a proper burial for Clean, with the best effort at standard military honors by Chief(who was especially aggrieved by the death of Clean, as if of a younger brother).
Despite the amity between the Americans and the French, something seems a bit off. Americans, despite their imperial presence in Vietnam, embody democratic principles(especially following the Civil Rights Movement in the Sixties that removed the last vestiges of white privilege). Race is hardly a factor among the half-white and half-black American boat crew.
In contrast, the French plantation represents old-style imperialism and racial hierarchy, not unlike something out of GONE WITH THE WIND. The French maintain social divisions with the subservient Vietnamese, so at odds with the American soldiers. Yet, they feel as comrades against a common enemy, the communists.
Among the scenes left on the cutting room floor in the film’s initial release, the French plantation scene is by far the most complex. Included in the REDUX version, it generated the most amount of controversy. Many deemed it boring, unnecessary, and irrelevant to the story, a sore thumb sticking out. Others found it problematic but fascinating, adding yet another layer, especially of historical significance, to the very complicated affair that was Vietnam.
Both viewpoints are valid depending on the context. Given that Coppola drastically altered Milius’ original ending, the French plantation scene feels almost superfluous. But within the framework of Milius’ original ending, the scene serves as both a bridge and a barrier to Kurtz’s transcendence.
The French are thematically linked to Kurtz in that both have gone way further than American Power in their understanding of ‘why we fight’.
The US establishment invoked freedom/liberty, democracy, defense of an ally, anti-communism, business interests, sharing the American Way, and etc., but the sales pitch rings hollow in an ‘exotic’ war dragging on with no end in sight. Are those stated interests and values worth more American boys coming home in body bags, especially given the poor rapport between the Americans and the locals? (The film itself shows zero interest in the Vietnamese themselves, who actually figure in the story less than Indian savages in Old Westerns.)
If Kilgore’s men seem somewhat more motivated, it has less to do with politics and ideology than the charisma of their relentless commander who makes his men feel as if they’re on a safari. But if given a choice of fighting in Nam or returning home, most would pack their bags.
The French holding out on their plantation are different. They’ve made the land under their feet their home, to which they’ve developed a degree of historical attachment. When Willard asks why they don’t return ‘home’(meaning France), the family patriarch rebuts that THIS, their plantation, is their home. They’ve put down roots and count for something as the masters of their own domain, whereas back in France, they’d be just another bunch of faceless citizens of the Republic. Their ancestors fought for the land, they tamed & developed it, and their children were born on it. Thus, it isn’t mere property or real estate but a family domain in which they are at the center of all that surrounds them. This, in their hearts, is something worth fighting and dying for.
Unlike most Frenchmen who saw themselves as colonizers and left for the mother country when things went south, they opted to stay and fight because they saw themselves as pioneers(and builders of something new), not unlike the whites who settled the Americas(and the Boers of South Africa).
In this, their conviction and impassioned defense of land & honor anticipate what Kurtz has come to realize as well. Like the Frenchmen with their Alamo-Masada-like fortress mentality, Kurtz also believes that men are most willing to fight “because we live here”, something wholly missing in the American War effort where US personnel, from the highest generals to the lowest soldiers, feel no connection, historical or sentimental, to the land.
The admission by the French that they even killed some Americans(by ‘accident’) is an additional peculiarity they have in common with Kurtz, who has become an enemy of the Americans as well as of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese(especially in Milius’ version).
However, the differences are no less striking than the similarities. Whereas Kurtz has fully detached himself from Americanism, the French cling to French civilization that is alien to Vietnamese soil. Therefore, for all their talk of roots and attachment to the land, they remain culturally and soulfully bound to Old France, incidentally one that is fading in France itself via commercialization American style. (Ironically, preservation of traditional France has been implanted in another land.) As such, they’re more like a mini-museum of a vanishing France than a people in harmony with the unique rhythms of Southeast Asia. They’re like earthlings trying to recreate Earth on Mars.
For all their insistence on their rightful claim to the land, they remain soul-outsiders who fear merging with the native folks(who are assigned the roles of servants) and the local flora, which is kept at bay by the plantation system(that historically grew crops of foreign origin for foreign export). Thus, they aren’t in tune but in conflict with the land, maintained as a kind of ersatz-France. Their roots in Asia are of European seeds.
Unlike the French plantation owners who remain culturally and historically wedded to a distant land, Kurtz goes the extra step, or as Willard remarks at one point, “… he went for himself.”
Kurtz’s momentous decision is not to be confused with ‘going native’ or switching sides. In DANCES WITH WOLVES and AVATAR, the heroes become immersed in the cultures of the Other. In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the hero comes to sympathize with the Arabs despite his allegiance to the Empire(that is merely manipulating, indeed inventing, ‘Arab Nationalism’ as leverage against the Ottoman Turks). Lawrence finds himself caught between two worlds.
A subtler transformation occurs in MARTIAN CHRONICLES where an astronaut is as if ‘possessed’ by the ghostly ‘spirits’ of the all but extinct Martians. He comes to identify with the Martians and seeks to repel humans as foreign invaders and sure-to-be despoilers of what remains of Mars. He turns against his fellow crew, killing a few before he himself is felled.
Kurtz cuts himself from Americanism but not to join with another culture or cause. His resolve isn’t a matter of switching allegiances or a reversal of loyalty, as was the case with some US soldiers who came to sympathize with the Vietnamese and joined the Anti-War movement.
Initially, Kurtz took a more independent turn to better serve the American cause and, even at the end, remained at war with the communists. But, along the way, as he took matters into his own hands as a burgeoning maverick, he grew more self-aware, not least of his deeper/hidden motives. Like a domesticated pig released into the wild that undergoes profound changes in physiology and psychology, Kurtz couldn’t help but notice(with excitement) the appearance of his figurative tusks and bristles. For the first time in his life, he truly tasted freedom but also its bitter pill, the ‘horror’ of flight/exile from familiarity, interdependence, and security.
Likewise, the escaped hero of THX 1138 stands tall at the end, like a bird finally free of its cage, but confronted with the profound dilemma of making it on his own. Dogs hate the leash but are lost without a home, and humans are no different, which is why most people abhor full freedom that comes with real responsibility. Kurtz understood this but decided to go all the way.
It began to dawn on Kurtz. What was in it for him to fight a war thousands of miles away from his home country? Why was it so important for the US to prevail in a nation so alien in terms of race, culture, and history?
The more Kurtz expanded his reach and impact in the fight against the communists and in defiance of the US military, the more it began to dawn on him that his conviction was fueled less by a sense of duty to his uniform or ideological commitment to anti-communism than by his will-to-power, egoism of pride, supreme self-confidence, and prophetic vision.
At some point, he likely came to a realization of himself as the superior man, above all the politicians and generals, a bunch of careerists or departmentalists. Kurtz, in contrast, is supposed to represent the ‘harmony of the pen and the sword’, an ideal of Yukio Mishima who, at one point, embarked on a radical path to defend Japan(that was condemned to perpetual ignominy under the rule of politicians and military bureaucrats beholden to materialist USA). Interesting that the over-confident John Milius and highly insecure Paul Schrader, both more renowned as writers than directors, arrived at similar obsessions about politics-and-poetics: word + sword.
Milius’ mythmaking of Kurtz was quite a tall order, and it’s no wonder Coppola had problems with it and opted for a more harrowing view of the Vietnam war(and war in general). (Ironically, Coppola’s own screenplay of PATTON is closer in spirit to Milius’ vision for APOCALYPSE NOW.) However exaggerated APOCALYSE NOW is at times, there’s the constant reminder of the grinding brutality of war, its indiscriminate nature and the utter chaos(as the actual practice of combat always falls short of the theory formulated in the chambers of the higher-ups, the point of Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY). The one moment that violates this rule is when Kilgore seems impervious to shrapnel exploding around him — while his men cower or hit the dirt, he stands firm and upright, like the movie Patton flashing his pistol against German bombers strafing an American camp. Still, it’s but an instant and, besides, Kilgore soon orders air support to suppress the artillery barrage coming from the trees. For the most part, the film is relentlessly grim about the scale and intensity of war, a solemn reminder of the fragility of men in the face of bolting iron. The mythic dimensions of Kurtz(according to Milius) simply didn’t comport with Coppola’s preferred interpretation, more in line with the conclusion of ALTERED STATES(released a year after APOCALYPSE NOW) in which a scientist’s experiment to probe into the deepest recesses of his psyche leads to mental and physical breakdown. Both films convey a disillusionment with the Counterculture and/or New Age vision of fusing Western science with Eastern mysticism. (Milius didn’t so much reject the Counterculture as co-opt its beatific psychedelic romanticism for right-wing ends. Instead of a peace-loving hippie, a war-loving shaman. The Summer of Love believed in the power of Rock Music and psychedelics to make people less tribal, aggressive, and egotistical, guiding them toward peace and harmony, or “All You Need Is Love”. But, there was no guarantee that those taking the ‘trip’ and diving into their psyche would embrace their herbivorous than carnivorous side. A sheep on the couch may dream of grass, but a tiger on the couch will dream of lamb chops.)
Coppola’s misgivings about Kurtz-according-to-Milius were understandable given the paucity of historical parallel. Did it make sense for a film about the horrors of war to allow such an outlandish character to define its overall theme? Perhaps, one historical precedent was Genghis Khan, at one time a labor of love for Milius as a film project. An incredible story to be sure, the epic tale of an extraordinary Mongol accomplishing the most unlikely feat of bringing factious barbarian tribes under one roof. Civilized peoples, especially the Chinese, dreaded the Mongols but found them manageable through effective defenses, bribery, and the age-old strategy of divide-and-rule. But then, Genghis Khan did the impossible. If someone had entertained the notion of backward ragtag Mongols pulling off such a feat, more than a few would have fallen on the floor and died laughing. Still, his empire was of warrior might and, in time, in the absence of its own vision and prophecy, was absorbed into the cultures and beliefs of other peoples.
Along with his friend Steven Spielberg, Milius was likely inspired by the story of T. E. Lawrence, the subject of the great film by David Lean. Though a minor figure in history, Lawrence was both a soldier and a man of letters, or a poet-warrior. Maybe it was the heat of the sun on the land that birthed three great religions; Lawrence even began to exhibit signs of the prophet complex. In the film, Lawrence(Peter O’Toole) states, “The best of them(the Arab rabble) won’t come for money. They’ll come for ME.” In other words, his power to inspire is such that he doesn’t need to buy loyalty; men will follow him because they believe in him(implying a greatness above and beyond the British Empire and Arab aspirations), a messianic germ that in the end failed to sprout.
Just about the only real parallel to Milius’ vision of Kurtz is Muhammad whom Michael H. Hart placed at the head of the list in his book THE 100: A RANKING OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY. Hart’s reasoning was that, even though Jesus was spiritually more influential and figures like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan conquered more territories in their lifetimes, Muhammad was unique in history as a man who not only founded a new religion but had success as a political & military figure. The combination of the Word and the Sword was unparalleled in the annals of history, which is why there has been only one man like Muhammad: Himself. (Perhaps, John Milius’ directorial effort THE WIND AND THE LION in which the American Imperialist President Theodore Roosevelt, much idolized by Milius, grows in respect for a Moroccan Muslim rebel-leader is a nod to the founder of Islam as a kind of neo-Moses-Jesus. American military prowess and Islamic spiritual power. Mix those and you have the makings of the Kurtz cocktail.)
Coppola’s style in APOCALYPSE NOW is a blend of the operatic and the real, a kind of ‘operealism’, but steers clear of the myth-making at the core of Milius’ conception of Kurtz. So, what was to be done?
The best approach in retrospect would have been a compromise: Toning down Milius’ flights-of-fancy without dismissing it altogether. In other words, trust the adage, “Don’t throw the baby out with the baby water.” (Either that or Coppola should have tossed out the entirety of Milius’ ending and rewrote the whole thing from scratch, thereby avoiding the confusion resulting from the retained fragments of Milius’ original.)
If Coppola’s couldn’t accept Kurtz as the heart-of-brightness(or warrior-poet-prophet incarnate) and instead perceived him as part of the madness of Vietnam, inescapable despite the colonel’s best efforts, he could still have granted him a worthy farewell, allowing him to bow out with a measure of dignity and honor.
In Coppola’s view, Kurtz had tried to be different in order to save America’s sinking ship in Vietnam; he was innovative in his methods, but the pressure and violence, and surely the wear-and-tear on his body and soul, eventually got to him. To the very end, he maintained a semblance of power and magic but was broken inside, waiting for an exit from the ‘horror’ of darkness.
Then, the narrative challenge would have been to devise a way to grant him this wish(or death wish). Let him go out with a bang or in a ding. Coppola sort of had it both ways, letting Kurtz be killed in the most ignominious manner by having him butchered like a hapless hog by a machete-wielding Willard(to the sound of Jim Morrison belting ‘fuc*, fuc*, fuc*’) yet bombastically juxtaposed with the ritual slaughter of cows by the tribesmen(actually, a local custom of Filipino ‘savages’ transposed to the Montagnards) and choreographed to Willard’s self-conscious tai-chi-like motions, as if in sacrificial offering to the gods.
But the elaborate montage, surely a rehashing of the bloodletting in THE GODFATHER, hardly adds anything to the putridness. The audience feels bummed out and cheated, especially after a long journey with mounting expectations. Furthermore, the cows fail as metaphor because Kurtz is like a lion among men. Perhaps a wounded lion or lion gone mad, but a natural predator, leader of a pride. Willard has been sent to hunt a tiger. Intercutting his death with the slaughter of cows reduces him to a prey, a walking-talking steak house.
Coppola settled for a false dichotomy: Milius’ mytho-comicbook fantasy vs his own dark and serious ‘artistic’ approach. In truth, he could have kept the tragic tone while conceding to the heroic aspect of Kurtz’s venture, thus allowing for an honorable exit, in which case Kurtz would be a great but flawed man who has reached the end of the line, whose search for answers only led to more questions and whose victories only led to more conflicts, thereby creating a quagmire of his own. In that sense, he too has failed, despite ‘making a friend of horror’. He knows it, Willard knows it, and we know it.
Then, what should have been the off-ramp for Kurtz? As his extraordinary qualities are undeniable, it should have been worthy of the man and the myth. What APOCALYPSE NOW needed was A Wild Bunch ending. THE WILD BUNCH’s spectacular ending, in no way, shape, or form, diminishes the tragic dimensions of the film. (Also true of Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA and RAN.) The outlaws, with their hard-earned gold from a successful heist-for-hire, could have ridden off into the sunset but, irked by something like a conscience and crude sense of honor in regard to a captive comrade, choose to risk it all, even unto death. The latter had ‘played his strings right to the end’, and the men feel they owe him(and themselves) at least that much, which, by the zero-sum rules of the Wild West, could mean little or everything. Their advance toward danger and very possible death seems foolhardy from a rational point of view, but man doesn’t live on logic alone. Ultimately, men choose triumphant tragedy over sheepish safety. “…better to live one day as a lion than live a thousand days as a sheep.”
From Peckinpah’s perspective, outlaws of the West stood apart from others of their kind throughout history. Criminals have always been and will always be with us, but the American West was a unique historical moment, an all-too-brief window of time when the potent themes of independence, honor, manhood, violence, wanderlust, loyalty, and community came into play in a most dynamic way imaginable. Thus, while most criminals throughout history were just scum, the Western outlaws, while certainly bad men, navigated the thin line between civilization and barbarism, all the more so as even lawmen of the time found themselves straddling both sides of the fence. If Old Hollywood Westerns upheld the lawmen and bearers of civilization as the forces of good, Peckinpah pointed to the greed, corruption, and unethical practices of those on the side of the law, often an instrument of the rich and ruthless. Furthermore, his films confronted the audience with the inconvenient thesis that the outlaws(more than the lawmen) were most emblematic of the Western legend. (In SHANE, the hero is essentially a gun-slinging villain-gone-good up against villains-being-bad, much like Schwarzenegger’s reprogrammed robot in TERMINATOR 2. Sergio Leone grasped this earlier and made a killing with THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY that culminates in a showdown among three outlaws.) In that light, we can see how the outlaws in THE WILD BUNCH, cold-blooded killers that they are, have within themselves also the elements of honor and heroism in their grand exit in the twilight of the West. There’s nothing comic-bookish or cheapening about the ending of THE WILD BUNCH. As one of the characters say, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Coppola had it another way.
Likewise, POINT BREAK(directed by Kathryn Bigelow) allows for Patrick Swayze’s character to exit in a manner commensurate with his aura. He is indeed a criminal and a menace to society, the villain of the movie caught in a cat-and-mouse game with Keanu Reeves as the hero cop. Yet, he’s also a daredevil adventurer living on the edge, whose escapades aren’t just for the money but the thrill of breaking every rule and pushing boundaries. There’s something of Chuck Yeager in him.
As much as Reeve’s character is reluctant to admit it, the two men are two sides of the same coin, a lawman and an outlaw equally addicted to the adrenaline high of the hunt/chase. In a way, the outlaw has the edge because he’s on his own like a lone wolf, without the institutional backup of the lawman who, however bold and daring, must ultimately serve as a dog trained to protect the sheep of society. The wolf leads, the dog chases.
In their final encounter, the lawman handcuffs himself to the outlaw(as the police approach from land and air) on a beach toward which a massive once-in-a-lifetime tidal wave is looming. The outlaw concedes defeat but pleads his final wish, one that may well finish him off: To surf the impossible wave. The lawman could shoot him(for ‘resistance’) or hold him for arrest(in accordance to the law), but something stirs within him, and the lawman-vs-outlaw antipathy gives way to a mutual recognition as ‘frenemies’ sworn to the quest of living on the edge. There’s a similar sense at the end of Michael Mann’s HEAT when the lawman(Al Pacino)’s downing of the outlaw(Robert De Niro)is tinged with respect(and regret), as the latter is a most unusual criminal, a man of impeccable professionalism and personal code than the usual slimeball of the underworld.
Or take RUNAWAY TRAIN where an escaped convict(Jon Voight), a beast of a man, is given his due as an irrepressible force of nature worthy of a grand exit. A psychopath with virtually no empathy, he is unfit to live amongst us, but he’s possessed of the stuff that makes man the master of his own destiny.
Even the delusional has-been faux-athlete(Mickey O’Rourke) is granted a final moment of glory, illusory as it is, as he leaps to almost certain death in THE WRESTLER. Or consider Captain Tyreen(Richard Harris)’s last charge against the French troops(occupying Mexico) in MAJOR DUNDEE, for death with glory.
Coppola’s ending of APOCALYPSE NOW is closer in spirit to that of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, where Billy’s demise is rendered anti-climactic, undoubtedly one reason why the Peckinpah film failed at the box office. Still, the film was (semi)based on history, and the real Billy was indeed killed by Pat Garret alone. Furthermore, the Billy of the film isn’t supposed to be some larger-than-life character(the kind done to perfection by Orson Welles in films like CITIZEN KANE, THE THIRD MAN, MR. ARKADIN, and TOUCH OF EVIL) but a lax personification of freedom once taken for granted, for good or ill, in the West when it was ‘wild’. Also, as Billy is introduced near the beginning(in a casual setting), there is no mystery about him. Indeed, he’s not even after significance, only freedom, but his refusal to adapt to changing times turns him into a symbol regardless.
In contrast, we’re introduced to the myth of Kurtz early on, long before we’re finally given a glimpse of him(in the dark). Good or bad, success or failure, he’s meant to possess great qualities setting him apart from the rest of humanity. Therefore, an anticlimactic ending(like the one in PAT GARRET & BILLY THE KID) could only be fatal for APOCALYPSE NOW — one can’t help thinking Kurtz mopes in the dark to hide his weight gain — , which really needed A Wild Bunch Ending… or An Excalibur, Blade Runner, or 13th Warrior Ending, all of which came later and did the endings right.
Let’s assume, as Coppola envisioned it, Kurtz has reached a point of weary and agonizing self-doubt, fallen into a fatalist trap from which there’s no escape. Still, his folly would be a great folly of Hindenburg proportions, something to go out with a bang, like Odin awaiting Gotterdammerung or Hitler’s dream crashing all around him. Willard could have played the role of Perceval(or Parsifal) to Kurtz’s Arthur(or Amfortas).
John Boorman the director presumably fused the Arthurian legends with the Fisher King(Amfortas) myth and had his Arthur, like Kurtz, wasting away, having lost sight of his calling, that is until Perceval fulfills the Quest and offers Arthur a rejuvenating sip from the Grail. Still, Arthur knows his days are numbered; he’s lost too many men and conceded too much ground during his prolonged incapacity, and the most he can muster is a final battle. And so, he and his remaining knights ride off into sure but heroic death. It has elements of tragedy and triumph, of death and redemption. In other words, the heroism doesn’t undo the grimness and the tragedy(or the ‘horror’).
In BLADE RUNNER, Roy Batty the alpha android sought out every ‘cure’ to keep himself and his android companions ‘alive’ but ultimately accepts his fate with stoic nobility. The glistening rain-soaked closure is worthy of the ‘man’.
In the preparation for the final battle in the 13TH WARRIOR, the Viking leader seems incapacitated from his wounds, useless in the looming and decisive clash with the enemy amassing in great numbers; yet, he summons every last bit of his remaining strengths to take his stand alongside his men. It’s beautifully done, and there’s nothing comic-bookish or fantastic about it. As with Arthur and Roy Batty, the Viking chief’s fate is sealed and cannot be ‘unwritten’, but he can still face death with the spirit with which he lived. And the two ornery patriarchs in THE BIG COUNTRY ended a long-running blood feud in a duel that took both their lives but with their heads held high.
A similar end could have been accorded to Kurtz in A Wild Bunch Ending. But Coppola decided that a sullen and dispirited ending, utterly drained of myth and vision, would be closer to serious art. It left most people feeling confused, even cheated, not unlike the baffled reaction of Kurtz’s followers upon the death of their king. Should they attack Willard for his apparent act of regicide/deicide? Or follow him as the new god… which is what they appear to be doing, bowing before him and laying down their weapons(as if to suggest that the White Man possesses the power of initiative whereas nonwhites are naturally inclined to follow and obey)? Or are they grateful that someone finally put Kurtz out of his misery and shut down the campaign of ‘horror’ so that they can return to their homes and livelihoods?
It lacks even the resonance of the ending of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, one of Peckinpah’s tawdrier efforts, where a half-mad Latin American kingpin is terminated-with-extreme-prejudice by a ‘loser’ whose wild sheep chase improbably led him to the source of the woes that left a trail of dead bodies.
It’s all the more disappointing because Kurtz was hyped as larger-than-life, someone on the scale of Darth Vader or Henry Fonda’s villain in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST(“man… an ancient race”) but was given the butcher shop treatment than a Viking funeral. In the end, he becomes indistinguishable from the cows being slaughtered by illiterate savages. After so much waiting, the denouement surely ranks among the biggest bummers in cinematic history.
Coppola was correct that Milius’ ending in its pristine(as well as puerile) form leaned toward the fantastic side, but its essence worked as a culmination of gradually built-up audience expectations. He could have nixed some of Kurtz’s more outlandish exclamations, especially the stuff about the power in his loins worshiped by the local gals, while keeping with Milius’ idealization of him as a great warrior and visionary.
Coppola could have added tragic fatalism to this Kurtz, i.e. for all his ambition and dreams, the odds remained stacked against him and the best he could hope for was a hero’s death. Well, what better way for him to bow out than a final battle, one comparable in sound and fury to the climaxes in SEVEN SAMURAI and THE WILD BUNCH? At least give Kurtz that much in his final hour, fighting the North Vietnamese with his warriors at his side and then facing death in spectacular fashion by taking on the Americans as well, thus becoming Sinatra of the Jungle who did it ‘my way’. It could have been one of the most thrilling and awesome set pieces ever. Coppola could have had it all: Milius’ mythicism and his own tragic-realism in one great bundle, opposing visions complementing than negating one another.
The manner in which Milius beams with pride as he recites the sturm-und-drang words designated for Kurtz, one can’t help thinking he prized Kurtz as his ultimate creation, the great man as warrior-poet-prophet who appears maybe once in a millennium. While Coppola by and large did justice to most of Milius’ concept, indeed way beyond the directorial skills of Milius(or Lucas for that matter), his utter mangling of the ending was surely a blow to Milius. Over the years, both men have mellowed on the topic and come to take well-deserved pride in their collaboration. Upon its release, however, Milius fumed about the film as a prime example of what happens when a liberal takes on a war movie. Supposedly, Coppola’s anti-war inclinations had a castrating effect on his original concept, which was more about man’s circumcision into warrior manhood.
However, it was a misdiagnosis as it was Coppola’s well-intentioned but misguided artistic aspirations than his political views that sank the ending.
If there has been near-unanimity about the film among critics and the general public, it’s that the ending is deeply problematic, to say the least. Even the film’s biggest enthusiasts tend to agree. The rare exception, Roger Ebert’s heroic but foolhardy explanation of the ending fails to convince. Indeed, the fact that it requires such a degree of rationalization is a tell-tale sign that something is wrong, as most truths are self-explanatory, in no need of a defense attorney.
Quite likely, John Milius’ FAREWELL TO THE KING was an attempt to correct the record. As writer-director of the film, Milius had total mastery in projecting his idea onto the big screen. Its lead character is a Kurtzian figure played by Nick Nolte, a white man who becomes a chieftain of some primitive island tribe.
Milius once said in an interview that his greatest fantasy is that of a white man who goes native, defeats the men of the tribe, gains dominance as the head honcho, and has the pick of the women. In other words, merely going native isn’t enough to satiate Milius’s obsession as it implies submitting oneself to another culture. If, however, one takes over the tribe as its god-king, he becomes the lawgiver in the Year Zero of his rule, a figure who can even bend time. Anno Miliusini.
Plenty of people in the industry and critical community thought of Milius as a kind of nutjob or goofball. Some no doubt regarded him as a neo-imperialist with fantasies of white domination over the browns.
Yet, there’s been a streak in Milius rather respectful of the Other, the world of nonwhites. As awesome as the Western Empires were in their technology and organizational prowess, the Western individual had an ‘unfair’ leg-up in his confrontations with nonwhites. Even a white woman armed with a modern rifle could blow away the biggest jungle warrior(or even a lion or elephant).
Thus, while in the collective or cumulative sense Western Imperialism could be seen as evidence of the triumph or the supremacy of the White Race, it didn’t ascertain the mastery or superiority of any white individual. A white soldier armed with a weapon that could fell a large number of colored folks was entirely reliant on the socio-economic order to which he belonged. Even a low-IQ white dummy with a modern rifle could kill the most superbly lethal primitive hunter-warrior. Therefore, the only sure validation of one’s worth as a man would be to face the enemy on his own terms. If he fights with a knife, you fight with a knife, not with a gun. A bunch of white men with modern weapons could handily subdue any jungle tribe. But how many white men could take on the tribe on its own terms, defeat all the native rivals, and stand tall as the worthy champion-warrior who passed the ultimate test?
With FAREWELL TO THE KING, Milius got to cook as well as write the recipe and then eat his fill to satisfaction. But it was like a private feast, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and self-referential, i.e. those ignorant of the World-according-to-Milius would have been puzzled as to what it was all about. It was a demonstration of the saying, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” Milius’ imagination, being so virile, aggressive, bombastic, and over-the-top, usually needed some balancing(or pruning) by someone with a keener sense of irony, context, and structure, generally absent in Milius’ directorial efforts like DILLINGER, BIG WEDNESDAY, and FAREWELL TO THE KING.
Still, Milius as director was leagues above other wanna-be right-wing big shots in an industry deemed to be overly and hopelessly ‘liberal’. Consider Jack Abramoff and other such jerkoffs who gave the world stuff like RED SCORPION, which is like an unfunny parody of the Milius milieu.
Coppolypse Now.
Francis Coppola was arguably the most important director of the 1970s, with THE GODFATHER and APOCALYPSE NOW bookending the decade as respectively the sunrise and sunset of New Hollywood. Various films predated THE GODFATHER in signaling change, but THE GODFATHER was recognized as the culmination and peak, as both artistic achievement and commercial success, refuting the skeptics. Coppola’s unprecedented triumph proved film school graduates could deliver, Hollywood movies could be art, and the public wanted something different. Who was to say otherwise when THE GODFATHER became the biggest moneymaker in short time?
For any number of reasons, the film struck a chord with every segment of the audience: Old and young, cinephiles and genre aficionados, snobs and slobs, cynical and the nostalgic, the right and the left, men and women.
In contrast, the earlier breakthroughs, despite impressive box office numbers among them, were perceived as narrower in aspiration and appeal: THE GRADUATE and EASY RIDER were ‘youth films’, STRAW DOGS and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE were controversial in their ultra-violence, THE FRENCH CONNECTION was regarded as essentially a crime thriller for the male audience, and so forth. More than any other American film up to that time, THE GODFATHER transcended genre origins and limitations. Though centered on organized crime, it was also a family saga and a period film, a celebration of ethnic culture and immigrant experience. There had been ethnic-themed movies before but none so pungent and authentic in feel, and unapologetic to boot.
For many, it was a remembrance of a better time(what it had in common with AMERICAN GRAFFITI) before the radicalism and upheavals of the Sixties irreversibly changed America, though, ironically enough, the film’s very existence owed to those socio-cultural transformations.
Though set in a bygone era, one of Sinatra than the Stones, its ‘political’ aspects made for contemporary relevance, finally an acknowledgement of the corruption and violence inherent in the system, i.e. crime does pay(and always did pay).
It played to the yearning for a simpler past while also exploding the myth of innocence so intrinsic to nostalgia. Upon release, it instantly became the film of the moment, but there was an unrushed timeless quality about it, as if oblivious to the vagaries of fashion. As such, it aged like fine wine, whereas many highly lauded and/or commercially successful New Hollywood films, rightly or wrongly, were forgotten as outdated and overly topical as new fashions grabbed the spotlight.
Yet, like the twists and turns in the plot of THE GODFATHER, the future of American Cinema did not pan out as expected in The Godfather Moment. By the time APOCALYPSE NOW finally hit the screen, the cinematic landscape had significantly shifted away from the (impossible-in-retrospect) idealism of the early Seventies. As such, for all of APOCALYPSE NOW’s success critically and commercially(despite the controversy and its detractors), it represented the last gasp of big budget personal filmmaking. That the film emerged relatively intact from the prolonged production hell seemed close to a miracle. William Friedkin had also plunged into the jungle with high expectations and delivered THE SORCERER, which however turned out to be a total bust. (Bertolucci’s overblown epic 1900 also dampened confidence in personal filmmaking.) And the biggest kahuna of them all, HEAVEN’S GATE, equally or even more ambitious than THE GODFATHER, would become a disaster of Biblical proportions, one that nearly everyone, even the champions of personal filmmaking, piled on for its self-indulgence, megalomania, and wastefulness. HEAVEN’S GATE became for cinema what Watergate became for politics. It signaled Auteur Fatigue, though, to be sure, a good number of critics had warned about Cimino as an overrated phony who, mistaken as an genius and visionary(on the virtue of THE DEER HUNTER), was handed the keys to the mansion that he subsequently burned to the ground.
To be sure, plenty of media folks had anticipated(and even relished) a total fiasco for APOCALYPSE NOW, a kind of Heaven’s-Gate-before-Heaven’s-Gate, and sharpened their knives to pounce, except that too many critics were impressed and too many moviegoers bought tickets, thus denying and delaying the media bloodletting that finally settled on Cimino instead.
Coppola had somehow managed to pull through as the one of the last torchbearers of industrial-scale personal filmmaking. One by one, whether Warren Beatty with REDS or Philip Kaufman with THE RIGHT STUFF, that kind of filmmaking fell out of favor, failing to draw in the audience even with fulsome critical praise. APOCALYPSE NOW was among the exceptions whose profit justified the production costs. (Ironically, the film that finally undid him, ONE FROM THE HEART, was made inside a self-protective bubble designed to simplify the craft and leave nothing to chance, which had dogged the production of APOCALYPSE NOW. Coppola finally had his own insular eco-system, a creative biosphere that however proved sterile.) If New Hollywood grew from the foothills to its highest peak with THE GODFATHER, many came to regard APOCALYPSE NOW as its final summit, beyond which lay an entirely different landscape(with its own peaks to be sure but of a different kind and order).
Apart from its symbolic(as well as artistic and commercial) value as a cornerstone of New Hollywood, THE GODFATHER cast a long shadow in ways no one expected. Its biggest impact, though indirect, was in clearing the path for STAR WARS, another cultural milestone, for good or for ill.
It was the success with THE GODFATHER that lent Coppola a measure of clout, which came in handy in persuading reluctant studio heads into financing AMERICAN GRAFFITI, without the success of which Lucas would have had great difficulty convincing anyone to take a chance on his space fantasy project. As they say, one thing leads to another. (To top it off, Coppola’s nabbing APOCALYPSE NOW for himself left Lucas no choice but to plunge into space with robots.)
If not for the success of THE GODFATHER, it’s probable that Lucas would never have gotten a chance to make AMERICAN GRAFFITI, without which STAR WARS(and later the Indiana Jones series) would never have gotten off the ground, in which case the history of cinema would have gone in a very different direction. Spielberg, whose path to success ran parallel to but independent of Coppola’s circle, might have been alone as the king of the blockbusters(though he never would have gotten the chance to direct RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK without Lucas as a neo-mogul peer). All in all, THE GODFATHER was indeed a movie-godfather to other important works, including those of an old master. Coppola’s success paved the way for Lucas’ even bigger success, and they together aided Akira Kurosawa’s comeback with KAGEMUSHA, which then made RAN possible. None of those might have come to pass if not for the success of THE GODFATHER with its George-Bailey-like effect on the larger culture.
THE GODFATHER very likely played a key role in the Italian-American Renaissance in popular culture, what might be called the ‘Dagossance’ or ‘Goombassance’. While Italian-Americans were no slouches when it came to movies and music through much of the 20th century, the running theme had been assimilation and acceptance. Many had Anglicized or ‘Americanized’ their names(like Connie Francis), presented themselves as clean-cut, took on mostly non-Italian roles(like Ernest Borgnine and Anne Bancroft), or worked on non-Italian narratives and subjects(like Frank Capra, most of whose films are American-as-apple-pie than Italian-as-spaghetti). In contrast, THE GODFATHER was like a coming out party for full-blooded Italian-American-ness. It didn’t go easy on the garlic.
It’s no wonder that good many Italian-Americans were nervous about a movie presenting a very specific cultural milieu, one unmistakably Italian. Indeed, it’s telling that Sinatra felt especially threatened by the film’s frank admission of the ties between the mob and show business. Sinatra, like most Italian-Americans of his generation, had been careful to maintain a manicured image of himself. Reality was one thing, often dirty and dangerous, but a well-managed publicity went a long way to wash away the sins, even if just for show. There was a difference between an open secret and an open book. THE GODFATHER read the words out loud. What people knew and only whispered about became the talk of the town, and it made Sinatra look ridiculous, made even more humiliating through the weak demeanor of Johnny Fontaine(whose circumstances resembled the career turns of Sinatra) who pleads for help and gets slapped around and mocked by his godfather. Sinatra might have better tolerated the suggestion of his mob ties had the Fontaine character been presented as tougher and meaner, a man of pride. Instead, Fontaine was made out to be a sap, a coward pleading with a boss to save his flagging career.
But if Sinatra was angry with THE GODFATHER’S skeletons-out-of-the-closet approach, many Italian-Americans didn’t see an airing of dirty laundry but a showing off of silk suits and fancy gowns. Besides, by using the mafia as a metaphor for American capitalism/corruption, the film de facto validated the Italian-American hoods as more honest actors than the hypocrites of the ‘legitimate’ world, really a bunch of ‘pezzonovantes’.
THE GODFATHER really put Italian-American culture on the map, comparable to the moment when blacks went from being Negroes(eager to prove their worth in the eyes of white society, like Sidney Poitier in his early roles) to blacks(who felt ‘beautiful’ simply on account of being black). As such, it’s possible that the pitches for ROCKY and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER were met with less resistance on account of Italian-Americans having gained cultural currency via THE GODFATHER.
Of course, it also helped that Jews often used Italian-Americans as cultural buffers and fronts(or alter-ethnos) out of anxiety of putting themselves out there. Jews had ethnic issues of their own, and it felt ‘safer’ to channel their rages, frustrations, and desires through some other group, like the Italians. So, Erich Segal’s ethnic character in LOVE STORY is Jennifer Cavilleri of Italian Catholic background. (The biggest and most perverse twist on Jews using fronts is probably Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS where a couple of zany Jews launder their ethnic complexes and schemes through a Neo-Nazi goof ball. But then, was the Jewish Milius and Italian Coppola partnership for a Vietnam War film any less zany?)
For all of Coppola’s profound understanding and appreciation of Italian-ness so powerfully on display in THE GODFATHER films, his career might well have been more like those of earlier Italian-American greats like Frank Capra and Vincente Minnelli. It just so happened that Puzo’s very Italian-American novel was foisted upon Coppola whose preferred personal projects exhibited very little interest in Italian-American life and culture. YOU’RE A GOOD BOY NOW, THE RAIN PEOPLE, THE CONVERSATION, and APOCALYPSE NOW had nothing to do with meatballs and spaghetti.
Coppola essentially wanted to be thought of as an American filmmaker, a personal artist, or an ‘auteur’ than be pigeonholed or stereotyped as an ‘ethnic’ voice.
Thus, the artist/entertainer with perhaps the biggest impact on the Italian-American representation in the popular imagination(on account of THE GODFATHER films) might have had an entirely different influence on the culture(or none at all) had he possessed the means to pursue his most personal projects, in which case Puzo’s novel would likely have been adapted by a non-Italian-American hack into something with little cultural resonance and limited shelf life.
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