Analytical Review- Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a well put together film that creates imagery and illusions to the world of war. Francis Coppola directed this film and the shots and angles show a lot of cinematography. The introduction to this film begins with a song "The End" by the Doors and it is what drew me into watching the rest of the film because it foreshadowed chaos and destruction. It begins with the main character, Captain Willard, laying in bed and thinking about past memories of his experiences in war. It first fades into a shot of large plants with brown smoke rising from the bottom of the screen. Several helicopters fly by and when they do, a huge fire explosion takes place within the fields of the green plants. After the fire explosion became transparent with a close up of Captain Willard's face appeared and he looked frightened with his bright blue eyes opening wide. Then the shot of his face overlaps with the fan on the ceiling of Willard's room. The blades were spinning so fast it sounded like helicopter propellers.
The color scheme in this sequence had a lot of orange because of the fire and black background. It was very smoky and chaotic because it was Captain Willard’s flashbacks of the Vietnam War. Then the camera pans to the right over Willard’s desk, which has a bunch of letters and a picture of his wife lying on top. As it pans from the desk to Willard’s head on his pillow with his eyes closed, it fades into more flashbacks of the war.
The lyrics of the song are very relevant to what the audience sees on the screen. The persistence of vision is amazing in this sequence. For example, when Jim Morrison (singer of The Doors), sang, “Lost in a roman...wilderness of pain and all the children are insane all the children are insane,” It goes along with the sequence of shots. It starts from Captain Willard’s head on the pillow and the transparent background of actual ‘wilderness of pain’ with the war images of explosions and forests. Then it pans over to a night stand next to Willard’s bed with a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, a glass of scotch, and a spoon lying on top. This shot is in a mobile frame as the song plays, “And all the children are insane,” at that point of the song it’s on a low angle of Willard’s head with his eyes closed and slowly moves to a close up shot of a his hand holding a cigarette. I think it can mean that the soldiers of war are the children and all of the pain and murder that he’s been through he has gone insane. The symbolism here is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, and got a divorce with his wife because he can’t handle living back in reality. And all he thinks about is being in the jungle when he’s not there.