My father-in-law, two tours of duty in Vietnam with an honorably earned Purple Heart amongst his salad, said of Apocalypse Now “it wasn’t like that.” “It’s not about Vietnam,” I replied. He’d not heard it was based on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Given that knowledge he nodded, somewhat grimly.
"My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." – Francis Ford Coppola
In all seriousness, though, everyone's war was different. I know an Australian guy who fought out of Nui Dat and, yeah, that wasn't APOCALYPSE NOW. But I also know an American guy who fought with the Bastard Cav in the DMZ and that makes APOCALYPSE NOW sound tame.
Remember that outpost scene where Willard crawls through the trenches to ask “Who’s the commanding officer here?”? My father-in-law was commander at just such a camp. One night he got blindingly drunk and passed out in his tent. Around 3 am a soldier shook him awake. “Sir! The VC’s attacking!” “Wake me up when they get under the wire,” my father-in-law replied.
That's the most out-there scene of the film, too. The colours, the music, the guy looking straight into the camera: "Ain't you?" That to me was always the key scene, far more than the Valkyries or Kurtz stuff.
Thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comments (here and below)!
I'm convinced (it could be the basis for a future piece) that there are any number of great and popular films which are not really about the things that they're about. A few nights ago I rewatched Rear Window (for example) and I'm convinced that it's not about voyeurism, and that it won't seem as good if it's interpreted that way. 'It's not like that,' to paraphrase your father-in-law's reaction...
I’ll be interested in reading that one, AF! As an aside (and these days I’m a minotaur in the Fred Sanford junkyard that is my mind) there’s a heatwave, the dialog of Rear Window informs us. And a wall thermometer confirms it: a blazing 82 degrees.
Two comments based on two things you said in a very short space.
Firstly, if you've not read Việt Thanh Nguyễn's NOTHING EVER DIES, you should. It explains his fiction but is, I think, better than it (not least on the grounds that the fiction is pretty self-explanatory already). It is required reading for anyone even passingly interested in America's Vietnam-related cultural output.
Secondly, America won the war in two ways. The M16 agent John Colvin, who was in Hanoi during the bombing of it, wrote later that "the American effort in Vietnam, however ultimately unsuccessful on the peninsula, held the line long enough to permit the establishment of a democratic market economy outside of Indo-China itself". What's more, Vietnam immediately went back to war with its great historical antagonist, China, and is now very much part of the market economy itself (as I have written elsewhere, quoting my favourite Godard intertitle, the Vietnamese are, more than anyone, truly "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola").
Of course, America lost the war in the way that really matters actually and therefore psychologically-and we have been living with the results ever since. Vietnam Syndrome was never "kicked".
Thank you for reading, as ever, and for these comments!
I have a slight weakness for aphoristic writing (to put it mildly) and one of the reasons I like it is its compression - the fact that a lot of reading can sometimes be hidden behind a short sentence and (as in this case) a lot of new reading can be provoked by one. And so I'm beyond delighted that my short piece can be expanded in this way.
I haven't heard of that book, let alone read it: I'll certainly be seeking it out. Nor have I read the remark by John Colvin -- although of course I'm aware that there are people much more knowledgeable than I am who have suggested that America won the war. Is your piece available on Substack or elsewhere online?
As you say, what you tend to find in the cinema are the mental wounds of the conflict, and the effect that it had on the American psyche, and on America's image of itself - so that we are left with a parallel mythological war which like the Gulf War (at least in some literal sense) may not even have taken place.
My father-in-law, two tours of duty in Vietnam with an honorably earned Purple Heart amongst his salad, said of Apocalypse Now “it wasn’t like that.” “It’s not about Vietnam,” I replied. He’d not heard it was based on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Given that knowledge he nodded, somewhat grimly.
"My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." – Francis Ford Coppola
In all seriousness, though, everyone's war was different. I know an Australian guy who fought out of Nui Dat and, yeah, that wasn't APOCALYPSE NOW. But I also know an American guy who fought with the Bastard Cav in the DMZ and that makes APOCALYPSE NOW sound tame.
Remember that outpost scene where Willard crawls through the trenches to ask “Who’s the commanding officer here?”? My father-in-law was commander at just such a camp. One night he got blindingly drunk and passed out in his tent. Around 3 am a soldier shook him awake. “Sir! The VC’s attacking!” “Wake me up when they get under the wire,” my father-in-law replied.
That's the most out-there scene of the film, too. The colours, the music, the guy looking straight into the camera: "Ain't you?" That to me was always the key scene, far more than the Valkyries or Kurtz stuff.
🤝
Thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comments (here and below)!
I'm convinced (it could be the basis for a future piece) that there are any number of great and popular films which are not really about the things that they're about. A few nights ago I rewatched Rear Window (for example) and I'm convinced that it's not about voyeurism, and that it won't seem as good if it's interpreted that way. 'It's not like that,' to paraphrase your father-in-law's reaction...
I’ll be interested in reading that one, AF! As an aside (and these days I’m a minotaur in the Fred Sanford junkyard that is my mind) there’s a heatwave, the dialog of Rear Window informs us. And a wall thermometer confirms it: a blazing 82 degrees.
Two comments based on two things you said in a very short space.
Firstly, if you've not read Việt Thanh Nguyễn's NOTHING EVER DIES, you should. It explains his fiction but is, I think, better than it (not least on the grounds that the fiction is pretty self-explanatory already). It is required reading for anyone even passingly interested in America's Vietnam-related cultural output.
Secondly, America won the war in two ways. The M16 agent John Colvin, who was in Hanoi during the bombing of it, wrote later that "the American effort in Vietnam, however ultimately unsuccessful on the peninsula, held the line long enough to permit the establishment of a democratic market economy outside of Indo-China itself". What's more, Vietnam immediately went back to war with its great historical antagonist, China, and is now very much part of the market economy itself (as I have written elsewhere, quoting my favourite Godard intertitle, the Vietnamese are, more than anyone, truly "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola").
Of course, America lost the war in the way that really matters actually and therefore psychologically-and we have been living with the results ever since. Vietnam Syndrome was never "kicked".
Thank you for reading, as ever, and for these comments!
I have a slight weakness for aphoristic writing (to put it mildly) and one of the reasons I like it is its compression - the fact that a lot of reading can sometimes be hidden behind a short sentence and (as in this case) a lot of new reading can be provoked by one. And so I'm beyond delighted that my short piece can be expanded in this way.
I haven't heard of that book, let alone read it: I'll certainly be seeking it out. Nor have I read the remark by John Colvin -- although of course I'm aware that there are people much more knowledgeable than I am who have suggested that America won the war. Is your piece available on Substack or elsewhere online?
As you say, what you tend to find in the cinema are the mental wounds of the conflict, and the effect that it had on the American psyche, and on America's image of itself - so that we are left with a parallel mythological war which like the Gulf War (at least in some literal sense) may not even have taken place.