When Willard finally meets Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, I was really annoyed that you couldn't see his face because of all the shadows. But then I got to thinking about how the Coppola wanted to show that Kurtz is a dark character. Pretty cool...
You'll find that Kurtz in the novel is emaciated. Brando show up to film his relatively short time on screen weighing 100 pounds more than he weighed in The Godfather 8 years earlier. Of course, Coppola keeps him in the shadows for lots of reasons that have to do with evil. Does it really matter, by the way, that one Kurtz is skeletal while the other one is bloated? What do they have in common?
You can find this feature in many movies, where a supposedly evil or unknown character is only heard, and not seen, for quite some time. I believe this effect can not only act as a metaphor to show how dark a character is, but also just to keep the suspense of what the character might look like, contrary to the viewer's previous idea of his features. As the character steps out of the shadows, his face might reveal something about him that the viewer (and character interacting with him in the film) would have otherwise not known about or even thought the contrary about.
You'll find that Kurtz in the novel is emaciated. Brando show up to film his relatively short time on screen weighing 100 pounds more than he weighed in The Godfather 8 years earlier. Of course, Coppola keeps him in the shadows for lots of reasons that have to do with evil. Does it really matter, by the way, that one Kurtz is skeletal while the other one is bloated? What do they have in common?
ReplyDeleteYou can find this feature in many movies, where a supposedly evil or unknown character is only heard, and not seen, for quite some time. I believe this effect can not only act as a metaphor to show how dark a character is, but also just to keep the suspense of what the character might look like, contrary to the viewer's previous idea of his features. As the character steps out of the shadows, his face might reveal something about him that the viewer (and character interacting with him in the film) would have otherwise not known about or even thought the contrary about.
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