Reading vs listening

When I listened to Heart of Darkness it was a totally different experience that when I read it. I actually felt like I was listening to Marlow telling the story. I even tried listening to it in the dark...very cool, I was really able to relate to how the men in the story must have felt hearing that story in the dark!

Every time I left the classroom after the movie, I felt like I had awoken from a horrible, horrible nightmare. It's phenomenal that a watching a movie could create such strong feelings. Definitely one of the greatest movies I have seen, but way too depressing to see again! The lighting and the music really impressed upon me how evil the war was. Everything they did in Vietnam, at least in the movie, seemed like pointless bloodshed. Everybody was miserable, and nobody was winning. Was that a point the director was trying to make?

Willard

I wonder what happens to Willard once he returns home... does he succumb to his demons? At the start of the movie, has he just returned from a previous assassination? Maybe he hates his life of brutality, but the only cure he knows of is to murder more people. I think Willard just wears his emotions on his sleeve, but to such an extent that he becomes animalistic instead of human at certain points.

Overall Feelings

After seeing all the horror and bizzare things happening throughout the movie, I was left with a feeling of dissapointment at the end of the movie. I feel like there was all this build-up to when Willard would finally kill Kurtz and they would leave, but once it happened Willard and the surfer dude just walked out of the jungle onto their boat and floated away.... It just seemed insufficient to me after all that had happened to them.... Maybe that's the way its supposed to be? Maybe all the sacrifices they made and all the innocent people killed and all the destruction they witnessed was supposed to seem like a waste because of what it got them in the end? Honestly I thought the entire movie was full of absurdities. They should change the name to Absurdity Now!

The chaos of Vietnam is how I imagine Hell to be, and I definitely saw a correlation to Wizard of Oz:

1. Hurtz was the Wizard, who seemed all mighty and powerful when he was just a voice, but once you actually SEE him, its a bit of a letdown and you realize he's weak and only in power because of his words
2. The natives jumping around in the jungle were like the flying monkeys.
3. Willard should be Dorothy except he doesn't want to go home...so I don't know who he is

Shadows

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...

The Dog

This might be terrible, but I felt worse for that cute puppy than for all those Vietnamese people that died in Kilgore's attack. Isn't that ironic and horrible? That I felt more empathy for a dog than for hundreds of people. Am I alone here?
That was a really cute puppy. I looked on the internet, but I couldn't find any backstory about the puppy or even his owner. Too bad.

Weird Music?

All the music in Apocalypse Now is so eerie! And, I think it's very fitting because we know that in all the mess of the Vietnam War, something else is happening. Can evil take shape in music?