Film Analysis: Apocalypse Now

In Apocalypse Now, Roger Ebert (1) maintains that Coppola has fashioned an "insanely inspired gesture" of filmmaking "of moments that are operatic in their style and scope." Using a musical term to comment on the intensity of the film is well chosen, since the film's music often drives its action forward as well as reinforcing several of the film's themes. The main theme of the film is the horror, madness and folly that are war. One of the most dramatic sequences in the film that symbolizes this is greatly enhanced by music. When gung-ho Colonel Kilgore, who "loves the smell of napalm in the morning," orchestrates an attack on a seemingly peaceful Vietnamese village, he instructs certain music to be played to make the attack seem more ferocious to the Vietnamese (Coppola 1979). As Kilgore explains, "We'll come in low out of the rising sun, and about a mil

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)

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