Hello my wonderful readers. Here are two essays from my Film as Literature class from my senior year of high school. The first is one I’m quite proud of. My performance is really credit to well, first my amazing teacher Ms. King, and two, the fact that I did an extra credit assignment where I got to watch the documentary on this film by Eleanor Coppola called Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. So yeah, the first (in class) essay is on Apocalypse Now which answered the prompt, “In an analytical essay, explore how editing techniques and sound design enhance a central thematic message in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Be sure to apply specific techniques as concrete details, supporting an argumentative claim (thesis).” The next essay following the Apocalypse essay is one I have actually not turned in yet. It is a “two chunk” paragraph on Kelly Reichardt’s 2019 neo-western film, First Cow. The only difference between these two other than the formatting is that the second features two parenthetical citations of other critics’ analysis (which previously I haven’t really ever used). That paragraph answers this prompt: How does Kelly Reichardt’s 2019 film First Cow subvert tropes and/or themes of the classic western? (Review the Western lecture slides for a reminder of the tropes). I hope you enjoy reading these two. I kind of just felt like, “Why not I post these. It’s still my writing.” Plus some may feel like this is showing off, egotistic, or something like that but who isn’t showing off these days.
Dylan Shobe
King
English 12: Film as Literature
17 November 2023
Apocalypse Now: The Guilty Pleasure of Thrill in War
In the history of war filmmaking, studio executives, directors or auteurs have catered to making a spectacle out of battle. The American audience has always craved violence and been enthused by the almost gamelike aspects of war. This has been shown through movies like Rambo First Blood and even satirized through a film like Tropic Thunder. Apocalypse Now, the 1979 Vietnam War film by Francis Ford Coppola is deemed one of the most compelling tellings of war by the film industry. When emulating the hypocrisy and juxtaposition of western imperialism in the Vietnam War, Coppola employs rhythm, converts diegetic sound into score, and uses each (diegetic sound and score) separately to expose that there is an innate thrill in human nature when fluctuating between good and evil acts seen in war.
Coppola makes deliberate use of the score and rhythm in act one of Apocalypse Now to awaken buried pleasures of the American moviegoer which in turn exposes the traditional, fixed style of American war filmmaking. The very first visuals of the film–a Vietnamese treeline engulfed in flames from American napalm–in conjunction with “The End” by the Doors, plays to the thrill seeking American mind that expects the utmost chaos and fascinating visuals of a war movie. To create this commentary, Coppola uses the score to build suspense. In contrast to how the stereotypical American war movie may use “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival to cast a patriotic feeling, Francis Ford Coppola uses “The End” for a more dark and twisted feeling. The lyrics: “this is the end” and “my only friend, the end” supports this and even propose to the viewer that the movie is ending before beginning–presumably Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Kurtz’s (Marlon Brando) minds the lyrics refer to. Once combining the score with the visuals, the scene speaks to the viewer very personally, making them question their own nature by evaluating if they find pleasure in a scene jam packed with peril. The score is also able to show the “beautiful” visuals of war whilst calling out the American audience for seeking these twisted visuals. When Willard joins Colonel Kilgore’s team who wipes out an entire Vietnamese village, Coppola and editor Walter Murch use similarly timed cuts to create a particular pace that immerses the audience into being with Kilgore and Willard. When they hit the ground of the village, Coppola makes an appearance in his own film as a TV news director gathering footage of the war. While it’s unclear whether Coppola made his cameo to poke fun at former director of the film George Lucas–who planned to send a crew to film real warfare in Vietnam to put in the film–what is clear however is that the rhythm of the scene allows the viewer to feel as though they are walking with Kilgore as he lays down death card on dead Vietnamese. In doing this, Coppola and Murch make the viewer feel they, too, are putting down the cards. Editing and sound elements act as agents in Apocalypse Now, forcing the viewer to confront their obscured and hidden pleasures head on, instead of being spoon fed the glory without deeper consequences.
Coppola returns to diegetic sound and scores twice more in the film to highlight the juxtaposition of soldiers’ actions that make a spectacle out of warfare in what otherwise would just be plain war. What is known as “The Ride of the Valkyries scene,” relates Norse mythology’s horses used in battle to American Helicopters in Vietnam, all while Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” is moved from the diegesis to the score of the film. At first the orchestral song is played out of a loudspeaker on one of the helicopters, classifying it as diegetic sound. But Coppola converts the song into the score for the scene once the scene cuts away to a long shot of the cavalry of helicopters. Coppola effectively makes “Ride of the Valkyries” the anthem of the cavalry, representing the army’s dramatization of war. As an anthem, the scene becomes one the viewer can root for, this invigorating the more primal instincts within them. These primal instincts represent the dissonance viewers find themselves in when enjoying a scene where Americans are going to kill the enemy from above. When Willard is on the boat, Coppola just relies on diegetic sound when Clean (Lawrence Fishburn) turns the radio on while Lance (Sam Bottoms) is wakesurfing behind the army boat. The Rolling Stones’ “I can’t get no (satisfaction),” another song from the late 1960s, propels the juxtaposition we see of a soldier, in the middle of a warzone, water skiing down a river. In this case the scene stands in stark contrast to “The Ride of the Valkyries scene” due to the good actions of the soldiers. Yet, the diegetic sound still taps into the adrenaline seeking side of the viewers. Seeing a soldier, expected to be carrying out highly important duties, water skiing behind a boat meant for these duties and at any moment he could be in danger from gunfire, allows the audience to toe the line that divides logic and pleasure in order to gain thrill. Whether diegetic sound, score, or both, the scenes choose each to point out one theme of the film (the juxtaposition of actions) but more importantly to guide the viewer to their own relatability and repressed pleasures seen on the screen.
Coming out close to the end of the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now and its brave director Frances Ford Coppola did not treat the subject delicately. Instead of succumbing to the preexisting tropes and the blueprint of war filmmaking, he carved his own path. A path that creates a relationship between the viewer and the screen through sound and editing, good and evil, and ultimately the thrill of war for generations past its early release date.
Dylan Shobe
King
Film as Literature
21 January 2024
First Cow’s Deep Diegesis
For Kelly Reichardt’s neo-western film First Cow, she intentionally uses a softer editing style through the use of rhythm and long takes on minor characters to subvert a traditional western film’s focus and account of just one marvelous story. When King Lu (Orion Lee) and Cookie (John Magaro) walk through the town with their first batch of cakes to sell, shots of other people in the town linger on as they walk off frame. The way that Reichardt is directing the pace of the film through a purposeful rhythm in this scene allows this western to move the needle away from the traditional western’s focus on just the major characters. In addition, Reichardt uses other options to open up the attention to the whole diegesis such as “establishing shots of the location” and the “actions or reactions of extras or side characters” (Thomas Flight). Another example of this lingering comes in the form of a long take when a man waiting for one of Lu and Cookie’s cakes is left without one on frame for an extended period of time. This long take instead gives attention to a common man’s experience in the early 1820s Pacific Northwest, transitioning away from the beneficiary perspective of Lu and Cookie as salesmen. Similar to opening up the attention to the whole diegesis as discussed before, Reichardt stays with this man in order to respect the depth of stories that exists around the protagonists (Thomas Flight). At the bottom line, First Cow completely evades the classic western film blueprint through creative use of storytelling carved through an acute attention to the details of minor and major characters.