Apocalypse Now. Again.
We re-watched Apocalypse now last night. Although, when I say "re-watched" I should admit that the last time I saw it would have been when it was released in theatres, and, being d'une certaine age... it was pretty much like seeing it for the first time. In any case, I watched it with my two daughters, who both said it was the best movie they'd ever seen.
It is good, isn't it. But what struck me was, well, switch the jungle for the desert and Communism for Terrorism and - Voila - you've got Apocalypse Now, The Sequel.
Anyway, the difference, I suppose, is that I came away from watching Apocalypse Now wondering, "What the hell were Americans doing trying to fight Communism in Vietnam?" - whereas, I/we know pretty much why Americans are fighting Terrorism in Iraq. So when the movie is eventually made (and it'll take some gutsy Americans to make it, that's for sure) about the American experience fighting Terrorism in Iraq, I figure, instead of basing it on Heart of Darkness, it'll want to be based on... what? The Prince?
What do you think? Please put your suggestions in the comments below. I tend toward books by new Canadian female writers so I really don't have any idea what book Apocalypse Now - The Sequel should be based on.
Interestingly, too, my sympathies were completely with the Vietnamese no matter what side they were on - even though Apocalypse Now doesn't even go into that - the whole movie being focussed on the American soldiers making the classified journey down Vietnamese waterways to Cambodia in search of the A.W.O.L. Kurtz. The incidental destruction to another people's country, the complete disconnect between the American Army's mission and the reality of life for the Vietnamese people, the wanton disregard for human life - it's all happening now in Iraq, isn't it. And because it's the United States that is at war, the most important and influential critics of this fact are themselves American.
So, how does it happen that his powerful country that is at the same time so polarized internally in terms of its foreign policy can continue to make the decisions to bomb other countries and kill thousands of people and tell themselves and the rest of us that it is for the greater good when we know, we absolutely know, that it isn't - that it isn't even for the American good?
It's baffling, it really is. But what's more baffling to me is the fact that there are people here, in Canada, who genuinely believe that the War on Terror is a good thing, that Americans have a reason to be fighting it, and that there won't, in a few years time, be books and movies about the people who started it confessing to the American people that it was all a big and terrible mistake.
