the comments about Full Metal Jacket in this thread are particularly interesting for two reasons:
1) I have some very conservative friends who love this movie, and if you told them it was anti-war, they would laugh at you.
2) Kubrick himself, before making the movie, declared that he wanted to make a war film. Someone told him (and I'm paraphrasing) "Well, you made Dr. Strangelove" to which he replied "No, Strangelove was an anti-war film. I want to make a war film."
I don't think the film is inherently anti-war at all. I think it's just incredibly honest. If you're an intellegent individual who supports war, the film will support your contentions, and if you're an intelligent individual who despises war, it will also support your contentions.
Personally the very idea of pro- and anti-war films is something I find disgusting because it basically implies outright that the truth is going to be distorted to fit the director's point of view. Platoon comes to mind as a perfect example of this (overdramatic, and with a somewhat poetic narrator to tell the audience what to think), and it's one of the reasons I don't place the film as on high of a pedastal as many others would.
As for Apocalypse Now, I think it barely qualifies as a film about Vietnam at all, and even if the aspect of war itself were to be removed entirely, it would still work equally as well against a different backdrop. The film is essentially about the conflict between Id and Superego, about wanton violence, and about the Jungle as metaphor for the subconcious. Coppolla merely substituted the British Imperialism of Conrad's Heart of Darkness with what he saw as it's modern day equivalent - the Vietnam War. The film presents a scathing look at the war for sure, just as Conrad frowned upon the ivory trade in the Congo in the novel, but that's not the focus of the film, merely a backdrop for the much more primal, personal, and psychological themes.
And finally, because Helmschmied mentioned it: Saving Private Ryan. I think overrall the film takes a pro-war stance, while still maintaining the "war is hell" stance. But that's to be expected... every modern war film MUST admit to at least that much if it's to be taken seriously. Simply saying that "war is hell" alone is not nearly enough to make a film anti or pro war, just enough to make it somewhat accurate.
Some other films that might be worth discussing:
- Black Hawk Down (I find it to be more along the lines of Full Metal Jacket, in that it presents an uncompromisingly honest view of war. I find it strange that so many find this film to be pro-war)
- Three Kings (it suffers from the same heavy handed bias that Platoon does, except manages to pull it off much more elegently, I feel... it also presents the side of "the enemy" - something Platoon fails to do)
- The Patriot (an interesting specimen, especially because we've only mentioned post-WWI films so far) |
