{"id":1026,"date":"2010-02-27T12:50:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T16:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2010-02-27T12:50:55","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T16:50:55","slug":"apocalypse-now-and-moby-dick-the-movie-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1026","title":{"rendered":"Apocalypse Now and Moby Dick the Movie (2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title of our last lecture, \u201cThe Beginning of the End,\u201d got me thinking of The Doors\u2019 epic song \u201cThe End,\u201d which lays the chilling soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1979 film Apocalypse Now<\/em>, which \u2013 lo and behold \u2013 is about the mission of a ship and crew, and one man\u2019s path to insanity.\u00a0 Coppola\u2019s interpretation of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness<\/em> (1902) is one of my favorite films, and his portrayal of insanity one of the most intriguing I have seen on screen.\u00a0 So I got to thinking about just how good the 2010 movie Moby Dick<\/em> could be with the strikingly similar Apocalypse Now<\/em> serving as inspiration.<\/p>\n

It would undoubtedly star Daniel Day Lewis as Captain Ahab.\u00a0 Lewis\u2019s performance in There Will Be Blood<\/em> (2007) as the monomaniacal oil tycoon Daniel Plainview seemed almost like a tryout for this historic role.\u00a0 His character even sported a limp after a leg injury early in the movie (sound familiar?), rejected religion while likening himself to God, and severed his ties to his family (see the video below).<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KwkP7Gnp7ek<\/a>\n

As for the rest of the crew, Coppola\u2019s 1979 cast starring Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford, and Dennis Hopper among others would be hard to beat.\u00a0 But with Edward Norton (Fight Club, The Illusionist) playing the philosophical Ishmael and Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator, Blood Diamond) as Queequeg, this cast would find its sea legs soon enough.<\/p>\n

The object of the mission in Apocalypse Now is to kill Walter Kurtz, a former U.S. Green Beret who has been driven insane and is in the middle of the Vietnam jungle, the heart of darkness.\u00a0 In what you might call the \u201cbeginning of the end\u201d of the film, Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) says:<\/p>\n

I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Moby Dick, similarly just before the end, Ahab spouts:<\/p>\n

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it, what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? (564)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In both Apocalypse Now\u00a0and Moby Dick<\/em>, the insane character is killed at the end.\u00a0 In the former, Kurtz\u2019s death represents a mission accomplished by the crew, while in the latter, Ahab takes everyone but Ishmael down with him.\u00a0 After seeing some clips from prior film versions of Moby Dick<\/em> and knowing how performative Melville\u2019s text can be (as displayed by Ahab\u2019s dramatic monologue above), I can only imagine what Francis Ford Coppola and Daniel Day Lewis could do with it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1991.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0078788\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of our last lecture, \u201cThe Beginning of the End,\u201d got me thinking of The Doors\u2019 epic song \u201cThe End,\u201d which lays the chilling soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which \u2013 lo and behold \u2013 is about the mission of a ship and crew, and one man\u2019s path to insanity.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,76,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-religion","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1481,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}