I consider this to be one of the best Vietnam movies ever made. The movie depicts very much not merely the lawlessness of an erratic politically deleterious war such as Vietnam, but the dynamics of how hierarchy manifests itself in any human time and place, through strife, through chaos.
The captain "Willard" played by Martin Sheen, journeys through the disarray of the Vietnam war to reach a renegade and megalomaniac Colonel Kurtz who has radically assumed command of a village of indigenous native peoples. Throughout his excursion, he encounters officers such as the Sergent in this clip who falls on the lower tier of the rank of military authoritarian madness. He is more of a posturing type, and arrogant but still able to keep his head stable enough to maintain leadership. His indifference to the nerve-racking stimuli of the events around him is not so much cool-headed grandstanding as it is a conditioned response or state of mind to his particular intellectual and psychological superiority; where most of the other regular soldiers struggle to maintain their composure and show more anxiety.
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In this scene, Captain Willard is similar to Kurtz because he shares Kurtz's despair and spiritual anguish for the environment of mindless war and death, but Willard understands it on a different plight than Kurtz which is why he is the one who lives. Kurtz is deemed the "Colonel" as the top of the rank of the madness; the more sophisticated version of it. The village is calmer and less chaotic than most other areas of the war along with Kurtz's calm and calculating demeanor. He is the stable condensed form of the madness of the war and he also understands subconsciously that given his own choice to abandon his affiliation with any militaristic faction, he must become what is in his higher mental abilities to be from the influences of the violence that surrounds him. In other words, based on his intelligence, if he were to follow a more institutionalized path of self-actualization he might be a university teacher or a General, but because of this environment of savagery his astute abilities simply take on other means to express themselves through the logic of madness. He falls into his death like someone falling onto a comfortable bed from exhaustion, as a man who meets his own set expectations of his choices inside his own time and place.
As far as ancient military tactics go, the Spartans would never have broken away from the phalanx and fought in a disorganized brawl such as this, they would have been devastated. But without a doubt the best cinematic action sequences.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
I prefer the 'older' action movies where things are at least somewhat realistic and it's cut at a reasonable pace so I can actually recognize what is happening on a tactical level. The way of fast cutting removes much of positional awareness.
I recently thought about that. There are two ways in which to stop people from thinking, the assertive, the active part of the mind. Either sensory overload and additionally holding the hand of the audience. Like creating a roller-coaster, it's fast and lots of sensory input in a short time frame but it's also on rails and guides the mind from one piece of information to the next, nothing has to be filled by the mind on its own - there wouldn't be any time for that anyway. The other method is creating a setting which is fundamentally disconnected. What I mean by that is for example a plot which looks like it makes sense and tells a story but when one would look at the details, there would be countless contradictions in the motivations of the characters, non-sequitur actions which are just happening to advance the plot and so on. In short, creating a plot which seems to contain all the elements but is actually disconnected in the details. Because it doesn't make any sense, the mind of the audience kind of gives up on trying to think about the details and surrenders to the plot in a passive way, just going along as it unfolds.
This show is insane. Better than Game of thrones. Has the first actions scenes that have significantly upped my heart rate in years, although it is partial to the excellent build ups. The Japanese language sounds so fucking badass.
