![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last night I attended a screening of Apocalypse Now at Cinerama, thinking I should give it another try after ~20 years. I'm glad I did. I still think the editing is oddly clumsy, but I'm a lot better at appreciating long, slow films now. More importantly, I've just had more life experiences to help it resonate. Nothing major -- in no way am I comparing my lived experience to that of a participant in the 20th century's most famous asymmetrical conflict -- but it adds up.
I've seen people go deeply weird in those 20 years. I've now seen societies go deeply weird. That is real for me in a way it wasn't last time. I've done a long river trip, stuck with the same people in a small boat, and I understand the weird bonds that form better now. And I know how disassociating it feels to watch endless terrain unfold, all the same, with nothing to do but worry. Lance, tripping balls, wondering at the beauty of explosions and fire surrounded by utter chaos... well, if that isn't a genuine Burning Man experience then I don't know what is. But I think most of all, the detail of Kurtz having gone back to bootcamp at 38 struck me much, much harder this time. The absolutely inhuman, monstrous amount of willpower which that would take is now all too clear to me at 41.
My emotions run closer to the surface now. I'm less willing to abstract things away. I don't remember feeling anything but an intellectual disapproval during the Ride of the Valkyries attack, watching people blown up so some asshole could go surfing, but this time I was almost crying. That whole aspect of the movie seemed much more interesting to me. What was once funny was now tragic and evil, but all the more worthy of exploration because it's so obviously real.
Like Fight Club, there is a lot of toxic macho bullshit coming from a fandom who love the movie for reasons antithetical to the content of the movie itself. I watched the Fight Club heresies develop in realtime, so those don't surprise me, but Apocalypse Now has always been there. It took me this long to realize that the received wisdom about it is, simply, wrong. It's still a deeply flawed movie, with so many fucked up racial issues that I'd have to write a whole separate post just for that. But it has a lot worth thinking about, too.
And this is why I like revisiting media. Without the parallax it provides, it's very hard to see the changes in my own personality.
I've seen people go deeply weird in those 20 years. I've now seen societies go deeply weird. That is real for me in a way it wasn't last time. I've done a long river trip, stuck with the same people in a small boat, and I understand the weird bonds that form better now. And I know how disassociating it feels to watch endless terrain unfold, all the same, with nothing to do but worry. Lance, tripping balls, wondering at the beauty of explosions and fire surrounded by utter chaos... well, if that isn't a genuine Burning Man experience then I don't know what is. But I think most of all, the detail of Kurtz having gone back to bootcamp at 38 struck me much, much harder this time. The absolutely inhuman, monstrous amount of willpower which that would take is now all too clear to me at 41.
My emotions run closer to the surface now. I'm less willing to abstract things away. I don't remember feeling anything but an intellectual disapproval during the Ride of the Valkyries attack, watching people blown up so some asshole could go surfing, but this time I was almost crying. That whole aspect of the movie seemed much more interesting to me. What was once funny was now tragic and evil, but all the more worthy of exploration because it's so obviously real.
Like Fight Club, there is a lot of toxic macho bullshit coming from a fandom who love the movie for reasons antithetical to the content of the movie itself. I watched the Fight Club heresies develop in realtime, so those don't surprise me, but Apocalypse Now has always been there. It took me this long to realize that the received wisdom about it is, simply, wrong. It's still a deeply flawed movie, with so many fucked up racial issues that I'd have to write a whole separate post just for that. But it has a lot worth thinking about, too.
And this is why I like revisiting media. Without the parallax it provides, it's very hard to see the changes in my own personality.