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Question about Apocalypse Now

Anyone seen this movie? There's a scene that leads up to the attack of a village, and the colonel says: Big Duke 6 to Eagle Thrust. Put on psy-war-op. Make it loud. This is a Romeo Foxtrot. Shall we dance?

What does he mean by "this is a Romeo foxtrot. Shall we dance?"

Well what could 'RF' be code for? I don't think you'll ever get a straight answer unless you ask the writer (to which it probably means nothing in particular at all), but I dunno... Let's Ruin Fuckers?

Romeo Lima Foxtrot = RLF = Run Like Fuck, in NATO jargon.

Maybe you can decipher it yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Rape fest?

the line was scripted as "this is Romeo Foxtrot: shall we dance", no "a". Normally RF would be military shorthand for Radio Frequency; however, I am uncertain if that is what is intended here.

Re: Question about Apocalypse Now

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Originally posted by Unique2701 Big Duke 6 to Eagle Thrust. Put on psy-war-op. Make it loud. This is a Romeo Foxtrot. Shall we dance?

Hey fucksticks. We need some goddamn choppers. Blast these fucking vinks. This is a real fight. Comprende?

some of you, thanks for the helpful answers

A two letter NATO phonetic at the end of a message is an authentication code.

One side will say a two letter phonetic and the other will respond usually "This is callsign, authenticate XY" where XY is another NATO phonetic pair.

Its a simple way to make sure that the people on coms are who they say they are.

"Shall we dance" is him just being a bad ass and saying that instead of "out/over".

RF = Raining Fire ? maybe.

Is this some NEW AGE BS?

This scene practically leaves me in tears just at the cinematic virtuosity of it. The editing, the sound mix, the photography... Apocalypse Now is not just the best film ever made, it's so much better than anything else I don't know why people bother having their own opinions.

You prefer the redux or the original?

Studied that scene in school, especially it's use of Flight of the Valkyries and how it was synced up to the image. Very powerful scene indeed.

I haven't watched the Redux cut since I was about 16 and it was the first version I saw. I just remember it being so painfully long and slow I don't think I finished it. It was only when I watched the theatrical cut I started to appreciate the film. I'm sure I'd appreciate Redux a lot more now, but generally I'm against extended or director's cuts of classics. The extra footage was usually left on the cutting room floor for a good reason, and it's probably been restored entirely to make fanboys fork out for another copy. Flawed films benefit from alternative cuts, not classics.

You mean you haven't seen the bunny sex scene?
The whole concert is so out of place in the original, I think. Just seems like a random "here are some girls"-scene, but the second scene gives it a bit of context and ties it together better imo.
I also like the argument with the french plantation owners, but I can see how others find it boring as shit. I guess "There are two of you, don't you see" can be a little too deep for someone who's mainly in it for the explosions. Not trying to imply that you are, of course :P
And the eerie love theme doesn't exactly help the scene progress either. But works well to paint an aural picture of opioids.

The concert scene makes perfect sense. The playbunny sex scene is a very harrowing critique of pornography and the objectification of women, and even as a 16 year old I found it extremely disturbing, but it's distinctly tangential from the subtextual thrust of the film.

I watch the helicopter scene probably once a month, it's just so brilliant. Really need to dig out my DVD and watch the whole thing again, soon, though.

I'm not going! I'm not going! I'm not going!

Re: Question about Apocalypse Now

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Originally posted by Unique2701 Anyone seen this movie?

I couldn't get past this part.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Apocalypse Now is not just the best film ever made, it's so much better than anything else I don't know why people bother having their own opinions.

Better than Robocop?

In any event, I attribute so much of what's memorable about Apocalypse Now not simply to its (impressively sized) collection of poignant dialog and satirical sequences, but to how nearly every scene carries this unnerving, ominous inflection to it, and leaves you with an unsettling impression of what you just witnessed (even when you can't point the finger to anything in particular).

Something about the way the following scene transitions out of r&r to the tune of 'Satisfaction' and into the narrator's take on Kurtz's dossier at 1:33 'really puts the hook in me:'

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Originally posted by Paradox Lost Better than Robocop?

I love Robocop and it's one of my all-time favourites, but Apocalypse Now is four times the piece of cinema Robocop is.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I love Robocop and it's one of my all-time favourites, but Apocalypse Now is four times the piece of cinema Robocop is.

I don't know man, I read your review of Robocop, and walked away with the impression that you find it better than everything for all values of 'better.'

I could very easily write an entire book on Apocalypse Now.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I could very easily write an entire book on Apocalypse Now.

Well, I'm going to have to take issue with the section that addresses the Playboy Bunny concert, and how it concerns matters of pornography and the objectification of women. I don't see that as the basis for its inclusion in the film, but rather is intended to emphasize and reinforce the theme of depravity as inspired by being forced to endure prolonged periods of armed conflict. I don't see, for example, the point in which the soldiers storm the stage as being too dissimilar in spirit from a scene later in the film, where we witness soldiers abandoning their posts, charging Willard's boat, and frantically pleading- suitcase in hand- to be taken along with them.

It may be expressed with misogynistic overtones in mind, but I think this is entirely incidental to the underlying notion of fleeing the madness of fighting an endless battle in an unfamiliar and unforgiving place, and into something- anything- that looks and feels like home. To that point, I think it's entirely consistent with the film's subtextual thrust, as you put it.

EDIT: I do admit that the scene as presented in its original entirety might create some problems for my analysis.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I love Robocop and it's one of my all-time favourites, but Apocalypse Now is four times the piece of cinema Robocop is.

Could you agree that the terms movie and film could be used respectively about said masterpieces, as to differentiate what they were trying to accomplish, not minding the origins of the words movie and film?

Sounds like you're writing a different book to me, viewed through a different interpretive lens. My reading of Apocalypse Now is perhaps coloured by the large amount of academic coverage I did of Heart Of Darkness while at university, but for me the core subtext of Apocalypse Now is that of moral hypocrisy in the how the US military fought that war, but that is metonymic for a larger criticism of US (and Western) society as a whole - themes readily extracted from Conrad's novella.

The initial playbunny scene seems fairly self-explanatory in its depiction of the US conducting a war much like a circus, and how Charlie got no such diversions or comforts because he was in the business of death or victory. This is a very central theme: Kurtz becomes a brilliantly efficient soldier because he adopts the focused, amoral efficiency of Charlie, but his actual commitment to fighting a war to win appalls his American superiors.

Now, the larger critique of the playbunnies is to show that the Americans are fighting the war inefficiently because they're supposedly too moral and civilised to go around hacking children's arms off, and yet the utter depravity and misogyny of pornography is a central part of American culture, and thus the notion of "civilisation" is one of complete hypocrisy. (Again, this constant ironic binary thematic interplay is something I read into the film because it's so central to Heart Of Darkness.) In this sense, having an extra playbunny scene furthering the point does continue the attack on American cultural hypocrisy, but I think it's tangential because it's less and less focalised through the conditions of the actual conflict, and is over-egging a fairly peripheral point. Redux, from memory, is flabby and inefficient because it keeps "getting off the boat" for these pit-stops that overstate secondary points rather than keeping the emphasis on Kurtz and Willard's steady proximal and mental conflation to him.

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