Jaws in the Age of Covid-19

In 1975 a director by the name of Steven Spielberg, a man at that point with only two feature films and a few shorts to his name, premiered his latest film- an adaptation of a novel by Peter Benchley. After a notoriously difficult production, audiences were shocked to see a frightening tale of a killer shark. Its title made it clear what to expect: Jaws, obviously in reference to the deadly jaws of the great white shark who serves as its main antagonist. The film was an astounding success, and made a massive impact commercially and critically. The John Williams score alone has developed a long-standing association with any depictions of deep sea threats. Audiences were so shocked by the frightening creature that the film provoked a wave of anti-shark sentiments that even made the author of the original book regret its existence.

Many film scholars have identified the astounding success of Jaws as marking the end of the so-called "New Hollywood" period that began in the late 1960's with the end of the American Studio System. Jaws is sometimes known as the first real "blockbuster" as it unwittingly inspired major film studios to adopt a business model that is still in use today.

And we can certainly see the influence of its financial success in various subsequent films- which included three sequels as well as numerous b-films revolving around humans fighting aquatic monsters. The idea of a disaster film revolving around sharks isn't that unusual either. Certainly the popularity of films like Sharknado (2013) owe something to the success of Jaws.

The idea of humans faced with danger posed by an abnormal underwater predator was hardly new even in 1975. Over a century earlier Herman Melville had written the novel Moby Dick. In the novel, Moby Dick was a sperm whale notorious for his proficiency at killing whalers who tried to hunt him. He is pursued by Captain Ahab, a whaling captain who becomes increasingly obsessed with hunting down the "white whale," ultimately dooming himself and all but one of his crew. In fact the influence of Moby Dick is clearly visible in the second half of Jaws, with the character of Quint (Robert Shaw) acting as a sort of modern day Ahab whose growing obsession with catching the shark ultimately leads to his demise.

But my main interest in this discussion is less so the film itself, or the impact it has made on film in general, but rather its relation to our current social circumstances, and how a film made 45 years ago is weirdly relevant under new circumstances. Like the citizens of Amity, we have our own shark to deal with- at least figuratively speaking. Our shark is a pandemic. The Carona Virus, also known as Covid-19, is currently posing a major global threat. Social Distancing is a necessary measure, but instead of acting responsibly, the issue has become politicised in the United States. President Donald Trump has displayed an uncanny inability to respond to the virus, putting his political goals first.

While many people remember the second half of Jaws, which actually sees Brody, Hooper, and Quint pursuing the shark, the first half is particularly disturbing in light of current events. The central conflict concerns Brody and Hooper trying to respond to the presence of an unusually large shark that has been known to target humans in the water, which is complicated by the presence of the town's mayor Larry Vaughn, a politician who uses his media connections and authority to overrule the two men. Within minutes of finding out that a swimmer was killed by a shark bite, Brody is trying to close the beach, only to be immediately blocked by Vaughn, who insists that the beaches need to stay open because the town is an attractive spot for tourists.

A lot of people remember the roles of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfus, and Robert Shaw (who doesn't even become a prominent figure until the second half), but Vaughn is just as important. In many ways he behaves as a very Trump-like figure of authority. He may have even taken inspiration from Donald Trump, a man already notorious when Jaws entered production. Vaughn can be most easily described as a charismatic politician who acts like he knows what he is doing but in reality is putting his own interests above those of the people he is meant to be leading.

The opening scene of Jaws famously shows a young woman swimming out in the dark only to be attacked and killed by the shark whose presence will drive the rest of the film. But while it's presence is constantly felt, the shark isn't even seen during the first half, its presence only signalled by the occasional POV shot and the iconic score by John Williams. It's not until the second half that we actually get to see the shark, and even then we only see it when it is visible to the characters (its presence at other moments being signalled by an increasing number of floating barrels). Much of the plot instead concerns its human characters and how they react to the shark's presence, rather than the shark itself.

This has the peculiar effect of making the shark a much more enigmatic entity compared to its more obvious human characters. The shark itself actually does not do all that much in the film. The people it kills are mostly background characters- we never really get to know Chrissy or Alex Kitner before their demise, and even less so the unnamed man in the rowboat who is eaten by the shark later on. The only central character to actually be killed by the shark is Quint, and that only happens at the very end. If anything, the key players are never really in danger during the first half as they are never actually in the water.

Instead, while the shark is legitimate cause for concern, there is a much more dangerous threat in the form of Mayor Vaughn, who proves far more dangerous than the shark itself. Much of the film could have been averted if it were not for his presence. Had the beaches been closed as Brody repeatedly tried to do, the shark would have eventually left on its own due to a lack of food. The Mayor is the key obstacle.

After receiving the coroner's report that swimmer Chrissy Watkins (Susan Blaklinie) was killed in a shark attack, Brody immediately begins taking action. When he learns that there are not any "beach closed" signs he actually goes to the local hardware story, picks up materials, and has his staff begin making signs. No sooner has he done this than he is approached by Mayor Larry Vaughn, who quickly tries to overrule him. Suddenly the coroner (presumably through bribery, coercion, or a combination thereof) is saying it was a boating accident and not a shark, an alternate story the Mayor eagerly jumps onto to justify keeping the beaches open.

In fact the Mayor tries to outright discredit Brody, claiming he just made a mistake caused by not being familiar with the town. His reasoning is simply that they are a popular destination for tourists because of their beaches and tourists bring in money. This is disturbingly reminiscent of Donald Trump's resistance to social distancing. Like Vaughn, Trump continually insists on opposing potential safety measures. Why? Because opening businesses is good for the economy, showing no concern for people who might be endangered by doing so.

As if this wasn't enough, we have even had the problem of politicians making the questionable decision to keep beaches open during Covid-19, in spite of the obvious risks. While the reasons why they should be closed may be different (in real life, it is because crowds that normally form on beaches would produce favorable conditions for the virus to spread, rather than a shark in the water), the issue of politicising a life-threatening situation and putting people's lives at risk for the sake of money seems alarmingly familiar.

Vaughn manages to keep the beaches open, and sure enough the shark arrives. The first instance he tried to cover up, but the second happens in front of an entire crowd of witnesses, and results in the deaths of both a dog and a child. When a town meeting is called, Brody declares that the beach is going to be closed, only for Vaughn to suddenly add that it will only be closed for twenty-four hours. When Brody points out that he never agreed to that he is ignored, and finds himself ignored further when he tries to state that he has called for an expert. The culminates in the introduction of Quint, a fisherman who offers to kill shark for a price. For all his faults (as noted later) Quint is an experienced fisherman who has dealt with sharks before, and has knowledge and skills that could be put to use. But his offer is ignored by the Mayor simply for being too expensive.

The parallels only start become clearer when shark researcher Matt Hooper arrives. He examines Chrissy's remains and immediately determines that it was indeed a shark bite that killed her, and reacts in shock when Brody reveals that the town has failed to notify the coast guard or perform any sensible counter measures, which the viewer will know is thanks to the actions of the Mayor. When Vaughn is first introduced to Hooper, he more or less ignores him. They shake hands, but the whole time Vaughn's attention is elsewhere. 

Vaughn spends much of the film completely ignoring Hooper. When a bunch of fisherman claim to have caught the shark, Vaughn latches right onto it, ignoring the fact that Hooper has multiple reasons to doubt that they indeed got the right one. Of particular note is Vaughn outright refusing to let Hooper perform a test that could be used to confirm whether the shark that was caught was indeed the same one that killed Chrissy and Alex. No matter how much Hooper protests the Mayor only gives excuses.

Certainly this refusal to listen to an expert is reminiscent of Trump's efforts to ignore the CDC. Recently he even went the extra step of trying to bypass the CDC all together by ordering hospitals to report directly to Washington. One of the key voices of reason at the moment, Anthony Fauci, has been a frequent target for Trump, who has routinely tried to discredit him the same way Mayor Vaugn tries to discredit both Brody and Hooper. 

And worse still, two deaths is not enough to pursuade Vaughn to listen to any kind of reason. He keeps insisting on keeping the beaches open, because the Fourth of July is an especially popular holiday for tourists. This is even after Brody and Hooper confirm that the shark is indeed still a threat. He quickly seizes any opportunity he can to doubt their claims, pointing to Hooper dropping a shark's tooth as proof of their unreliability. He even tries to deflect blame by pointing to a sign that has been vandalised (probably by someone fed up of the Mayor's crap) and demanding Brody instead focus on catching the graffiti artist. 

When Hooper makes a last attempt to pursuade Vaughn, pointing out that the proportions of the shark in the vandalised sign are actually pretty accurate, he is met with "you'd like to prove that, wouldn't you?", as though the Mayor sees anything that challenges his political agenda as a conspiracy against him. Not unlike Trump's habit of making assertions and dismissing anything contradicting them as being part of the "radical left wing's" agenda or "fake news." Once again the beaches remain open, despite clear evidence that they should not be, because it's good for the economy. A politician prioritises his public image and money over the lives of the people he is mean to be leading.

So once again, after being warned about the dangers of keeping the beach open, Mayor Vaughn keeps it open for tourists. But he manages to go one step further. After blocking any effort to close the beach or get rid of the shark, he has Brody and Hooper reduced to conducting patrols on boats in the surrounding waters, a move that is conspicuously insufficient for tracking and catching a large shark that is likely to strike from under the water. 

But at first things go okay. People are able to enjoy themselves on the beach, but knowledge of the shark has made sure they stay out of the water, seemingly an okay compromise. But of course the Mayor decides to intervene and make it worse. He approaches one family on the beach, and actually pressures them to go into the water. Once one family is seen going in, others start to follow, until a large number of tourists are splashing in the water and making themselves very good targets for a hungry shark, all while Vaughn cheerfully brags to the press about how the situation has been resolved. 

Like just about every decision Vaughn makes throughout the movie, his decision to force people into the water turns out to have some serious consequences. It ends up creating a panic that actually diverts attention away from the shark. The ominous presence of a shark fin results in the crowd panicking and running back onto the shore, only for the police to find that it was a prank orchestrated by two children. It's not until after this scuffle is over that the shark is spotted in seemingly isolated area where it manages to eat one man and nearly kills Brody's son. 

Just like Vaughn, Donald Trump has failed to properly address the Covid-19 disaster. We can see him jumping on partial or just plain false information, leading outrageous claims being presented as facts, such as the assertion that drinking bleach will cure the virus. Just as Vaughn tries to encourage people to swim in water occupied by a giant shark, Donald Trump has openly resisted measures that could help contain the virus, and discouraged  his supporters from wearing masks that could help reduce the spread of the virus.

But while he might be the most obvious parallel, Mayor Larry Vaughn is not the only link to our current circumstances. I am far from the first person to notice the resemblance. A simple Google Search will quickly reveal a variety of headlines comparing Vaughn to Trump. There is even a quote from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (a conservative often compared to Trump) that claimed Vaughn was the "real hero" of Jaws. Yes, someone actually thinks the guy who got three people killed by ignoring a serious danger for the sake of money was a hero. But while there are other parallels of note.

Trump himself has made a lot of questionable decisions, but he also has a number of supporters who eagerly take in what he says and try to take matters into their own hands, often making the situation worse. As a simple example, the astonishing number of Trump supporters who have protested against masks. The problem with this, obviously, is that the reason for rules about wearing masks during a pandemic is to stop the spread of the virus. But some people, acting on misinformation, fear, and complete disregard to anything experts have to say, end up making the problem worse.

Just like anti-mask protesters in real life, Mayor Vaughn also inspires people in his town to act irrationally and foolishly. We see this at the Town Meeting, which starts with one of the Mayor's counsel joking about the bounty on the shark that just killed a child, which actually gets a laugh from some members of the crowd, indicating that not everyone is taking the problem seriously. But it gets worse when a woman in the audience (which includes several local business owners) asks if the beaches will be closed. When Brody says they are, he is met with a disapproving groan from the audience, presumably because they are more worried about how it will affect their jobs. Not unlike anti-mask protesters who put their own interests over much bigger problems.

But things go further when residents of the town come up with some poorly-thought out methods of trying to catch the shark. Two men sneak onto a pier and try to catch the shark using a chain, which almost gets them killed. The next day, several groups launch their own witch hunts against the shark in the hopes of claiming the 3,000 dollar bounty, people who disregard safety protocols and ignore Brody when he tries to point out their mistakes. We then get a parade of boats going out and tossing dynamite into the harbor, before coming back with a random shark that is just assumed to be the correct one. 

We then get a big moment of the shark being put on display by the fishermen who caught it. Their ignorance is exposed when one asks what kind of shark, and Hooper (a shark expert) points out that it is a tiger shark, to which one of the fisherman simply responds with "A what?" A crowd gathers around the shark, with the press eagerly jumping on and a photographer trying to compose a shot, all of which ignores Hooper when he finds reason to question if they actually have the right shark. The fishermen dismiss his measurements of the shark's bite radius and he is yelled at to clear out of the way before his investigation is finished. This easily calls to mind the Trump-supporting Americans who refuse to follow instructions and refuse to listen to experts, endangering themselves and others by refusing to wear masks in public.

Finally, I'd like to talk about Quint as a similarly problematic figure in the second half. While the Mayor's dismissal of his offer in the earlier town hall scene easily feels like he is ignoring an expert, Quint himself has issues that ultimately prove detrimental to dealing with the shark. Notably, he puts profit above actually helping others. Although he is not entirely unjustified in being reluctant to risk his life pursuing the shark, he demands an increase in pay from the initial $3,000 bounty already being offered. Some of his claims about the shark are also somewhat exaggerated, such as claiming it will "swallow you whole." While he has knowledge of sharks, certainly more than most people in the town, his behaviour leaves one to wonder if he is really the best choice.

After the initial town hall scene, Quint is more or less forgotten until about halfway through the film. He might have disappeared all together if not for the Mayor's interference. It is only by desperation that Quint is even permitted to take part. Brody resorts to hiring Quint after his own son was nearly attacked by the shark, this being after three people have already been killed by it and the Mayor consistently blocking any reasonable response. Had the beaches just been closed at the start Quint would never have needed to be involved.

Once Quint is finally brought onboard he frequently runs into conflict with Brody and Hooper. One of the first things we see when the boat leaves is Quint sitting in a chair while the other two men are visibly working hard. He goes on to pull out an oversized fishing rod that he thinks has successfully caught the shark, even after Hooper quickly figures out it is probably something much smaller- we never get to find out exactly what as Quint's stubbornness results in the rod being broken. Later on, he gets everyone drunk leaving them vulnerable when the shark manages to attack the boat.

When they do finally encounter the shark, Brody speaks the famous line "we're going to need a bigger boat." Sure, on its own it makes a good dramatic line, but it actually comes up a few times. After saying this line, Brody attempts twice to emphasise the point to Quint. He's not just making a remark about the shark's size, he is legitimately realising that a bigger boat will be needed to take on this shark, an observation that is ignored by Quint. He even tries to convince Quint to just use the radio to call for someone to bring a bigger boat,  bot his pleas fall on deaf ears.

Quint is too proud a man to show weakness. As the hunt continues it becomes increasingly clear that he wants to be the one to kill the shark. This also explains his refusal to get a bigger boat, doing so would, at least in his mind, show that he is incapable of catching the shark. That would be a weakness. This aspect of him is foreshadowed back in his introductory scene, where he openly refuses to take on any crew members and insists on going alone because "there are too many captains on this island." He even resists taking along Brody and Hooper at first.

This also proves to be a series of very poor decisions as, like the Mayor in the first half, Quint ignores the advice of others and, unsuprisingly, it backfires on him. There was a reason Brody wanted to call for a bigger boat- because he quickly figured out that using the one they had was going to put them in unnecessary danger and wouldn't be sufficient for fighting the shark. Sure enough, when the shark is provoked it manages to destroy and sink the boat. Quint even goes a few steps farther during the final confrontation by destroying the radio when Brody tries to call for help, putting them in even greater danger. Quint's insistence on being the one to kill the shark ends up being the very thing that results in him getting eaten, much like Ahab being dragged down by his white whale.

Now unfortunately, this same problem can be seen in the American government's reaction to Covid-19, perhaps most obviously in Trump but also in his supporters. Like Quint, Trump is afraid to show weakness. He doesn't like to be wrong, but he also wants to be the one to address problems. Trump has claimed to respond to the pandemic while obviously making the situation worse, just as Quint is ostensibly killing the shark but ultimately just makes things more dangerous for him and his crewmates. Trump ignores advice that contradicts his view, and refuses to do things that he think will make him look weaker, just as Quint refuses to get a bigger boat when it is obviously needed. Like Quint destroying the radio that could have saved his life, Trump opposes actions that could help contain the spread of a deadly virus.

For a film that came out 45 years earlier made by people who could not have known about the outbreak of Covid-19, the parallels are astonishing. Jaws suddenly feels extremely relevant to our current situation in this day and age, maybe even moreso than it did when it first came out. While the filmmakers obviously could not have known about what would happen in 2020, what this shows is that the political climate of today is nothing new. The problem of a life-threatening situation becoming the subject of political controversy is one that may have existed long before, but perhaps only now has been fully exposed.

To Be a Free Man: Understanding the Futility of Freedom in Half-Life

The full Half-Life series currently comprises two main games, a series of expansions to the first installment, and two episodes continuing the story of the second game. The gameplay is fairly simple, focusing on a mix of first-person shooter action and problem-solving that usually require the player character to get from once place to another while avoiding obstacles and enemies.

In the first game, the player assumes the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist newly hired at the Black Mesa laboratory. Shortly after his arrival, an experiment goes wrong causing a resonance cascade that results in the laboratory being infested by aliens from another dimension. Gordon then finds himself battling through both aliens and marines sent to cover up the disaster eventually travelling to the dimension of Xen where he defeats the nihilanth (the apparent "boss alien"). Half-Life 2 picks up twenty years later, where the world has been taken over by a ruthless alien race known as the Combine, and Gordon Freeman becomes the leader of a revolution.

But this is where the situation gets more complicated. The themes of freedom and liberation are hardly subtle. It's even reflected in the protagonist's name: Gordon FREEman. Yet the irony is that Gordon Freeman, the so-called "One Free Man" is never truly free. He is constantly subordinated to someone or something in what seems to be a never-ending chain of command. Throughout the series, Gordon Freeman is constantly under the thumb of a mysterious figure of authority. The true identity of this unnamed man remains a mystery still debated among fans of the games. Numerous fan theories exist to explain his apparently metaphysical presence, and the uncertainty of whether he's even human.

However, the identity of this character, known in the community as "G-Man" (derived from his filename) is ultimately not as important as what he represents to the world of Half-Life. Whoever this guy is is ultimately irrelevant. What matters is that he is the puppet master behind Gordon Freeman. Whatever his endgoals are, and for better or worse, he displays a firm investment in Freeman's activities and appears to be working toward specific outcomes (even if to what end remains unclear). Throughout both Half-Life and Half-Life 2 G-Man makes routine cameos where he appears to be observing Gordon, or otherwise taking an interest in the setting. Both games also see G-Man congratulating Gordon for his efforts, implying that the player did indeed produce G-Man's desired outcome.

At the end of Half-Life, G-Man appears to offer Gordon a "job opportunity," yet the game implies that this is not a choice on Gordon's part. G-Man appears to consider Gordon a valuable asset for reasons unclear and wants to make use of him again, and subsequently puts him into stasis until the events of Half-Life 2. In that game, G-Man once again awakens Gordon, only to once again suspend him in stasis as the film's conclusion after, once again, Gordon has produced the desired outcome. G-Man has essentially enslaved Gordon and is treating him like one might a tool, literally the same way one might treat a hammer or a screwdriver. Gordon is taken out when he is needed, but when he is no longer useful he is placed back into stasis, a sort of "toolbox" where he is stored until such a time as he is needed again.

This adds a peculiar irony to the events of Half-Life 2, where Gordon is drawn into the resistance against the oppressive Combine. He becomes a beacon of freedom towards everyone. The vortigaunts, once enslaved by the antagonists of the first game, now happily aid Freeman. By the end of the game resistance members eagerly follow him and place their trust in his leadership. But is this really freedom? Or are we only seeing a transition from one handler to another?

As the player already knows, Gordon is trapped under the thumb of G-Man, with no clear means of escape (this is accomplished in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, but G-Man's reaction suggests this is little more than a temporary setback). And yet the vortigaunts are calling him the "One Free Man," a moniker the player knows to be false. In short, Gordon Freeman, the leader of the freedom fighters is himself under the control of someone else, only he is given strings that can be seen by nobody else.

The futility of Gordon's efforts at freedom is further reinforced by the decision of Valve to treat him as a silent protagonist. Throughout the series Gordon never speaks a single word, not even so much as a grunt. The series is also experienced in the first-person- Gordon's face is only ever seen on the game boxes and posters. This deprives Gordon the chance to express himself in any meaningful way. By keeping him from speaking, Gordon is unable to share his thoughts or opinions on any issue. The first-person perspective prevents him from emoting. This is also fitting as there is another dimension to his character.

G-Man is not the only one manipulating Gordon. He is also being controlled more directly by someone else- the player. Every action Gordon performs is up to the player. Gordon's movements are based on the actions of a figure who, within the diegesis, shouldn't even exist. As a silent protagonist whose story is seen in the first person, he never gets a chance to properly share any independent thought, personality, or emotions. They are whatever the player decides them to be. So even when Gordon is released from G-Man's grip by the vortigaunts, he is never released from the player's.

Furthermore, in addition to the players, Gordon's path and actions are dictated by the game's writers and developers. His movements are controlled by an entity he doesn't know exists, and his story is scripted. Freeman is therefore perhaps the least free of all the cast of Half-Life, without so much as a means to share or even indicate any real independent thought. Gordon is a puppet on three different fronts, and he can only recognize the strings of one of his puppet masters. He is about as far from a "free man" as can be imagined.

And yet, the contradiction of the so-called "Free Man" and his constant imprisonment is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the themes of control. While Gordon Freeman is indeed being manipulated by forces he can't control, he also has puppets of his own in the form of his apparent allies. Part way through Half-Life 2 one of the Vortigaunts provides Gordon a means of controlling the antlions (a hive-minded race of insectoid aliens) by harvesting Pheropods. As a result, the antlions become Gordon's personal army.

Now the puppet has become a puppeteer. The antlions under Gordon's control blindly follow his orders, taking on enemies and being ready to get themselves killed on mass just to protect Gordon. Just as Gordon cannot see that he is being controlled by the player, now the antlions become his unwitting servants, fighting and dying for him all while being unable to see or even comprehend the strings that are manipulating them.

Once Gordon reaches the levels Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman, the antlions are replaced by human resistance members. "Hey everybody," the rebels yell as they join him, "Follow Freeman!" These are freedom fighters, driven by a desire to end the oppression of the Combine and liberate humanity, but in fact they are now Gordon's servants. He can instruct them on where to go, when to hold position, when to follow, and they obey his orders.

These people are devoting themselves to following Freeman, meaning they are in fact becoming his puppets. Just as Freeman is being manipulated by G-Man, now he manipulates the resistance. The only difference is that the resistance can't see that they're being controlled, and that they are not truly free.

And yet this is only what is seen through the perspective of Freeman himself. Let us shift our perspective for a moment and consider the character of the so-called "G-Man." We never do find out exactly who he is or what his intentions are, beyond that he seems to have an investment in Gordon's success and the implication that he may not be entirely human. He is even shown to be able to freeze time itself. It is obvious that G-Man is a powerful figure, perhaps moreso than even Gordon could begin to understand. When he is not directly obverving Freeman, he is seen interacting with other characters in ambiguous conversations. The expansion Opposing Force even implies that G-Man was the one who sent the marines into Black Mesa. This would seem to suggest he is a boss figure of some sort, the man in control of everything...

Except that is not in fact what he is. He may appear this way as far as any human is concerned, but one important detail is G-Man's references to his "employers." Who G-Man works for is an even bigger mystery than the man himself, but it is clear that he is working for someone. This is not some all-powerful being manipulating everything for his own personal gain, but an agent or employee acting on behalf of an even bigger party, someone so high up that we have no idea who they even are. This means that G-Man may in fact have no more control over anything that goes on than Gordon himself, and his actions are mainly conducted to suit the needs of his unknown employers.

This does leave an interesting question to think about. If G-Man is himself being controlled by someone else, whoever they are, is that party also being controlled by someone else? Is this simply a never-ending chain of command, servants controlling servants who control servants? This appears to be the case when one examines Gordon's enemies. In the first game, Freeman is battling a mix of aliens and U.S. Marines. In the second, he is mainly fighting his way through the Combine forces, with a particular emphasis on their human propaganda master Wallace Breen.

Breen is an interesting case study given his status as the "face" of the dystopian world established in Half-Life 2. In keeping with its not-so-subtle Orwellian influence, Breen takes on the role of a "big-brother"-like figure who regularly appears on screens to deliver messages encouraging City 17's residents to be compliant and submit to the Combine authority. Among the city's residents he is a figure of resentment and a symbol of the Combine's oppression. The man basically sold out humanity when the combine first arrived (though this proved the only way to ensure humanity's survival). As a result he has practically enslaved the entire human race, enjoying the privileges of his role as administrator while trying to comfort everyone else with exaggerated claims about the supposed long-term benefits of Combine rule (even referring to them on-camera as "Our Benefactors").

But Breen is himself little more than a puppet for the Combine. His job is simply to go along with whatever they desire and find some way to present it to the human population as a positive move. Under Breen's direction, it is implied that humans are stripped of everything that makes them individuals to turn them into the ruthless metro police and and the soldiers who routinely work to stop Gordon Freeman, but they are ultimately serving the Combine, not Breen. Breen is only a tool used by the Combine to subjugate humanity. He is ultimately using his position of authority to work toward their interests. Once again we a puppet, albeit a puppet who also has puppets of his own.

Curiously, in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 we see the screens once again being used, this time by Dr. Isaac Kleiner. This comes after the revolution started in the previous game, after Breen has been deposed from his position as administrator for humanity. Kleiner instead takes up a suspiciously similar role, even if he is now speaking on behalf of the resistance. We hear him instructing humanity on what to do, and how they should feel about the Combine recognizing them as "malefactors" (echoing Breen's referring to them as "Our Benefactors" throughout Half-Life 2). He even begins providing instructions for any humans who aren't in immediate danger to begin reproducing to re-establish the human race. It leaves us to wonder: is anything really changed? Has the resistance made things better or are we only replacing one authoritarian regime with another?

Likewise, in Half-Life both groups of antagonists are acting on behalf of other authorities. The marines who arrive to cover up the Black Mesa incident are themselves implied to be manipulated by G-Man. They are only acting under orders, not even fully understanding why they have been deployed or to what end they are working. They are only acting under orders, not out of any malevolence to Black Mesa, on a mission that appears to have been meticulously planned by someone well above their level of command.

The aliens that invade Black Mesa have been enslaved by a creature called the Nihilanth, a peculiar telepathic entity that rules the dimension of Xen. The Nihilinth serves as the primary antagonist and ultimately the final boss. But it ultimately turns out that the whole reason the aliens were in Xen to begin with was because they had themselves been enslaved by the Combine (the primary antagonists of the second game). The enslaved had now become the slaver.

Furthermore, the Vortigaunts find themselves in a peculiar position. They were previously enslaved by the Nihilinth until it was defeated by Gordon. This leads to the Vortigaunts developing a particular respect for Freeman, to the point where he takes on an almost messianic quality in their view. They become extremely loyal and willing to do almost anything for the person they have come to know as "The Free Man" (who, as we have established, is not in fact free in any sense). Throughout Half-Life 2 and its episodes the Vortigaunts provide Freeman with various services. This suggests that Gordon did not in fact liberate the Vortigaunts, but that he merely replaced the Nihilanth as their master while they unknowingly continue to be controlled by their own blind loyalty.

Given these patterns, one is left to wonder about the Combine, who at first seemed to be brutal imperialists interested only in domination. We never do find out just who or what runs the full empire, something only alluded to by the transmission sent in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, but what we have seen of the other characters suggests some interesting questions about what might be found if the series had continue or were to be revived. Is it not possible that, given what we've seen, the oppression and brutality exerted by the Combine forces is in fact because they themselves are being controlled by something else?

At the end of the day, we are left with a simple question: what is freedom? What does it mean to be free? Can one ever be truly free or do they just change controllers? These are the questions which the series constantly wrestles. Their answer? Freedom is an abstract concept constructed in our minds, one for which we constantly feel we must strive towards and yet can never truly attain. True freedom is impossible. The closest one can get is the illusion of freedom brought on by strings they cannot see. Everyone is locked in a series of endless chains of command- servants controlling servants controlling servants, in an inter-tangled web of manipulation and control.

The Mental Labyrinth

On the surface, it is not hard to see why a film like Labyrinth has developed such a huge following. At first glance, it appears to simply be nothing more than a surreal (if very campy) fantasy adventure with a variety of bizarre and humorous characters designed by Jim Henson. As ridiculous as the film's story might be, one cannot deny the imagination that has gone into its narrative both in terms of the world depicted and those who inhabit it. This creativity is more or less the main draw of the film. The actual story is very simplistic, and is more or less taken straight from The Wizard of Oz: a teenage girl gets transported to a mystical world where she is joined by three strange companions on a quest to return home while a powerful magician pulls every trick at their disposal to stop her. One could argue that Sarah is a somewhat stronger character than Dorothy, but the parallels are undeniable.

However, while on the surface, this appears to be the basic narrative, the movie might just be more complex than one will initially realize. Far from a surreal adventure with strange Muppets (even for Jim Henson), it is actually a very detailed character study. Many aspects of the film become much more sense when one realizes that, much like The Wizard of Oz, most if not all of the central narrative actually happens in the mind of its heroine, played by Jennifer Connelly. What the audience experiences is not in fact a physical journey but a mental one. It is really a story about conflicting emotions, and her struggle to accept herself.

When Sarah is introduced, the film immediately begins by way of a strange sequence which sets up an important detail about her character. In this scene, Sarah appears in a suspiciously medieval-looking environment. She is in an open field near a stone bridge, wearing an old-fashioned dress while reading her book. At first glance, it appears that she is in a medieval fantasy world, creating a jarring affect when the next scene reveals a modern neighborhood. This contrast is also emphasized by the composition of both scenes. When she is at the bridge, it is bright and sunny with a strong use of high-key lighting, while low-key lighting is used for her running through the neighborhood in the rain. These touches allow a glimpse into Sarah's imagination.

The opening scene represents how she imagines herself, while the following sequence shows that image being shattered by reality. She tries to enter a fantasy world, but keeps getting pulled out of it by her real-world responsibilities. The only thing that she is able to cling to of the world she longs for is her soaked and antiquated looking dress, and even this is revealed to be nothing more than a costume. Once at home, Sarah removes a large portion of the dress, revealing underneath a pair of jeans and running shoes. This sets up the movie's prominent theme of fantasy and reality, and the conflict between childlike imagination and adult responsibility. The tension between these two extremes drives much of the film.

At the beginning, Sarah's imaginary world is shattered by her adult responsibilities. When she returns home, she finds out that she has to look after her baby brother Toby. While she does not appear to have any specific plans, Sarah is frustrated about being given responsibility without a choice in the matter. She feels as if Toby is taking over her personal life, represented when she enters her room filled with fantasy characters and costume accessories. She also upset when her teddy bear, fittingly named Lancelot, is found in Toby's room. Sarah finds Toby crying, and drawing on her imagination begins to taunt him, though less out of any intentional abuse and more her not thinking straight due to her frustration.

Eventually, Sarah unwittingly summons the goblins, including their King Jareth, played by the late David Bowie. It is the moment Sarah coldly says "I wish the goblins would come and take you away" that reality ends, and her mind takes over, drawing on her imaginary worlds. In addition to the title of the movie, Labyrinth is also the title of a book she is seen reading several times. It is presumably from this book that she draws her "story" that describes her feelings about having to babysit Toby, which includes a "goblin king." It therefore seems strange that a film until now grounded in reality should suddenly incorporate these fantastical elements with no logical explanation.

This makes more sense when one realizes that Jareth as a person does not actually exist in the world of the story, nor does the labyrinth. The conflict is not one between two people so much as between the protagonist and her own consciousness. Sarah's personality is broken up into two roles, and the movie is the tension and eventual reconciliation between these two sides of her personality. Sarah casts herself as the responsible and mature side, while the frustration and desire to get rid of Toby that she has displayed becomes personified in Jareth.

Immediately before he appears, Sarah steps out of the bedroom, pauses, and re-enters, presumably feeling guilty about her momentary outburst. It is fittingly timed that this is when Jareth makes his first appearance, as he represents this side of Sarah's personality. As he does not actually exist, he probably never abducted Toby, but he does act as Sarah's darker side. Upon taking the child, he opts to try to pursued Sarah to ignore her responsibilities, to go back to her room. Sarah refuses to accept this, but this other part of her mind is persistent. These two sides clash together, represented when she finds herself in the titular labyrinth.

The labyrinth is less a physical location than it is a mental state. This is why Sarah appears to simply teleport into the area outside its entrance, rather than any travel actually taking place. Jareth challenges Sarah to "solve the labyrinth" in order to retrieve her brother. The labyrinth, however, is symbolic of the tension between both sides of Sarah's own mind. At the moment, it is the irresponsible side, represented by Jareth, that remains in control. This is evidenced by the increasing obsession that he develops with Sarah. He never shows any real concern for his actual responsibilities as the supposed King of the Goblins, symbolizing his role as her irresponsible side.

This is shown by Sarah's initial struggles to begin navigating the maze. She has trouble even finding the door, and upon entering is easily motivated to give up whenever it gets too complicated. She breaks down upon entering the first passage. Later on, she tries to use lipstick to mark her routes, only to find someone has been moving the tiles she drew on. "It's not fair," she childishly yells several times throughout the first act. It is only as she metaphorically grows up that she makes any real progress. With her progression into the maze, her responsible side slowly becomes more powerful, while Jareth becomes weaker and increasingly desperate to maintain control.

 

The strange Muppet dwarf Hoggle also serves as a bridge between these two sides of Sarah's personality. Throughout the movie, he is constantly torn between serving both sides. On one side, there is the pressure brought on by the irresponsible side, and yet he also has a consciousness that tells him Sarah is trying to do the right thing (even if he refuses to admit it). Hoggle's good intentions but apparent cowardice symbolize Sarah's own feelings as she struggles through a difficult evening. He constantly tries to offer assistance to Sarah, while also being easily scared or pressured by Jareth into doing the wrong thing, yet whenever he gives in, he also must face the guilt of his actions; just as Sarah struggles with the immediate guilt of her own actions.

 

When Sarah first enters the labyrinth, Hoggle asks her a simple question: "would you go left or go right?" and when asked which way he would go simply replies "I wouldn't go either." Sarah immediately dismisses him as being useless, completely failing to understand the meaning of his advice. It sounds at first as though he is merely expressing his reluctance to go through the labyrinth, but he actually says he would not go "either way" because neither way is correct. At this point, Sarah is still overwhelmed by her guilt and frustration, and subsequently remains unable to see the actual passage forward.

 

As Sarah continues through the labyrinth, she displays an increasing strength in overcoming its obstacles even as Jareth throws various tricks at her. This is symbolized by the various strange challenges she faces in the labyrinth, during which she displays intelligence and resourcefulness that gets her into the oubliette, far enough to make Jareth worried that she might actually succeed. These changes occur as Sarah herself "grows up" and begins to take responsibility. The responsible side of her personality is now taking control, while Jareth grows weaker.

 

With these newfound resources, Sarah also develops two new allies in the form of gentle giant Ludo and a strange fox named Sir Didymus (whose "trusty steed" is a dog that looks very much like Sarah's own dog Merlin, a cue that this is still in her mind). Both of them are obtained through challenges that require Sarah to act responsibly. Ludo is first found tied up by goblins, and freed through an act of strength when Sarah manages to scare off his goblin captors. Didymus is won over when Sarah uses her intelligence to resolve a simple (if very petty) dispute. This development of a party, rather than Sarah alone, represents the growing power of her own mind.

 

 

Jareth is able to bring out one last trick against Sarah, which almost works, but it is ultimately a test of will. This occurs when she is tricked into eat a berry that eliminates her memories. Sarah finds herself in a strange garbage dump occupied by people who carry bundles of objects on their backs. This offers a possible opportunity for her irresponsible side to take over, to reject her adult responsibilities in favor of a childish obsession with toys. However, she also shows her strength when she manages to remind herself of her responsibility, refuses to lose control, and breaks free.

 

This in turn leads the party to the goblin city, where the guards prove ineffective against dealing with them. Eventually, they reach Jareth's castle, where Sarah insists on facing him alone. Her companions agree to this, and tell her to "call" them if she needs them. She claims that she must do this because "that is how it is done," but in fact it is far more complicated. Everything up to this point has been Sarah's own imagination, and the struggles of her personality. She has used her great strength, her imagination, to deal with an emotional period, but in the end she must face her fears directly.

 

The confrontation between the two central characters becomes separated from the rest of the world. Jareth and Sarah both find themselves on a floating platform where the confrontation happens, but more interesting is the way it plays out. Rather than any type of fight, Sarah uses her voice as a source of power. In doing so, Sarah is able to accept her responsibilities reject the urges represented by Jareth, who now remains unable to control her. This is explained through the passage Sarah refers to, which ends with the phrase "You have no power over me." It is her speaking this phrase that finally ends the fantasy and brings Sarah back into the real world.

 

 

A few hours have passed, and Sarah has calmed down. The labyrinth has been nothing more than her mix of feelings over the course of the evening. She willingly checks on Toby, even letting him keep her teddy bear, and still manages to find time for herself. However, at the end, she finds herself "missing" her friends from the labyrinth. This in turn suggests that she is not ready to give up her imaginary worlds, but she has also learned from her experiences. The ending, during which a party breaks out in her room with her companions as well as several of the strange figures encountered in the maze, represents a new realization. Childhood fantasies and adult responsibilities are not mutually exclusive. It is simply a matter of learning to balance both sides.

 

Underneath its campy production, strange characters, and imaginative landscapes, Labyrinth is really nothing more than a simple (if very unusual) coming of age story centered around the thought processes of a single protagonist. It's all about growing up and accepting responsibility, but in the end also being able to do so without leaving everything behind. The whole movie a single teenager's struggle to deal with a mix of emotions over the course of a single evening, but what makes this unusual is the decision to enter her mind and to explore her thought processes rather than to see it from the outside.

Crime Week: Reservoir Dogs (Heists)

Quentin Tarantino has something of a longstanding association with crime, one that goes back to his first feature film Reservoir Dogs. While this low-budget early film displays a lot of the trademarks that easily define Tarantino's later films, such as the rapid-fire dialogue and non-linear storytelling, it often stands out due to the curious way he approaches its subject matter. The story centres around a botched heist, specifically an organized attempt to steal diamonds which does not go quite as planned because one of the people involved is an undercover cop. Tarantino's approach to making a heist film, however remains somewhat unusual.

In the hands of any other director, the plot would likely be much more linear. Most likely, the heist would be the climax of the film. The story would focus on Joe (Lawrence Tierney) finding out about the diamonds and his efforts to recruit a team of professionals to pull off the heist, as well as their efforts to learn about the bank's security systems and to devise the appropriate countermeasures for each. Then at the climax, the actual heist would be shown, where the viewer would see how everything comes together. Then it might be played as a twist when the cops turn out to be ready for them, with the ending focusing on the attempted getaway that leads to them double-crossing each other and everything falling apart. This would be a conventional narrative for a heist film.

Instead, Tarantino opts for something very different. He begins the movie just before the heist is to occur, and then moves straight into its immediate aftermath. In fact, the heist itself goes entirely unseen. All information about what happened comes from what is described by the characters afterwards, many of whom have conflicting accounts of the precise chain of events such as when the cops showed up. Tarantino could have made Reservoir Dogs a more conventional heist film, but he chose not to because he was not interested in the heist itself. What he was clearly more interested in is the characters and their interactions. 

The cast is in general very minimalist, with few other characters besides the central thieves. This group contains a total of six men: Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Pink (Steve Buschemi), and Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), as well as their employers Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and "Nice Guy" Eddie (Chris Penn). Most of the film focuses purely on these individuals. Their association is also marked by the choice of wardrobe: all six of the thieves wear an identical suit, with slicked-back hair and similar pairs of sunglasses. 

This wardrobe serves to mark their association with one another. The only ones to deviate from this pattern are Joe and Eddie, both of whom are dressed casually. This creates an obvious contrast between the two different levels of the crime business, and separates the employers from those who are actually performing the theft. However, this is also deconstructed as the movie progresses. After the heist, each of the characters begin to shed parts of their uniform. The sunglasses come off almost immediately, hair becomes messy, and suits become dirty, torn, or altered (such as Mr. Blonde removing his jacket). These changes give each man a more distinct appearance, and with it a distinct personality.

There are next to no female characters in Reservoir Dogs, which may seem like a strange move given Tarantino's later films, and only one black character in a supporting role (Randy Brooks). The only women who make an appearance are the girl Mr. Pink pulls out of her car and the woman who shoots Mr. Orange (Tarantino actually shot a scene with a female cop, but it was removed because he felt it revealed too much about Mr. White too early). Of course, only six of the responding officers are actually seen: Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz), the three who chase Mr. Pink, and the two that are shot by Mr. White. Considering that it was heavily implied that there were a bunch of other cops besides these, it is entirely possible that there were female officers present offscreen. 

This may not be totally unjustified, however, as it fits the personalities of the main characters. These guys are anti-heroes, and are hardly treated as nice people. Joe in particular is shown to be a very old-fashioned criminal, and makes several remarks that indicate he is racist, sexist, and homophobic, and the others are not much better. At one point, Mr. Pink outright states that black and white women "ain't the same" and relies on stereotypes to justify this. The film even draws attention to this at times, with details such as Mr. White's anecdote about working with "Alabama" (who according to him is an exceptional thief), not to mention that the woman confronted by Mr. White and Mr. Orange actually makes an effort to defend herself (and ends up shooting the latter). 

It is likely that Joe, being a closed-minded old man, simply would not hire a woman. This would be consistent with much of the rest of the film, which highlights flaws in the criminal lifestyle. Joe is not exactly an effective planner. He is stubborn and refuses to accept any way other than his own (as is shown when he refuses to refer to Mr. Pink as anything other than his assigned nickname). This was after all the same guy who considered a complete psycho to be a good addition to the team, and the other guys involved do not exactly fit together.

This is established in the film's opening scene, where the thieves are eating breakfast and talking. This particular moment establishes each of the central characters through their dialogue. This particular scene marks the only appearance of Mr. Blue, and is one of only two scenes (not including the credits) to show Mr. Brown. Neither of these two are given a huge amount of focus. Mr. Blue only speaks two lines in the entire scene, while Mr. Brown is given a supporting role in the conversation. Both of these men die during the heist, so by reducing their role, Tarantino is singling out the four who will be given the most focus: Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Blonde.

During this scene, Joe remains distracted from the other guys. While most of them engage in a discussion about the sexual themes of pop music, Joe spends the entire time going through an old address book he apparently found. He seems to be more concerned with remembering the names he finds in the aforementioned book than the heist he is supposed to overseeing later. Mr. White, is quick to recognize this and takes the book. Mr. White is starting to show a sense of responsibility, as he feels the group is disorganized. He even comments on how he feels he is hearing two separate conversations, foreshadowing the inevitable incompatibility of the group. Joe simply responds by stubbornly asking for his book to be returned. This exchange alone is setting up aspects of both characters: Joe's stubbornness and the responsibility Mr. White claims trying to keep everyone organized and looking after Mr. Orange.

Mr. Orange remains very quiet during this scene. This makes sense, foreshadowing his role as the undercover cop, or the odd man out. When Mr. White takes Joe's book, Mr. Blonde jokingly offers to shoot the former. Not only does this foreshadow Blonde's role as a psychopath, but the fact that he directly asks Joe also alludes to the close relationship between them that is later revealed. Mr. Pink then refuses to contribute to the waitress's tip, an act which angers the other guys. When Mr. Pink explains it, there is a cold logic to his reasoning. He makes a perfectly valid point when he comments on how society expects some people to get tips and others not to. This sets up his attitude after the heist, when he is the first person to figure out that one of his partners was a cop and tries to figure out logically who it was.

This scene also establishes an interesting motif that recurs throughout the film, especially in the scenes set prior to the heist. This group of people is acting very casual. They are discussing popular music for much of it, not to mention everybody gets mad at Mr. Pink for refusing to tip the waitress. It would appear less like a robbery and more like a group of office workers going to lunch. Crime is treated as a workplace. The suits worn by the thieves even look like something they would wear to an office.

Two of the flashback sequences, those of Mr. White and Mr. Blonde, both play out very much like job interviews, with them each being seated in Joe's office and questioned about their most recent experiences. Mr. Orange even mentions getting a "reference" to convince Joe that he was a good thief. The planning sequence that is shown is basically organized as a seminar. Joe stands at the front of the room dressed in a business suit and displays charts illustrating his business plan. All these details go to emphasize one simple idea: that while these guys might not be the most pleasant of individuals, in the end they are all just doing their job.

Still, there is that final idea that crime doesn't pay. Everything comes down on top of the main characters in the end. Ultimately, their undoing is that the thieves are incompatible and unable to work together. They are all interested only in their own ends. Mr. White is too concerned about Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink is too determined to find the undercover cop, and Mr. Blonde's psychotic tendencies not only endanger his partners during the heist, but also causes distrust from Mr. White. All of the men are wrapped in their own perspectives so much that when Joe finally does show up, the thieves end up shooting each other before the cops can get to them.

It is fitting that Mr. Pink is the one person to avoid getting shot, being the one person rational enough to stay out of the Mexican Stand-off. He then makes the seemingly logical choice of taking the diamonds (which he might still be able to make money off of and thus get something out of all this), though he is presumably caught when the police show up moments later. The only other possible survivors are Mr. Orange and Mr. White, both of whom are badly injured (the film ends with a final gunshot, though it is hard to tell precisely who fired it and where). Mr. White is then faced with the ironic reveal that the man he has tried to protect and comfort the whole time was in fact the undercover cop.

In the final moments, a group of police officers break into the warehouse offscreen. Only their voices are heard, so it is unclear how many are present. The voices heard are all male, though given how many cops were implied to be involved in this operation, it is not unlikely that there are female officers present outside. What makes this scene curious is the ambiguity of the ending. Tarantino could have shown the cops entering, but instead he focuses purely on Mr. White's face and his reaction. There is final gunshot, but the audience is left to question where it came from and who was hit. Mr. White is seen collapsing, but this could be just from his injuries.

Once again, this ties into the simple idea that Tarantino is not interested in the heist itself. In another filmmaker's hands, the central plot of Reservoir Dogs would only make up the final act of the film, after the heist has been shown. There would be a shot of a group of cops entering the building and surrounding Mr. White (or possibly shooting him when he refuses to put down his gun, but it would be a lot more obvious). This would make sense; one normally watches a conventional heist film with an interest in seeing how the heist is pulled off, but Reservoir Dogs is not a conventional heist movie.

Tarantino is not so much interested in the heist itself as he is in the people involved. It is a character study, an attempt to get into the minds of the criminals. The actual crime is irrelevant. Tarantino could have said anything about what the protagonists were trying to do. The diamonds have almost nothing to do with the overall story. It is all about how the main characters play off of each other, and the mounting tensions that ultimately lead to their undoing. This is why Reservoir Dogs stands out among crime films.

Apocalypse Now: The River to Insanity

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now makes for a compelling piece of study. This film is legendary for its stories of troubled production, so much so that entire books have been written about it and there was even a critically-acclaimed documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse that chronicled the experience of filming Apocalypse Now. Even before running over budget there were casting problems. First Coppola struggled to get stars like Gene Hackman and Steve McQueen to even consider the project, before going on to cast Harvey Keitel as Willard only to fire him a week after shooting began and hire Martin Sheen to take his place. That is not even getting into the problems faced when Marlon Brando arrived on set. Even when shooting began, a massive typhoon destroyed the sets, Coppola had to check himself into a hospital for malnutrition and dehydration, and Martin Sheen almost died from a seizure.

Interestingly, Apocalypse Now was not the first attempt to adapt Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. Orson Welles had previously attempted to adapt the same material in 1939. Welles' interpretation would have stuck more closely to the original book by preserving its 19th-century setting but he had an unusual concept for how it would be structured. Welles envisioned a project in which the central character of Marlowe would be played by the camera; allowing the audience to literally experience the narrative through his eyes. Unfortunately, much like Coppola roughly four decades later, Welles's film went over budget and he had to stop when he was unable to comply with a need for the expenses to be cut by $50,000.

Looking past the difficult production and more closely at the film itself, Apocalypse Now provides a terrifying look at the true face of war. This three-hour epic uses Conrad's novella as a base to examine the insanity and chaos of the Vietnam War and how it shapes and changes those who fight. There is no true good or evil, nor is there any true cause. There is only chaos with some small objective just out of reach. All this is seen through the eyes of an army captain named Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) who serves as a reflection of the audience's experiences.

From the beginning of Apocalypse Now, it is clear that Willard is messed up in the head. His opening narration makes that much abundantly clear. The opening depicts an extended shot of military destruction juxtaposed with shots of Willard's confused facial expressions. Willard is likely dealing with a psychological condition commonly faced among soldiers called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The precise symptoms may vary but generally veterans afflicted with this condition find it hard to adjust to civilian life. They often have difficulty relating to relatives and are haunted by memories of things they endured in wartime. There are recorded cases of PSTD affecting soldiers as early as World War I (known then as "shellshock" and generally dismissed as a sign of cowardice) but it is only a more recent development that any effort has been taken to address it.

From Willard's description, he is a man who has ended up in his current position due to PTSD. He could not handle being at home (as he himself states, "hardly said anything to my wife until I said yes to a divorce") and presumably re-enlisted in the army as a result. For now he is stuck in a hotel room in Saigon, but it is hardly comforting for him. From his opening narration, Willard is still experiencing nightmares and flashbacks to prior experiences. He feels trapped, and all he wants is some mission to keep him occupied.

All this is displayed visually in the film's extended three-minute intro which plays to The Doors' song The End. This intro consists of a single shot of the jungle. It is initially quiet until a helicopter flies by, with the sound of its rotors greatly slowed down. As the music begins to play the area becomes covered by an ominous green mist, presumably napalm (a chemical weapon used by the Americans in Vietnam). Then suddenly the trees go up in flame. It becomes harder to see anything through the mix of fire and mist, and within this confusion is juxtaposed the face of Captain Willard.

It is worth noting that no obvious objective seems to be present here. There are no soldiers of either side anywhere to be seen. It is nothing more than chaos at its simplest form. It appears to be the Americans who are responsible for bombing the environment seemingly for no reason. However, the images of Willard's face reveal a new interpretation. What is being shown in this opening is not the actual war, but a glimpse into Willard's mind and how he perceives the war.

That mission comes in the form of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a rogue Green Beret officer who has been conducting unauthorized operations in Cambodia. Here is where the madness truly starts to show itself. The officers who recruit Willard basically ask him to kill an officer for doing his job. Kurtz's rogue tactics are actually winning the war, and yet instead of giving him medals his superiors are ordering his death. This becomes even more ironic when considers the fact that in real life, the United States failed Vietnam.

Willard is assigned to a Navy Patrol boat that is supposed to get him to his destination without knowing where they are going. The crew of this boat consists of what Willard identifies as "kids". None of them seem to have any real patriotic feelings about the war. Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) is just a guy who does what he is told and the others are ordinary men presumably drafted into a war they don't understand. This is most obvious with Chef, who is established to be from New Orleans and seems a fairly nice guy. He is even in a respectable profession, being an actual chef (more specifically a saucier) who was drafted into the war and ended up working in mechanics because he did not like army cooking.

Lance on the other hand is described by Willard as someone who looking at "you'd never think he fired a weapon in his life". Lance is an innocent seeming man at first, and yet out of all the patrol boat crew he is probably hit the hardest by his experiences in the war. Unlike the other men, Lance goes on to embrace the war, not out of any sense of duty but simply because he becomes one with the chaos. Lance almost seems to get an adrenaline fixation during his experiences.

Eventually, Willard is on a patrol boat and encounters "air cavalry" who take the insanity of war to whole new levels. After briefly passing a television crew (one of whom is played by director Francis Ford Coppola in a cameo appearance) Willard encounters Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who takes the insanity to whole new levels. Kilgore and his boys seem to be extremely inconsistent in their motives and goals. A name like Kilgore proves to be quite fitting for a man who never seems to take the Vietnam War seriously. This aspect of his character becomes even clearer by the fact that he never seems to dress appropriately for combat, wearing a bright yellow scarf and a blue Civil War officer's cap instead of the helmets worn by everyone else.

When he is first seen he proceeds to throw around playing cards onto dead VC (he claims they are calling cards meant to let "the Charlie" know who was responsible for this massacre). When Willard manages to find Kilgore, he completely ignores him and continues his... shenanigans. Kilgore completely ignores his orders in favor of partying and only displays the slightest bit of interest when he discovers that Lance Johnson happens to be among Willard's crew. Even then, he ignores Willard until late at night when he turns a massacre into a beach party, and only agrees to do his job when he learns that the dangerous village at the mouth of the Nung River has great waves for surfing.

This leads to the film's most famous sequence, where Kilgore leads his team of helicopters on what seems to be an unauthorized attack on the village. This already starts to bring out a double standard: Willard's superiors want Kurtz dead, but seem to have no objection to Kilgore who is also conducting unauthorized attacks on the VC and winning. Once again, Kilgore never seems to take the situation seriously, casually talking with Lance about surfing before hand and later even stopping to drink coffee in the middle of the fighting.

Kilgore then reveals his favorite tactic for attacking Vietnamese villages: "We come in low over the rising sun, and about a mile out we put on the music". That music turns out to be a piece called Ride of the Valkyries, originally composed by Richard Wagner for a series of operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen. This is meant as a psychological technique to scare the Viet Cong soldiers below, but there is another side: playing music this loud alerts them to their presence and gives them time to prepare.

During the same scene, Chef also gets to observe that Kilgore's own boys aren't all there in the head either. Some of them sit on their helmets, which technically makes them more vulnerable targets. When asked why, one of them simply responds "So we don't get our balls blown off". These guys seem to be more concerned about an extreme chance of losing what they see as defining their "masculinity" than they are about the more likely scenario of getting shot in the head and dying. These men seem to see what they are doing less as an actual military campaign and more like a game.

When the choppers come in, they cause immediate chaos. As the music plays, a large village is reduced to rubble. Houses are destroyed and people are gunned down in the street. The villagers never stand a chance against the might of the American military, and the one thing that comes anywhere near being a challenge (a single anti-aircraft gun) is quickly dispatched. By the time the helicopters finally land, the village is in ruins and, like the forest in the opening, filled with that same ominous green mist.

The chaos is further emphasized once the choppers begin to make their landing. Kilgore's men manage to destroy the village, massacre its citizens, and promptly begin kidnapping the survivors. As all this is happening, two men stand with megaphones yelling over the destruction about how they are there to "help" the Vietnamese people. In actuality, it seems apparent that the opposite is the case, and this one scene helps call to mind just how much good America actually did for Vietnam during the war. The strange part is that all this was done so that a few people could go surfing.

Kilgore barely seems to register the chaos around him as he sends people surfing. As he tells Lance, "you're either going to surf or fight" and when called out on making such an insane decision he proceeds to state plainly "if I say it's safe to surf this beach, it's safe to surf this beach." In reality it hardly seems safe to surf the beach, considering the shooting that is still going on. Kilgore goes on to deliver the movie's famous line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" and describes the damage the stuff can do before casually saying "someday this war's going to end." The way he says it has a strange tone, in that he doesn't want the war to end, he wants it to keep going so he can keep partying. In the redux version, Kilgore makes one final appearance when he leads an entire squadron of helicopters in search of the patrol boat to reclaim his stolen surfboard.

After leaving Kilgore, Willard continues his journey upriver. From here things start to get bleaker. Chef, despite being one of the more rational members of the group, convinces Willard to go with him on a brief expedition to find a mango. Willard agrees to this, but they fail to accomplish this end. Instead, both men find themselves scared when a tiger lunges toward them and charge back to the boat. Willard's narration offers a very simple piece of advice: "Never get off the boat, unless you're going all the way."

The next stop is a small supply depot where Willard tries to get fuel and also receives passes to "the show", which turns out to be a group of playboy models posing for the entertainment of the male soldiers. The men are driven into a frenzy by this encounter, calling attention the era's all-male military. There were no female soldiers in those days, it was all men trapped together, and it was also not unusual for them to subsequently be aroused in the presence of a woman. These three women are basically being treated as objects by the men, who have not seen women for some time, which also proves to be dangerous to the point where they literally have to be evacuated.

Even as the three models are loaded into a helicopter the men scramble for their attention, one going as far as the hang on the skids and another trying to hang from his legs (pulling his pants down in the process). This aspect of the characters is thoroughly deconstructed in the redux version, where a later scene involves the same models being confronted by Willard and his crew in an old medical camp. Once again, Chef and Clean both seem to treat the women as objects for their pleasure, but neither is cast as being in the right for doing so, and this more personal encounter allows the women to show that they are in fact human beings.

Act One ends on a dark note when Chief follows protocol and decides to investigate a Sampan that happens to be passing by. Willard tells Chief not to stop, but the latter ignores him claiming that the VC have used these boats to smuggle weapons. Once again, this attempt at a simple "police action" draws attention to how inefficient America was in dealing with the crisis in Vietnam. The search is extremely disorganized and consists mainly of Chief and Chef yelling at each other while Clean handles a large machine gun. Chef constantly points out the reasons why this search is unwarranted but Chief forces him onward anyway.

Eventually, in all the confusion one panicked woman makes a sudden move and Clean immediately opens fire on everyone in the boat. Even worse is that given how disorganized the search has proven Clean comes dangerously close to killing Chef, who was right in the line of fire. It turns out what the woman was concerned about was a dog, prompting Chef to call everyone out on their negligence and poor management of the situation. However, the chaos is emphasized further when Lance fights with Chef over the dog, and Willard has to shoot a surviving woman to emphasize that his mission takes priority.

Willard himself notes that "those boys were never going to look at me the same way". Willard has a mission: to kill Colonel Kurtz, and while he can't reveal it to the other men just yet he has to emphasize the priority of his mission. He does this by shooting the one survivor of the river boat massacre when Chief tries to take her to a hospital. He is showing that he is simply not just of the crew but someone else entirely.

At this point, the title of "Apocalypse Now" starts to become more meaningful. While the story does not literally depict the apocalypse, the general tone begins to have an apocalyptic feeling. This is evident from the numerous crashed helicopters (and at one point a crashed airplane) that the boat passes. It sometimes seems like Willard and the crew are the only living things left in the world. The world might not actually be ending, but as far as the characters are concerned, it might as well be with the destruction around them.

A crucial part of defining any post-apocalyptic scenario is the breaking down of social order, and that comes when Willard encounters the final checkpoint, Do Lung Bridge. This place is pure chaos. Two sides are shooting at each other in the dark, the only light coming from the occasional fireworks. If there was ever at some point any belief in a cause for holding this place it is gone now. When the boat first arrives men are scrambling into the water with briefcases pleading to be taken away from this nightmare. The entire battle seems like a pointless cycle as well: the Americans blow up the bridge, the VC destroy it, repeat.

Willard goes ashore with Lance, who in perhaps not the smartest move keeps the dog under his jacket, and attempts to find the commanding officer. The problem is there seems to be no organization or structure. He eventually manages to find a trench occupied by a few other soldiers. One seems to be firing blindly and when asked who is in command simply asks "ain't you?" It seems these soldiers have no more of an understanding of what is going on than Willard does. He then encounters another soldier named Roach and asks him the same question. Roach simply says "yeah" and walks away.

This attitude seems a little bit strange. Roach does not seem to be interested in telling a superior officer where to find his commander. Willard sums it up when he returns to the boat and simply says "there is no CO". This takes on a different meaning when one considers a remark made by Willard near the very end. When Roach says "yeah" he means he knows who is in command, but it is not so much who as what. It is no human being who is in charge of this situation, but the jungle itself. That is where they get their orders from. Roach very likely knew this, but did not want to say anything to Willard as he is not ready to grasp that realization just yet.

The loss of any clear human authority marks the final breakdown of social order. As Willard points out in his narration past Do Lung Bridge "there was only Kurtz". Passing the bridge marks the final departure from anything resembling "civilization", with the journey continuing into the wilderness. The American army is no longer here to protect or assist the crew, a fact they are constantly reminded of as they encounter the old wreckage of American vehicles with no signs of life present anywhere. Without any protection, it is here that the boat crew begins to die off.

The first to go is Clean in a brutally abrupt shift in mood. The scene begins on an optimistic note (or at least as optimistic as Apocalypse Now can get) with the crew opening mail that they received at Do Lung Bridge. Lance once again brings out the recurring motif of mist, this time in the form of "purple haze" that surrounds him and the boat. Meanwhile, Clean gets a touching audiotape from his mother describing her plans for when he gets home. Everything seems calm until the VC provide one final attack. Clean is shot and killed almost instantly, before the tape is even finished. His mother still continues to talk of her plans to invite family members to celebrate his return home while his body is sprawled out in plain view over the deck. This component becomes even darker when one considers that Lawrence Fishbourne was only fourteen at the time of filming and lied about his age to get the part.

Clean's death hits the men pretty hard, as though they have not already been through enough trauma. Shortly after this encounter the crew is attacked by what they might consider "savages" who start firing arrows. In theory, there is no real harm at this point, the arrows are fake and just meant as a psychological weapon, but only Willard is able to figure it out. In fact, throughout the film Willard has seen things differently from everyone around him. In a strange, twisted sort of way, Willard's confused state of mind arguably gives him the clearest perspective on everything that is happening. In that sense, he could be considered the sanest character in the entire film despite his obvious need for therapy.

Unfortunately, Willard is the only one who can see clearly what is going on. None of the crew listen and instead begin firing recklessly. They are firing in plain sight at people who have likely spent their whole lives in the jungle and thus know how to survive in it. Like Do Lung Bridge, everyone is firing blindly, and this leads to the death of Chief, who is impaled by a spear once he tries to pull out a machine gun. Chief collapses to the deck, but his final action is a failed attempt to impale Willard on the tip of the spear in his chest.

Willard tries to take this opportunity to release the two surviving members of the crew. Chef immediately recognizes the absurdity that Willard has to kill another American, but agrees to continue onward anyway. This ties back to Willard's statement after escaping the tiger: "never get off the boat, not unless you're going all the way." Chef is not ready to get off the boat yet, and he is the kind of person who is not ready to go all the way. Lance on the other hand is, and he got off the boat a long time ago, back when he started putting on the war paint.

At the compound, Willard encounters a strange character played by Dennis Hopper who identifies himself as "a photojournalist". This man has come to idolize and respect Colonel Kurtz in more than a few ways. He seems to be unable to express anything besides pure admiration when telling Willard about the Colonel, even when admitting that said Colonel threatened to kill him if ever takes a picture of him again. Meanwhile, in Chef suggests waiting at the boat for Kurtz to arrive when they are told he is away. Once again, this ties back to Willard's statement of "never get off the boat". Chef is unable to go all the way. He is not ready to get off the boat, but Lance is, and he does. In fact, Lance is so fargone by this point that he blends in, disappearing almost entirely among Kurtz's followers for much of the remainder of the film.

Willard finally gets his chance to confront Kurtz, leading to the famous sequence in which the Colonel is kept entirely in shadow. Kurtz is clearly not all there in his right mind, but he talks to Willard about what he has been through. Kurtz learns that Willard is there to "terminate his command" but Willard himself is already starting to question his mission. After all, Kurtz is a decorated officer who only became a Green Beret because he threatened to quit if the army did not let him.

After everything Willard has been through, it is hard to call Kurtz's methods "unsound". While the ethics of his tactics could be debated, it is hardly any more "unsound" than massacring an entire village to go surfing or shooting an innocent woman to ensure the mission continues as planned. Kurtz himself goes on to describe his disturbing experiences in the field. He speaks of an incident in which his platoon vaccinated a group of children in a village, only to return moments later to find every child who was vaccinated had their arm hacked off. 

It is somewhat ambiguous precisely what Kurtz's views on the Vietnam War are, but everyone in the film has some way of dealing with it. Willard tries to distract himself from the war. Lance learns to embrace it and becomes one with the chaos. Chef tries to reject it. Chief simply does what he is told and tries not to ask questions. Clean spends a lot of time thinking about going home. Kilgore tries to make Vietnam resemble what he considers home. Kurtz on the other hand has been in combat longer than any of these people. He has seen war can do to anyone. 

He is himself basically winning the war for the Americans despite their desire to kill him, but he no longer seems to consider himself part of the army. Even more curious is that Kurtz seems to know he does not have much longer to live. He is dying on a psychological level and has no intention of stopping Willard from completing his mission. It is just a question of Kurtz preparing the doubting Willard and making sure he dies the way he wants to. At the same time, Kurtz wants Willard to understand what he has endured. To do this, he takes Willard captive and holds him during the night in an uncomfortable situation, leading to one of the film's most disturbing sequences.

Chef is back on the boat and, true to Willard's advice earlier in the film, has refused to get off. He is frightened by Kurtz's compound and tries to conduct a radio test with the presumed intent of ordering an air strike, as was instructed by Willard. Willard is being held captive during the night outside a bamboo cage with barbed wire strapped around his neck. Kurtz approaches dressed in war paint, a reminder of who he once was and a symbol of who he has become. He then proceeds to throw an object in Willard's lap.

That object turns out to be Chef's severed head. Kurtz apparently killed him to prevent the air strike (as is evidenced later on, when someone can be heard trying to reach the boat on the same radio, implying the previous conversation had been cut abruptly). However, if Kurtz simply wanted to prevent the air strike he could have just stopped short of killing Chef or simply threatened to kill him if he did. The fact that Kurtz goes to the extreme of placing the man's severed head in front of Willard suggests an intended message. The question is what is Kurtz trying to say?

The obvious message is that Kurtz wanted to make an example of Chef, but perhaps not in the way one might normally expect. It was not that Chef was going to kill him, but in the way he would kill him. Willard himself points out toward the end of the film that Kurtz expected to die, but wanted to do so in a way that he considered honorable. He wanted to go out "like a soldier, standing." While Kurtz wanted his people "exterminated" he did not wish for this to happen until after he died. Forcing Willard to experience this nightmare is his way of telling him.

For the first time in the entire film, Willard actually displays fear. Up until now, he has basically tried to block out everything besides his mission. He has tried not to think about anything else going on in the war and to ignore it when possible. Kurtz is now forcing him to confront the horrors of war, literally face to face. Seeing that an innocent man has been killed so brutally and having the head staring back at him serves as Willard's first glimpse into the true face of horror. Willard tries to kick the head off him in the hopes of hiding, but there is no way to escape. Even after the head falls off his lap it continues to stare back at Willard, and with his bindings there is no way for him to escape.

Having had his eyes opened to the horror, Willard is eventually freed by Kurtz and allowed to walk around the compound. He is not kept as a prisoner, as no attempt is made to ensure he stays, but Kurtz knows he is not going anywhere yet. There is not exactly anywhere else for Willard to go at this point. He has already gone as far as the journey will allow, and there is no going back without finishing the job. All Willard can do is learn about the man he was going to kill and wonder why everyone wants Kurtz dead.

By this point, Willard no longer considers himself an American soldier, even though he says in his narration "they were going to make me a major for this." He is simply a man with a job to do, and to complete the task of killing Kurtz Willard strips himself of the remnants of his military background. He does not even register the messages coming in over the radio. First off, he refrains from wearing any obviously military clothing and rejects any type of firearm in favor of a simple machete. In theory, Willard could have just stepped off the boat to approach Kurtz, but instead he goes through the water.

As Willard notes in his narration "Everyone wanted him dead, him most of all. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from." This ties back into Willard's encounter with Roach back at Do Lung Bridge. When Roach was asked if he knew who was in charge and simply said "yeah" he was referring to the jungle, not to any human tasked with organizing the men. Willard also embraces this same idea. He notes that "everyone wanted him dead" but it is the "jungle" that seems to finally convince him to go through with the task. Instead of simply stepping off the boat, Willard dives into the river and emerges now a warrior of the jungle, not particular to any one nation.

Willard moves toward Kurtz and proceeds to do what the entire film has built up to him being responsible for doing: killing Kurtz. Willard approaches Kurtz, though taking him somewhat by surprise and thus failing to give him the dignified death he desired. Willard proceeds to slash at Kurtz repeatedly, all intercut with shots of the slaughter of a water buffalo. As Kurtz falls to the ground, he utters one final line that describes everything he has seen in his life before he dies: "the horror, the horror." Willard leaves the compound, encountering Lance whom he takes by the hand as both return to the patrol boat.

The film ends as the two remaining men begin their journey back to what might once have been considered "civilization" but neither one is in any position to be going back. Willard knows there is nothing left for him, and Lance is left in a confused state of mind not unlike that of Willard in the film's opening moments. These two men may still be alive and the job may be done, but this is far from a happy ending. For both the survivors, there is nothing to go back to. Even when and if they ever leave Vietnam, they will never truly leave behind the horrors they have endured in the war. Lance is starting to end up in a similar position to where Willard was at the beginning, but Willard himself has gone even further. For him there is no escaping the horror. In a way, he is starting to become a new Colonel Kurtz, beginning to understand how he was affected and why he changed the way he did. 

In the end, questions of what defines sanity are raised. Willard may be the sanest person in the film and even he is clearly in need of psychiatric treatment. Ultimately, the entire war is insane, and everybody involved only serves to emphasize that point. Everyone in the film is forced to confront the insanity of war one way or another, and each reacts differently, but only a handful of people can truly grasp the chaos and the madness and learn to confront it. As Kurtz himself describes it: 

"Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror, and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."