film/movie review: September 2008 Archives

A quote from General Corman in Apocalypse Now:

There's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature.'

Every man has a breaking point. You and I have. Walt Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane.

That quote refers to a man reaching his mental breaking point. I've reached a different breaking point: my heart is broken.

You can't die of a broken heart. (Or so they say.) Psalm 147 says: "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." So it would seem, there is hope.

Regarding the film (which I've seen several times over the years), I've never considered what it was that supposedly made Kurtz go crazy .. until now.

I mean, they paint him (played by Marlon Brando) as a stud, both mentally and physically. But if you watch the film, I think you'll agree the thing that made him snap was .. being subject to a dysfunctional system.

Finally finished watching All the King's Men last night. Near the end, Jude Law performs the following voiceover (while playing solitaire). He speaks quietly, solemnly:

"After any great trauma, or crisis, after the shock subsides and the nerves stop twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things, because you know that all possibility of any more change has been used up.

You've seen the pattern finally, because you've stepped back far enough to take in the whole picture."

He gets up and walks to the window, where outside it's pouring rain. The voiceover continues as the sound of rain becomes prominent.

"But it's too late now .. to do anything except accommodate yourself to it. And that's it. There's nothing left to do, or say, except that God and nothing have a lot in common. The end."

Imagine a man you've never met, walks up and proceeds to (methodically) mount a bazooka on a tripod right in front of you, and then carefully aims the crosshairs at your heart before squeezing the trigger ..

.. and you have an idea of how I feel. Defeated, broken. Hollow. Dazed & confused (literally). Not good. It's not the end of the world. (Only feels like it.)

I watched a little of All the King's Men last night, before bed. One scene stood out (as if it were speaking to me), where Sean Penn is devastated by an injustice, while trying to do the right thing, and a man asks him, "What are you gonna do?"

And he answers (unsteadily, as if he's trying to talk himself into it), "I'm gonna keep the faith." Today I know that unsteady feeling.

There is definitely a temptation to "give up" .. to stop caring (because it hurts too much & all hope seems lost). But I don't think I am capable of that.