Apocalypse Now (1979) Analysys; The Do Lung Bridge

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mANbl6QX9okP)

In terms of cinematography, this scene is probably one of the best in the whole film. Copola's expert use of lights helps to turn the scene from a straight-up battle into a surreal, seemingly drug-induced fantasy world.

The audience's first view of the bridge, a brightly-lit outpost framed by total darkness, serves to set the scene. In addition to being framed by spotlights, flares, party lights, and explosions give the bridge a fantastical quality, almost like an acid trip. Since Lance confides to Chef that he'd just dropped a tab of acid, it's likely that this was the view that Copola was going for. The scene quickly reenters the darkness, lit only by the occasional roving spotlight and quickly alternating between light and shadow. The shadowy, buring-out husks of helecopters only add to surreal, unearthly feel the audience is experiencing.

This feeling quickly reaches it's high point in one of the best sequences of shots in the entire film, as Willard and Lance make their way into the battle zone searching for a commanding officer. They first advance through a hazy wood lit only by fires and a far-off search light, then make their way to the edge of the bridge; a broken landscape of concrete and rebar sticking wildly into the air. The entire sequence is lit only by roving searchlights, random explosions, and the Christmas lights hanging over the bridge. The effect is that the audience feels that it is the midst of a war zone, not in Veitnam, but in some desolate, post-apocalyptic future. The sequence actually reminds me of the future scenes from the first Terminator film. Even more striking is that, except for a few random seconds, Lance and Willard are seen only in shadow, rarely in the light. It's as if they aren't really there, as if none of this is really here, it's just some drug-induced fantasy and soon we'll wake up or crash or whatever and rejoin the sanity of the real world.

The use of shadows and spotlights continues throughout the rest of the scene, but the first few moments are definitely the best and most representative of this style of bizarre and unsettling. cinematography.