A big theme from O'Brien that echoes in this film is PTSD. The episode in the beginning of the film has PTSD written all over it. The flashbacks were portrayed to be extremely vivid, which drives the Captain to punch a mirror and injure himself. At the end of this episode he is ordered to carry out a special operation. Its what he wanted, to be back in the jungle (Vietnam) but its also what he did not need at the time. He needs help. This mission would not help him it would hurt him even more, psychologically.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Cloudy Day
In Apocalypse Now it easy to see how Captain Willard basically is insane. In the beginning of the movie, in the hotel in Saigon, Willard is struggling to grasp reality in many ways. He talks about how when he was out on the battlefield all he wanted was to be back at home with his wife but when he was with his wife all he wanted was to be back out on the battlefield. In the movie he is asked to kill a US colonel. I believe this shook up Williard even more because he had been ordered to kill VC soldiers his whole time in Vietnam and now he is asked to kill an American, an important American soldier at that.
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It's rather odd that since I've probably read "The Things They Carried" around 3 and a half times, and the movie twice (or so I believe), It's never struck me that the men featured in these pieces need help, allbeit you're completely right in thinking that, it's just never struck my mind before! Anyways, I’d have to definitely agree with you on the terms that this movie displays a direct message of what PTSD is like. A man fighting to hold onto his previous life as he longs for his past at war, only problem is I continue to fail to see O’Brien’s depictions of (hardcore) PTSD in his writings, but I suppose PTSD isn’t always the worst thing you can imagine.
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