Wow, one of the greatest films ever made has been translated and dubbed into Armenian. Apocalypse Now is showing on Armenian Public TV as I type this post. Given Armenian TV’s obsession with garbage, who’d have thunk it?

Apocalypse Now is a thematically rich film. The primary motif is the same as in Heart of Darkness, i.e., an Odyssey in the epic tradition of Homer and the Orpheus myth into the dark side of the human soul. The secondary motif of the duality of man is illustrated by the conflict between Kurtz and Willard, and is made explicit in the Redux cut through the added line “You are both: one that kills and one that loves.”

[…]

Today, the film is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. It is on the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies list at number 28. Kilgore’s quote “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” was number 12 on the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes list. In 2002, Sight and Sound magazine polled several critics to name the best film of the last 25 years and Apocalypse Now was named number 1. The film is also ranked number 37 on imdb.com’s Top 250 movies list, with an overall rating of 8.4 out of 10.

Personally, any movie that has The End by The Doors played in its entirety has got to be something special.

Structurally, the song rises to three separate mini-crescendoes separated by slower sections of half-spoken, half-sung lyrics before building to an enormous psychedelic crescendo right after Jim Morrison sings the “meet me at the back of the blue bus” verse. Previously, the song had been weaving along on its melodies to an encounter with the ruling powers of the mind, the controlling “father” structure and the longed-for “mother”, or freedom. The final crescendo represents an attempt to break through to that freedom. Just afterward, “The End” departs on a wistful, post-orgasmic note when Morrison sings, “It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me. The end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die.” In the context of Morrison’s first interpretation quoted above, this lyric and the associated music that softly reiterates themes from the opening may mean that the comfort of childhood will be sacrificed for freedom.

[…]

“The End” was famously used as a framing device for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, in which its dark, poetic passage marked the film’s descent into the surreal. (The sound of helicopter rotors from the beginning of the film are often included in recordings of the song.)

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…strangers hand
In a…desperate land

Lost in a roman…wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the king’s highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake…he’s old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest

The blue bus is callin us
The blue bus is callin us
Driver, where you taken us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and…then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door…and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother…i want to…f*** you

Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
Cmon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin a blue rock
Cmon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

As for other films I’d like to see translated into Armenian, how about Citizen Kane, The Shining, and Dr. Strangelove. Incidently, there’s some great Apocalypse Now reviews here and here, which reminds me. The End has got to go on my iPod along with the Six String Quartets by Béla Bartók for when Yerevan gets too much.