The Michigan Daily-Tuesday, October 23, 1979-Page';
DESPITE PA YLESS PA YDA Y
Wayne workers still on the jobI
r
DETROIT (UPI)-Most workers in vital Wayne County
ETOIT UPMostyng wheobkdespiitls Wek'payneCout "If this hospital closes down because no one shows up f
agencies are staying on the job, despite last week's payless work, what would happen to our patients?,They could be o
payday. mothers or children, you know."
Council 25 of the American Federation of State, Country The br c ou ke s2.
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has urged its mem-
bers to keep working, pending the outcome of a suit on the cough up their property taxes early, but there appeared little
pay question. Aachance that would materialize.
But a spokesman for the council, which represents 4,000 Paychecksfor 3,350 clerks, secretaries, administrato4
county workers, said many employees already live from and elected officials were printed but not issued last week
payday to payday and simply can't afford to miss their and another 2,400 county workers face their first payless
paychecks. payday this week.
"WE'RE DEDICATED and in jobs that are important to About 800 employees were not affected by the county
the people we serve," said a Wayne County General Hospital fiscal crisis because their salaries are paid from federal
operator. ants.
.Down with billboards! AP Photo
A Maine state highway crew prepares to dismantle a billboard marking the beginning yesterday of enforcement of a
1977 state law banning unsightly billboards. A federal court upheld the law after a lengthy challenge from advertisers.
The state has agreed to buy 226 signs for an average of $3,200 a sign. The total bill comes to $3.5 million.
p
Fin ally..
(Continued from Page 7)
straight from "Heart of Darkness":
Willard (Martin Sheen), a burnt-outi
,.S. Army intelligence officer, is sent
ipriver from Saigon to Cambodia toi
4ssassinate Col. Walter Kurtz (MarlonI
Orando), a brilliant Green Beret officer;
Mho's gone insane, lording over the
neighborhood Montegnard tribesmenI
and turning them into a murderous ar-
my.
Conrad avoided easy moral formulas
by swathing his scheme in richly
meditative prose; Coppola attempts
something similar with his rich,
imagery and densely electronic soun-
dtrack. Looking at the violence and
atrocities, we're morally off-balance.
In the most horrifying scene, Willard
and his boat-mates (Sam Bottoms,
Larry .Fishbourne, Albert Hall, and
Frederic Forrest) massacre some
Vietnamese peasants aboard a sam-
pan; it's the perfect marriage of
ruthlessness and convenience. Later,
echoing that horror, Kurtz recounts a
story of how some Viet Cong entered a
South Vietnamese village, discovered
the children had just been innoculated
for polio, and cut off the innoculated
arms. "The gi'nihs of that," exclaims
Kurtz. "The will." In his murderous
temple, adorned by disembodied heads
and bathed in blood, Kurtz has staged
similar scenes; he's taken war to its
logical extreme, which makes him no
"crazier" than anyone else fighting the
war - just infinitely more efficient.
Apocalypse Now neither endorses nor
rejects that line of thinking. More to the
ijoint, it recognizes Kurtz' implications
as an historical reality. What nags at us
slightly is the feeling that' Coppola
didn't entirely trust his images to bring
across his ambivalence toward the
destruction in Vietnam. Willard's-
diary-like narration is a frustratingly
awkward attempt to spell out the film's
ambiguities in pat formulas - a self-
defeating proposition. Spoken by Sheen
in a jaded monotone, the narration is
occasionally illuminating; more often,
it reduces the movie's grandest
paradoxes to banal ironies. The Willard
character in "Heart of Darkness" was
named Marlowe; the Marlow Sheen
most resembles is Philip - Raymond
Chandler's burnt-out moralist of a
detective. With lines like, "Charging a
man with murder in this place was like
handing out speeding tickets at the Indy
500," Sheen sounds as if he's making
mental notes for some trashy novel he
intends to write upon returning to the
States.
.a Coppola now!
MICHAEL HERR, who wrote the
narration, must have known what he
was doing by making Sheen's journey
into a grand pulp-novel adventure fan-
tasy; unfortunately, his scheme works
against Coppola's abstract designs. The
whole feel of Apocalypse doesn't come
from dialogue, but from its visual tex-
tures and sounds: Landscapes ex-
ploding into flames, scary/seductive
whirring of helicopters. In fact, at its
best, the movie captures the fear/thrill
ambivalence of Dispatches, Herr's
superb journal of war reportage. The
book might have served as direct in-
spiration for scenes like a bump-and-
grind Playboy bunny show in a neon-lit
outdoor arena, which plunges
Americana at its gaudiest into the eerie
surroundings of a military nightmare.
The movie moves to even more crazed
heights; Willard seems to have reached
the eighth circle of chaos when he
comes upon a group of black soldiers,
firing into the darkness without benefit
of a commanding officer.
In his quest for the truly cosmic, Cop-
pola ignored some of his greatest
strengths as a filmmaker. Apocalypse
Now boasts not a single memorable
character. Sketchy characterizations
worked just fine for Conrad, of course,
and they work for Coppola, only one
can't help wishing we could care about
his crew of soldiers the way we care
about the Corleones, or about Gene
Hackman's forlorn wire-tapper in The
Conversation. The four young soldiers
on Willard's boat are defined by the
broadest generalization: This one's hot-
tempered, that one's a cut-up. Besides,
they start going insane before we get a
chance to know them.
COPPOLA, I believe, tried to take his
movie into a realm "beyond" charac-
ter. He fashioned a visionary spectacle
that becomes even less literal and more
metaphysical as the journey
progresses. When Willard finally
reaches Kurtz' murderous haven, the
images are so garishly morbid that one
thinks of the Jonestown atrocities. The
H AIRSTYLISTS
For Men, Women
and Children at
DeScels Stylists
Liberty off State-1-9329
EtU. at South U.-662-4354
Arborland-971-9975
Maple Village-761-2733
ultimate horror, though, is supposed to
be the elusive figure of Kurtz himself,
and Brando - though he gives a good
performance - is not as transcendently
evil as we might want.
Coppola obviously hoped that the ac-
tor's sheer physical presence could
bring Kurtz the same haunting mystery
that Klaus Kinski brought Herzog's
Aguirre. He doesn't. That's why the
final half hour never adds up to the sort
of magical epiphany we so desperately
want. Perhaps, like the handful of
visionary epic filmmakers before him,
Coppola set himself an impossible task.
But if true greatness eluded him with
Apocalypse Now, what's left is an ex-
traordinary document of both Vietnam
and a filmmaker's personal odyssey.
As such, it looms over every American
movie in recent memory.
t1~ ~oun
J
1k
tWe Courd
Presents
I-ETA-Pi contest
Prize is a Car
5-7pm Fri .Oct.26
Must be registered
by 4:00 at the bar.
(;
1140 S.University
668-8411
Mon.-Sat. 11am-2am Sun. 3pm-12am
V
Jvi
I
This little card is goingpae
-9 ~-
-.
saa
Michigan Union
_1auin Lobby _---=..
0 o S. University --
Madison Now you can use your
Ann Arbor Bank Money
North Campus Commons Machine Card at three new
Parking Lot Entrance
campus locations.
Murtin-) MIf you have an Ann Arbor Dank :loney Machine card, you can
do your personal banking business at three handy new locations.
Bonistee Blvd For your convenience. Ann Arbor Bank has installed automated
tellers on The ('niversity of Michigan campus. ou'l find the new
machines in place at the Michigan U nion, the North Campus Commons,
and-the Administrative Services Building at Hoover and Greene.
And even though they might say "Ready Teller," you can still
use 'Our Nloney Machine Card-the same card that fits our five other
Fuller Rd Glacier Way machines- -to make withdrawals, deposits, transfer funds, even pay bills.
Ann Arbor Bank and Trust. Finding new ways to make banking
more convenient for V'o().
OCTOBER 27, 1979
A CAREER CONFERENCE
FOR ACADEMIC WOMEN
University of Michigan LS 9 A / Rackham Ph.D. Programs
PRESENTED BY
HIGHER EDUCATION RESOURCE SERVICE
(HERS)
IN COOPERATION WITH
College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Horace H. Rackham School of
Graduate Studies. The Office of Career Planning and Placement the HERS
conference will emphasize the development of professional skills such as:
RESUME WRITING " INTERVIEWING " NEGOTIATING " MENTORING " DEVELOP-
ING PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS 0 DEVELOPING CAREER COOPERATIVES.
HERS Director Lilli Hornig and Associate Director Martha Tolpin will join with
I
I
Administrative Services Building
/h'or eStreet Entrance
Hoover St
I
I
Demonstrations will be held 10 a.m.-2 p.m. October 25 and
26 at Michigan Union and North Campus Commons; and October 31
and November 1 at Hoover and Greene.
D
r----.
0