Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a film set during the Vietnam War. A Special Forces Captain Willard is sent on a mission by the United States Army to assassinate an insane Colonel Kurtz, who has set up camp in Cambodia. Colonel Kurtz has become a God in the eyes of the natives who guard him and execute any of his commands. Kurtz ordered the assassination of three Vietnamese men and one woman. He also carried out Operation Archangel without clearance from the United States Army. The US Army considered him dangerous, because he had become a renegade fighting his own war and not theirs. Despite that his judgment on carrying out those missions was correct, the US Army still saw him as a danger to the war effort.

Captain Willard journeys up the Congo in a boat with four officers, who are all young with one foot in the grave, because they are in Vietnam. On his way up the Congo, he meets another Colonel, who is not wrapped too tight. His name is Colonel Kilgore and he enjoys the smell of napalm in the morning, loves to surf, and sees killing as an ordinary job that someone has to do to maintain the peace.

By the time Captain Willard makes it to Kurtz’s camp, he has lost two of the four officers that were on the boat with him. The enemy killed them. We are taken into Colonel Kurtz’s bizarre, maddening mind while we see him only in shadows. It appears that he has become monstrous and that he is aware of his own horror. One more officer is killed. Kurtz decapitates him. Captain Willard carries out his mission by bludgeoning Kurtz with a machete. The film ends with Captain Willard and the last surviving officer exiting the camp.

Francis Ford Coppola directed this film. He based it on the 1902 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The film went over its budget by 19 million dollars and took several months to shoot instead of weeks. Coppola had had success with Godfather I and Godfather II previous to the filming of Apocalypse Now. His concern in making this film was that he portrays the subject matter in its true light. To present it in its true light the film crew, actors, and Coppola himself had to experience their own madness while in its production.

Apocalypse Now was released in 1979 by MGM studios. The Deer Hunter and Coming Home were two films about Vietnam that were released in 1978. The closing of the decade signaled reflection on the Vietnam War by Americans. It was safe to do so now, as the film studios were all releasing their films about Vietnam. This was also a time when Americans were disillusioned with the government. It was a time after Nixon had been impeached due to the Watergate scandal.

The overt message in Apocalypse Now is that war is filled with horror and madness. Not only is war filled with horror and madness, but also it is sheer madness to execute a war knowing that innocent lives will be sacrificed. This film questions if there is a method to the madness or if it is not sheer terror that is the goal. The terror is to produce dominance over one another. That is not the goal of a sane person or country.

The implicit message is that the soldiers were sacrificial lambs for the US government like the cow is for Kurtz and his followers near the end of the film. They will devour that cow like the United States has devoured its youth to serve their own purpose and not the good of all involved.

Kurtz has set himself up in a camp in enemy territory to become a God just like the intervention of the United States into foreign affairs that have no concern to them. The United States has achieved God-status with foreign countries. Kurtz did not belong in Cambodia and the United States did not belong in Vietnam.

Captain Willard did not see any method to Kurtz’s madness. The United States lacked method when fighting the Vietnam War. Captain Willard’s quest up the Congo was to assassinate one of his own. The United States quest in Vietnam was to do the same.

There were parts of Apocalypse Now that appeared to be a spectacle, rather than a narrative. When Colonel Kilgore is commanding a squad of choppers to raid a Vietnamese village, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkynes is playing through the loudspeakers on the choppers. It is repulsive to see them glorifying their slaughtering of the Vietnamese peasants. It is not a positive statement about the United States war effort even though the Vietnamese killing of American soldiers is not shown.

Colonel Kurtz is also a spectacle. He is always shown in the shadows like some beastly creature. When he first reads from his poem book he appears to have some sanity, but that is fleeting as he decapitates Captain Willard’s crewmember. After that happens, it becomes necessary for Kurtz to be assassinated and any sympathy or understanding is thrown aside due to the fact that he appears to be a serial killer not in control of himself any longer.

The spectacle continues when we see Captain Willard prepping himself for the murder by taking a swim and arising with war paint on his face. He sneaks through the shadows. It appears that he, like Kurtz, has broken away from the program in his bludgeoning Colonel Kurtz to death with Kurtz’s full knowledge of the coming attack.

Apocalypse Now is a film that not only shows a portrait of the Vietnam War, but also the psyche of its soldiers who fought there. It is considered one of the greatest films of all times. It also shows us the politics that went on within the United States Army during the war. The images of fire and smoke across the landscape arise like a phoenix in the midst of a savage jungle. The film questions whether the vast loss of life and bombed out landscape was a means to peace or the means to dominance. War is a moral horror and it is to be feared or made friends with as Colonel Kurtz states.