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Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” was inspired by Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad about a European called Kurtz who penetrated to the farthest reaches of the Congo and established himself like a god. A boat is sent to locate him, and as it travels, the narrator gradually loses faith in organized society. He is oppressed by the weight of the jungle all around him, a ruthless Darwinian experimentation site where each living thing strives every day to avoid being eaten.
At the conclusion of the trip, what is discovered is less about Kurtz than it is about what Kurtz discovered, which is that all of our days and ways are fragile structures perched uncomfortably atop the hungry jaws of nature that will carelessly devour us. A happy existence offers daily relief from this realization.
I was in Calcutta a week ago, where I saw miles and miles of squatter camps where hundreds of thousands live in filthy huts made of cardboard, plastic, and scrap metal with no chance of escape from their abject poverty. I don’t intend to compare those people’s suffering to a movie; that would be offensive. But what I saw left me incredibly shaken, and I came to understand how fragile and priceless a happy existence is. When I got to the scene where Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) tells Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) about “the horror,” I was in the right frame of mind to view “Apocalypse Now.”
One of the finest soldiers in the Army and a decorated hero, Kurtz has built a jungle haven upriver in enemy territory where he commands Montagnard tribespeople as his personal army. “This old man came running after us and he was crying, he couldn’t see,” he says, describing a time when his Special Forces soldiers immunized a village’s children against polio. When we returned, every limb that had been immunized had been cut off. They were piled up there in a pile of little limbs.
Kurtz discovered that the Viet Cong were more determined to succeed than they were, saying, “Then I understood they were stronger than we. They are strong enough to accomplish that. We would have a fast end to our problems if I had ten divisions of those men. It is necessary to have individuals who are moral while also being able to use their instincts to kill without hesitation, passion, or conscience. This is the “horror” Kurtz has discovered, and it poses a danger to also engulf Willard.
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The entire film is a voyage to help Willard comprehend how Kurtz, one of the Army’s top soldiers, became so deeply immersed in the reality of war that he was unable to continue looking without going insane and losing hope.
One of the most eerie film conclusions ever created is a poetic allusion to what Kurtz has learned and what we hope not to learn for ourselves. Huge expectations are raised about Kurtz during the river trip, and Brando delivers. However, it’s obvious he was the right choice, not only because of his iconic status but also because of his voice, which enters the movie from darkness or half-light and repeats the words of T.S. Eliot’s dejected “The Hollow Men” poem. His casting was criticized when the movie was released in 1979, and his enormous $1 million paycheck was much discussed. The tone of the movie is established by that sound.
The photojournalist (Dennis Hopper), who managed to locate Kurtz’s camp and remained there stoned as a witness, is another crucial component of the conclusion. Kurtz is “a poet-warrior in the classic sense,” he blathers to Willard, and “we’re all his children.” If you can maintain your head when all around you… I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floor of a silent sea… “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floor of a silent sea,” the photographer must have heard Kurtz recite in the photographer’s disjointed rants. Between Willard and Kurtz, the camera serves as the mediator, the clown, and the fool.
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Why has “Apocalypse Now” been plagued by rumors that Coppola was not satisfied with this conclusion for such a long time? I witnessed the commotion start at the Cannes screening of the movie. Coppola initially planned on screening the film as a 70mm roadshow without titles. (they would be printed in a booklet). The 35mm version, however, would require end titles. The Philippine government ordered Coppola to blow up the enormous Kurtz compound set after he had done filming there, and he captured the process on camera. Despite the fact that he did not plan for the compound to be destroyed as an alternate “ending” to the movie, he chose to use this footage over his final 35mm credits. Unfortunately, the misunderstanding surrounding the conclusions from Cannes permeated the film world, and the majority of people believed that by “ending” he meant all of the Kurtz-related content. Coppola carefully explains everything again in the 20th anniversary DVD release.
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Apocalypse Now is undoubtedly one of the most important movies of the century when rewatched after a 20-year gap. The majority of movies are fortunate to have one standout scene. The river trip serves as a connecting thread as “Apocalypse Now” ties its various scenes together one after another. The best is when Col. Kilgore’s (Robert Duvall) helicopters attack a Vietnamese hamlet, playing Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” over loudspeakers as they swoop down on a schoolyard full of students. I adore the smell of napalm in the morning is one of Duvall’s most memorable lines, which earned him an Oscar nomination. He is an avid surfer who only agrees to the assault to free a beach that is rumored to have great waves (“Charlie don’t surf”). His emptiness is frightening.
The patrol boat stops a tiny fishing boat with a family on board in another scene. The entire family is killed when the jittery machine-gunner (a juvenile Laurence Fishburne) opens fire in response to a child’s sudden dash. It turns out the girl was chasing her dog when she ran. The mother is not completely gone. She is to be taken for medical attention, according to the boat captain (Albert Hall). Nothing can stop Willard from shooting her; he completes his objective. The only two experienced military personnel on the boat are him and “Chief,” who are both attempting to follow the rules. Later, in a scene of unusual power, the chief is shocked to be killed by a spear.
The scenes in the movie that stand out to me the most are when Willard’s crew member Chef (Fredric Forrest) insists on going into the jungle in search of mangoes. Willard follows him because he can’t be stopped. They are depicted by the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro as tiny human specks at the base of enormous trees; this is a Joseph Conrad scene that demonstrates how nature dwarfs us.
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The Doors’ “The End” serves as the film’s opening and closing musical selections, and transistor radio disc DJs can be heard saying, “Good morning, Vietnam!” during the film. When one of Willard’s crew members, Lance (Sam Bottoms), waterskis behind the boat, the soundtrack highlights the surrealistic nature of the situation. It also demonstrates how the troops attempt to alleviate their loneliness and anxiety by using domestic music, alcohol, and drugs.
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A number of other significant movies, including “Platoon,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Full Metal Jacket,” and “Casualties of War,” adopt different tacks when addressing Vietnam. I once watched five North Vietnamese films about the conflict at the Hawaii Film Festival. (They never mentioned “America,” only “the enemy,” and one director told me, “It is all the same–we have been invaded by China, France, the U.S. . . .”) However, “Apocalypse Now” is the best Vietnam movie and one of the best movies ever made because it goes beyond the other movies and explores the depths of the psyche. It is less about war than it is about how conflict reveals things we would prefer to remain ignorant of.
My thoughts since Calcutta have, in a manner I can’t quite put into words, prepared me to comprehend the horror that Kurtz discovered. If we’re fortunate, we get to live in a fool’s paradise and never realize how closely we’re straddling the edge of destruction. His realization of this is what pushes Kurtz insane.
Note: I cited French filmmaker Francois Truffaut in my initial review of “Apocalypse Now,” saying, “I demand that a film convey either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. Anything in the middle does not even remotely intrigue me. In “Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” a 1991 documentary about the making of “Apocalypse Now,” Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper reveal Coppola’s joy and agony through personal footage and journal entries by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, who secretly recorded Coppola expressing his doubts and discouragement as the project threatened to overwhelm him.
For more personality quizzes check this: Hotaru No Haka Quiz.
