To be completely honest, Apocalypse Now
is not a film that I'm particularly keen
on talking about, not because it's bad or
anything. On the contrary, Apocalypse Now
is a movie that is so good that no words can
fully describe how good it is. It's
something that has to be experienced
firsthand. In fact, it's so good that I
would probably place it among the ten
best films I've ever seen.
Granted, I only first saw it a few years
ago, so, as I was getting ready to discuss
this one, I was wondering if perhaps the
film's critically acclaimed status
influenced my original impression of it.
But no, upon rewatching it, it is every bit
as great as I remember it. For those who
aren't familiar,
this is a film about the Vietnam War, but
it is important not because of what it
says about Vietnam, but rather because of
what it says about war in general.
Over the course of the film's long and
troubled production history, director
Francis Ford Coppola attempted to place
within the film everything that he
believed could be said about the war, and
as a result, one discovers upon watching
it the complex range of ideas presented,
even further complicated by the many
different interpretations different
critics have offered on the film. Here I
want to present some of the various
ideas explored in the film and for the sake
of both newcomers and returning fans, to
provide a coherent picture of what the film
ultimately says about war, evil, and human
nature. The best starting point for
interpreting Apocalypse Now is to
consider its inspirations: the film has
literary origins in Joseph Conrad's 1899
novel "Heart of Darkness", which follows
a steamboat captain as he heads down
the Congo into the heart of Africa
searching for a manager named Kurtz.
Apocalypse Now borrows the basic structure
and plot of Conrad's novella, but
transports the captain's journey into a
river in Vietnam during the war, but
instead of seeking to do business with
Kurtz, he is instead under orders from
the government to assassinate him.
However, film critic German E. Vargas
discusses the issue of regarding
Apocalypse Now as an adaptation.
What Vargas
is saying here is that Apocalypse Now is
essentially an amalgamation of different
cultural sources.
Aside from the novella, the film
incorporates anecdotes from Michael
Herr's memoir "Dispatches" and stylistic
elements from the German film "Aguirre,
the Wrath of God", which also follows a
group of men traveling down a river and
moving closer and closer to madness. But
although it cannot be considered an
adaptation, "Heart of Darkness" remains
crucial to addressing the film's
political statements and the way that it
deals with its mysterious central figure
Kurtz. Within "Heart of Darkness",
Kurtz stood as an emblem of British
imperialism, containing within him all of
the goods and evils of the "white man's
burden" model of thinking, and if you're
unfamiliar with all of that stuff, then,
well, unfortunately, that's a topic for me
to explain on another day. In Apocalypse
Now, though Kurtz can be seen as a
representation of a similar American
ideology: that of foreign interventionism.
Some have criticized the fact that none
of the Vietnamese characters have
speaking roles within the film, when in
fact, the Vietnamese are portrayed as
silent because of the film's psychological
nature: here they are projection
constructed from the country's
collective memories of the war,
suggesting that perhaps the war was
mistake because it was more about us
than it was about them. But as I've said
before, the film is not just about the
Vietnam War:
it's about war in general, and if you
look further into it, the human psyche as well.
Francis Ford Coppola's wife even
described the film as "a metaphor for the
journey into the self." I know I've used
Roger Ebert quotes a lot in the past but
here I really think that he gets to the
bottom of the central idea of the entire film:
In this film, Kurtz begins as a noble man, an ideal man, even,
but once he's exposed to the horrors of
war, his philosophies turn against him.
What he realizes is that
war may be fought over ideologies, but
ultimately wars are decided not by the
strength of the ideology, but by the
brute force of those involved, and that
to be successful in war, one must abandon
moral judgment and embrace the primitive
instinct to kill without mercy.
"You have to have men... who are moral... and at
the same time, who are able to... utilize their
primordial instincts to kill without
feeling, without passion, without judgment.
Without judgment, because it's judgment
that defeats us." Hence, in the thick of
battle, despite the emphasis that we
Americans place on principles, ideology
becomes irrelevant and the issue becomes
one of killing or being killed. This
instinct lies buried within all of us,
but most of us have not been forced into
situations where this instinct must surface.
In confronting Kurtz, the film's protagonist
Captain Wheeler confronts that instinct
within himself and rejects it. Kurtz is
painted out as alluring and desirable,
but there is no deception. Instead, Kurtz
is presented as a brutal and
uncomfortable truth of man's innately
vicious nature, a nature that we must
all try to fight. "Because there's a
conflict in every human heart... between
the rational and irrational, between good and evil,
and good does not always triumph. Every man has
got a breaking point.
You and I have one. Well, Kurtz has reached his."
It's easy to see apocalypse now as an
anti-war film, but many critics have also
interpreted it as a pro-war film. For me,
it's a bit of both: war, as described by
the film, is evil because it turns men
into animals. And yet, at the same time, it's
sometimes a necessary evil.
Hence, the film withdraws from any
particular political stance, instead
choosing to simply observe and describe
the past as best it can. But beyond the
profound themes the film contains, the
film's true greatness relies in how it's
constructed as an experience for the
viewer: which, referring back to the
beginning of the review, is something
that can only be understood by watching
it. At the film's close, we have gone
through the jaws of hell, and we have
confronted the heart of darkness at the
climax of the film's narrative, but we
ultimately emerged victorious. Yet like
returning from war,
it is a victory that comes with a price.
The lesson that we have learned about
ourselves and the world we live in
will haunt us, and the things that we've
seen cannot be unseen; the things that we
have done cannot be undone.
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