The movie “Apocalypse Now”

The movie “Apocalypse Now” is considered to be of the greatest movies not only about the Vietnam War, but also one of the best movies that described the psychological and personal side of the war witness and participant in the world cinematography.  Making the movie, Coppola faced a lot of difficulties and troubles, but still the work was done, despite enormous cases of tropical fever happened to the actors, huge expenses that could make him a bankrupt and awful, unbearable conditions in jungles, the place where the most of the movie takes place.  In 1980 Pauline Kael wrote, with some justice, “Trying to say something big, Coppola got tied up in a big knot of American self-hatred and guilt, and what the picture boiled down to was: White man -- he devil.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum “Now and then” Chicago Reader 11/2001)custom essays

The idea of making an epic, all evolving movie about the war was  well-realized by Coppola, because the mass public needed to see what this dark page in the American military and social life was about, to feel the core of the tragedy and better understand those returned form the war.

As Norris Margot says: “Francis Ford Coppola rejected historical verisimilitude and reference when making his Vietnam War film ‘Apocalypse Now.’ Instead, he chose the mythical approach of modernism. In fact, the film’s many surrealistic scenes and moments give a strong insight into the incomprehensibility of the Vietnam War. Coppola clearly recognizes that the film is not war, or a simulation, but a representation that must problematize itself. The film played a key role in forcing Americans to reconsider events in Vietnam.” (Norris, Margot.  “Modernism and Vietnam: Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now.’” (Modernisms and Modern Wars) Modern Fiction Studies v44, n3 (Fall, 1998):730 (37 pages))

Truth on Film French director Francois Truffaut once said, “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between” and what Coppola pictured was a real truth, it was even more realistic that anyone could imagine.

The main point I want to highlight is that this great and terrific movie, primary made as an anti-war movie, hadn’t even a hint on such a thing as morality and ethics in war time, which gives it a lot of truthfulness to the movie but at the same time makes it bloody and cruel.  “The hard-boiled hero in Apocalypse Now, however, lacks the moral certainty of his American model, and lives to see his ideal exposed as corrupt.” (Hellman, John. “Vietnam and the Hollywood Genre Film: Inversions of American Mythology in The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.” American Quarterly, vol. 34 no. 4. 1982 Fall. pp: 418-439.)

The plot is quit mosaic: officer Willard is ordered to be sent to Cambodian jungles to “solve the issue” with renegade Colonel Kurtz, who established some kind of a kingdom in the virgin jungles of Mekong and organized a well-armed army from the local aborigine tribe, who worship him like god. Willard agrees, fulfills his duty and returns back.

The atmosphere of the movie can not be reproduced in common words, but to understand the characters better it’s just enough to quote the words of the main heroes, how the war changed them:

“Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said ‘yes’ to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now. I’m waiting for a mission - getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.” (Willard)

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream, it’s my nightmare. Crawling, slipping along the edge of a straight razor and surviving....But we must kill them, we must incinerate them, pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army, and they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie, for those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them.” (Colonel Kurtz)

But the whole movie has much more to say, then to depict this quiet usual war-time situation. There is a proverb “A fish rots from the head”, in this case it rots from inside. Willard hadn’t any way, but to give agreement for this task. Looking through the profile of the colonel, a successful military man in the past, physic and rioter in the present, and dead one in future, Willard perfectly understood his victim, and more over he agreed with the rioting colonel. The war that had no idea, was fought by unwilling soldiers, who were ruled by unqualified commanders and more over by unqualified politicians, broke and destroyed the existed personality, it released the hidden savage and beast, that is lying in the bottom of everyone’s soul and that makes an animal and a human similar. And colonel was such one, Vietnam changed him forever, made him different and the only way he had is to become one of them, one of the enemies he fought against and he changed his broken by war life on worshiping of wordless people, on power and hidden fear.

The atmosphere of the war in Vietnam can not be transmitted by similar picture and scenes of typical movies, that’s why Coppola uses surrealistic effects, Vagner’s music (“the flight of the Volkirias”), napalm effects, blood and pains, that make every spectator to be a witness of that terrible and awful events and go through that purgatory and hell.

The core of the Vietnam is getting brighter when Willard at least reaches the “kingdom” of colonel Kurtz. Kurtz realized his situation quite well and he understood that once the end will be put to his rebelling behavior, if not when Willard came than later. That’s why he didn’t kill Willard, who came on a boat, but had long conversations with him, and at the end he gave Willard the axe to kill him. Understandably that this murder crossed out all the life of Willard, and he never remained the same he had been before.

Coppola’s movie brought to the mass spectators the realities and horrors of the Vietnam War, the shock and stress standed by the veterans of this war and gave the explanation to the vets of the reasons of psychological sickness they had when returning back to peaceful life back in the USA. The darkness of the war that covered the hearts of the soldiers was shown through the episode with colonel Kurtz and captain Willard.

But despite all the horror and massacre described the idea of the movie remains as it was first set by Coppola, to show the immorality of the war and to make the man think about it in future, to give something to think about when one will decide to solve a problem by the military way.