Reflections on “Apocalypse Now”
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola
Starring Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall and Marlon
Brando
A video presentation of this material is available here.
At the height of the
Vietnam war, American officer Captain Benjamin Willard is called to a meeting with
his superiors, the upshot of which is that he is assigned the mission of terminating
the command of American Colonel Walter Kurtz who has established what amounts
to a renegade militia in Cambodia and is using methods his commanding officers
find questionable and run contrary to their moral and ethical standards.
Willard is to follow the course
up the Nung river taken by Kurtz and, en route to his base, Willard will encounter
what Kurtz experienced on his journey and will develop an understanding of his
prey’s character, reasoning and evolution. As will we, the audience.
Willard is a capable and
experienced officer but he is profoundly troubled. Through a brilliant series
of vignettes, we are given to understand that he has seen much action, violence
and destruction, and that he may have lost perspective on what he has gone
through and what life can mean. He has lived at such a heightened pace and
level of adrenalin that he can no longer cope with civilian life, or indeed
peace and quiet at all. He is almost detached from regular life and needs to be
surrounded by threat and action to feel alive and have purpose, and that is
when he copes best.
Willard’s skills and
mindset make him the perfect weapon or tool to carry out the mission to
eliminate the Colonel who is causing embarrassment by not adhering to the
military’s code of ethics and conduct. Kurtz is accused of murder and using
methods that raise doubts about his very sanity. Willard’s superiors use
reasoned argument and legalistic language to justify their position and the
action they are sanctioning, and they are apparently unaware of their own
hypocrisy and fail to recognise the irony in the fact that they are
commissioning a murder in response to their dismay at the murders committed by
Kurtz. The bottom line is that Kurtz is to be assassinated because he has taken
the military imperative to destroy the enemy to heart and is using what he
considers the most effective methods and means to achieve that goal, but
methods and means not in keeping with the veneer of respectability military
command wishes to maintain.
Using a navy patrol boat
and its crew, Willard makes his way up the Nung River to reach Kurtz and his
base. As they travel ever farther from what is familiar and accepted, they go
more deeply into waters and experiences that test their mettle and also their
perceptions of warfare, civilisation and humanity. The farther they go, the
less rules of engagement, order and sanity seem to apply.
They come across Lt Col
Kilgore who will help relay them upriver. In order to do so, he and his
airborne forces attack and destroy a seemingly peaceful and idyllic coastal
village, principally because of the good surfing conditions in the waters
nearby.
This sequence imparts the
devastation, agony and chaos of battle quite brilliantly. The sudden contrast
between the relaxed calm of everyday life and the indiscriminate destruction
inflicted by military forces is quite breath-taking and totally engaging in its
intensity and unpredictability. Like those involved in the action, our senses
are assaulted and we don’t know what will happen next, leaving us quite
disorientated. We are starting to share some of the experiences, thoughts and
feelings Willard and Kurtz might have known.
The single greatest
source of calm, composure and clarity of purpose in this action is Kilgore, an
officer so immersed in and conditioned by warfare, violence and bloodshed that
he has become desensitised to battle, danger and suffering. The authority to
make life-and-death decisions for others, combined with the ease of their
implementation, with little or no apparent control over his actions, has
undoubtedly affected his judgement and his attitude toward responsibility and
humanity. Perhaps in an effort to impose sanity on his circumstances, or to
find a way to survive and cope mentally, he appears to have lost focus on
purely military objectives and has personalised his mission, focusing on
opportunities for surfing and opting not to see potential danger in indulging
this activity. He is a good officer in terms of organisation and the mechanics
of command, but he appears to have lost sight of the bigger picture.
Willard and the boat crew
make a stop to pick up supplies and they are surprised to find the post bathed
in light, with troops gathered in noisy and good-hearted anticipation in a
specially built amphitheatre overlooking a water-borne stage set for a show.
There is great excitement and a request for fuel by a member of Willard’s crew
is ignored in favour of the selling of souvenirs, causing the professional and
highly focused Willard to lose his temper and threaten the offending soldier.
Shortly afterward, a helicopter deposits three Playboy Playmates of the month
to dance for and entertain the troops, leading to a breakdown in discipline,
general chaos and the hurried departure of the girls and the helicopter. This
also leads to a brief meditation by Willard on how the enemy receives no such
treats and is hardened and more focused as a result. This is one of several instances
of implied criticism of the incorporation of entertainment and home culture in
the daily lives of young conscripted soldiers in the struggle to defeat a
determined, focused and enduring enemy.
When they reach Do Lung,
the last American outpost on the river, they are confronted with scenes of
sheer chaos, fear and bewilderment, with soldiers driven by the fundamental
desire to survive. There is a repeated and existentially wearing cycle of
action with a bridge being built or repaired during the day, only to be damaged
or destroyed at night. There appears to be no chain of command and little
clarity of purpose or order. In military terms, it is directionless and a
stalemate, while in human terms it borders on nihilism and depression with
soldiers left to question the purpose and point of their presence there and
their lives reduced to relying on instinct to survive and destroy the enemy.
Willard sees and
experiences all this but Kurtz saw it before him. Being a professional, Willard
wants to know his target and so he studies and shares details of Kurtz’s career
with us. Destined for one of the top positions in the military, Kurtz
effectively renounced promotion to join Special Forces when he was 38. He put
personal conviction and action above career, perhaps believing he could achieve
more in the field than from a desk. Willard appears to admire him and, in
following in his footsteps, is learning to understand him and how he reached
this position.
There is minor conflict
between Willard and the Chief, who is nominally in charge of the boat. The Chief
understands and follows regular orders but he is very apprehensive of people
like Willard as he senses danger and threat in him. As they approach Kurtz’s
base, the boat and crew are attacked by tribesmen throwing sticks and the odd
spear. The Chief is fatally wounded by one of these spears but before he dies,
he tries to kill Willard by pulling him on to the spear head protruding from
his chest, perhaps because, by instinct, the Chief hopes that this cycle of
death will be halted if he stops Willard and his like. It is ironic that
Willard has similar feelings toward Kurtz and is set on taking similar action.
Within Kurtz’s camp, all
trappings of civilisation have been abandoned. All of Kurtz’s followers have
suffered the psychological horrors we have encountered on our journey to the
camp and life has been reduced to death or survival, with Kurtz deciding people’s
fates. He is accepted as leader perhaps because of his purity of purpose and
his ruthlessness, and he rules by fear and dread.
Eventually, Kurtz offers
an explanation for his methods. After immunising some children in a village,
the enemy arrived and, to show displeasure and enforce compliance, they hacked
off the arms of the children who had been immunised. It was at this point that
Kurtz had an epiphany – the only way to defeat such an enemy was to apply the
same strength of purpose and have the strength to manipulate horror in your own
favour. Thus, conflict is stripped of all niceties, facades and pretences at
standards and morality in favour of the purity of horror as the ultimate weapon
and means of destroying your enemy.
Kurtz could easily have
had Willard killed but instead he engages in a vaguely philosophical discussion
with him. Perhaps Kurtz views him as an equal and wishes to receive his understanding
and approval, or perhaps he sees himself in Willard and recognises the validity
of his mission and Willard’s right to exercise his judgement just as Kurtz had
done.
The imagery is clear when
Willard kills Kurtz. Kurtz is being brutally sacrificed to protect and maintain
the façade of civilised warfare. He was a good soldier and as such became a
product and perhaps victim of his own profession, as he took his task to its
logical conclusion rather than playing the game expected of him.
After killing Kurtz, Willard
re-emerges to face the horde of Kurtz’s followers. As Willard drops his weapon,
both physically and symbolically, the followers drop theirs and they appear
ready to accept him as their new leader, but Willard gets in the boat to leave.
Having followed Kurtz’s path and shown the same strength, determination and
occasional ruthlessness as Kurtz, he could easily have taken on his mantle.
However, Willard has stated he is no longer part of the military, perhaps
implying he has developed beyond their code of conduct, or even that he no
longer recognises authority. He lacks the ambition, drive and ego of Kurtz and,
more importantly, he may have developed an existential understanding beyond
that of Kurtz and he sees that only by laying down his weapons and allowing
people to lead their own lives will the ceaseless cycle of bloodshed and
dependence come to an end. Kurtz has therefore also been sacrificed on the
altar of peace and freedom.
If an acceptable
definition of art is “an attempt to convey concepts, ideas and emotions,
typically through words, images or sound, in a concise and engaging manner”,
then “Apocalypse Now” is, for me, a work of art. The storyline and imagery lend
themselves to an onslaught on the senses and the mind, leading the viewer down
the same existential path as Willard and Kurtz and allowing us to understand
this descent into murder and mayhem while warning us off this road.
My thanks for taking the
time to read this article. I hope you found it of some value.
Stuart Fernie
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