Over the years many, including the late Roger Ebert, have labeled Apocalypse Now as the greatest of all war films, and among the greatest works of cinema. In the most recent Sight & Sound Critics Poll, Apocalypse Now ranked #14; Ebert himself included it on his ballot of the ten greatest films. On the Sight & Sound Directors Poll, Apocalypse Now ranked #6, earning votes from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Michael Mann. Interestingly, Apocalypse Now was voted ahead of Francis Ford Coppola‘s other masterpieces The Godfather and The Godfather Part II on both polls, which actually makes sense — unlike the AFI lists, which focus on film, the Sight & Sound polls measure cinematic worth and present it as a global medium. “Film,” “cinema,” “movie” — these are three terms that are often used interchangeably but actually have separate usages, at least when it comes to technical analysis. All three are technically all-inclusive: It is not incorrect to refer to any motion picture as a movie or a film, but eventually it becomes obvious after enough study that film refers more specifically to artistically valuable motion pictures, and not the movies that provide entertainment and a good time to audiences and financial gain to studios.
The realm of cinema, although also technically all-inclusive, is yet another step removed from the business of movies; in fact, it is wholly unconcerned with it. Rather, cinema is concerned with the form of motion pictures, which (as we sometimes forget) manipulate image and sound — or just image, in the case of silent films — into something approximating reality. Movies released by major Hollywood studios do not draw attention to this, and are not even concerned with broaching the subject — the studios are there to make money, and audiences aren’t interested in cinema, by and large: If pressed, the vast majority of filmgoers would reveal a vague awareness of the form of motion pictures, but would shrug at the notion that a movie that exists to challenge the form itself has much value or would be of any particular interest to sit through. Today, motion pictures can be grouped into these classes more easily than ever: most often, what can be filed under film gets promoted heavily by an Oscar campaign in order to leverage its financial potential, and every other wide release is simply a movie that its studio hopes will make hundreds of millions of dollars (or more). As for true cinema, it’s mostly off everyone’s radar, shown in art house theaters (except for in rare cases like when a well-known auteur like Paul Thomas Anderson or Terrence Malick releases a film).
Any proper discussion of Apocalypse Now must be framed with all this in mind. Casual moviegoers understand Apocalypse Now is an ambitious film — even as spectacle, its greatness translates easily from the screen during multiple sequences of astonishing vision like the legendary helicopter raid on the village that culminates in Colonel Kilgore’s (Robert Duvall) famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” line. Without a doubt, the first three-quarters of Apocalypse Now is terrific entertainment; most can live with the bizarre third act since the buildup is that fantastic. What casual moviegoers likely remain completely unaware of, however, is just how abstract the film is. The typical war film strives to, as best as it can, capture exactly what war is like in some manner — depending on which aspect of war is covered in the film — and convey it as directly to the audience as possible. Realism is king, and there are, of course, a great many movies that do this quite effectively, such as Saving Private Ryan and the most accurate Vietnam War film, Platoon. Both movies represented a great leap forward in terms of achieving “ground-level” realism in combat scenes and were narratively successful, as well, telling moving stories.
The narrative of Apocalypse Now is quite different from the ones presented in Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. At its core, the plot of Apocalypse Now is extremely straightforward — so much so, that my former screenwriting professor at the University of Miami used to repeatedly use it as an example of a central character’s quest. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is given a mission — to kill the mad Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) — and once he does so, the movie ends. In this sense, Apocalypse Now is certainly a typical narrative film, but it would absolutely be a mistake to label this movie as anything resembling orthodox. For one thing, Apocalypse Now isn’t the slightest bit realistic, which turns off many viewers who expect realism from war films. (And since it isn’t a comedy or satire, it’s easy to not quite know what to make of it, since it’s obviously a serious movie.) Instead of chronicling the lives of historical figures or showcasing the great battles of the war, from the outset Apocalypse Now is totally surreal. Yet because the Vietnam War was itself a complete fiasco, the film’s ridiculousness — at least in the first half — never seems overextended.
58,219 Americans died in the war, and for pretty much nothing. During the European rush to colonize every portion of the world, Vietnam fell under French control and was a part of their colony of Indochina, which also included Laos and Cambodia. In 1954, after the French were defeated by the Việt Minh at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, two countries were created, North Vietnam and South Vietnam; they were divided at the 17th parallel. Hồ Chí Minh’s communist North Vietnam immediately set about winning the hearts and minds of their countrymen to the south, who were governed by the US-backed Ngô Đình Diệm. At the time, the so-called “Domino Theory” was a real concern (or at least was perceived as a legitimate threat): If Soviet communism was allowed to spread to additional countries, more would fall under Soviet influence. As it turns out, communism doesn’t work so there ultimately wasn’t much need to worry, but the Soviets were our arch rival, and the Vietnam War became a proxy war; we may have been killing Vietnamese, but we were really fighting Russia (or at least their influence).
An insurgency group called the Việt Cộng (commonly referred to by American troops as “Victor Charlie” or simply “Charlie”) would prove to give us fits, and soon “search and destroy” missions became common, where Americans went from town to town, region to region, throughout South Vietnam to ferret out VC guerrillas who otherwise completely blended into the population and landscape. It proved to be a Sisyphean task — we’d find them (or the invading North Vietnamese Army) on a hill, waste time and energy taking the hill, then would leave only to find them back on the hill the next day. It was like police trying to keep dealers off a busy Baltimore drug corner on The Wire. It didn’t matter how many troops or how much firepower we threw at them, we never could make much of a dent in winning the Vietnam War, and there are several reasons for that. The South Vietnamese government was weak and without much of a cause or a charismatic leader that could match Hồ Chí Minh’s George Washington-like appeal for unification and independence. (Seriously, the South Vietnamese capital Saigon has since been renamed Ho Chi Minh City.) The South Vietnamese people wanted to be a unified Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese government didn’t want that so it could justify its own continued existence.
Our government wasn’t much better, of course. Back then, the draft was still in effect even during the peacetime years of the Cold War — Elvis Presley of all people was drafted in 1958 and served in Germany for two years — which seems laughable now. The Vietnam War was a deeply unpopular war as a result, with more than half a million US troops over there at the highest point, 25% of which were conscripted. Even most of those fortunate enough to not be drafted didn’t believe in the war. My dad served in the Navy for two years during the war (over in Europe, thankfully), and I can remember us sitting down to watch Platoon about ten years ago. When the film started, he turned to me, shook his head and said, “Can you imagine actually being sent into this thing?” At the time, the Iraq War was in full swing and was becoming another deeply unpopular quagmire. The only thing that saved it from reaching Vietnam’s level of unpopularity was the lack of a draft — something the United States did away with in 1973 when the Vietnam War came to a close. (I have a feeling the lack of protests on college campuses during the Iraq War compared to those held during the Vietnam War may have had something to do with that.)
Apocalypse Now never dives into any of the political aspects of the war at all. In fact, the characters are fictional and no major historical battles are shown or even referred to. Even the Nung River that Willard’s PBR (patrol boat, riverine) glides upon toward Kurtz’s rumored stronghold is entirely made up. In terms of depicting the Vietnam War exactly as it happened, the film is generally unconcerned with that, though it is true that the first half of Apocalypse Now does take place in Vietnam while the Vietnam War is going on. And in that respect, many of the details are accurate (or at least as accurate as you can expect a movie to be). The uniforms, the warfare, the tanks and choppers, hippie culture, the USO show — these are all things that were certainly part of the picture when it came to life in Vietnam as an American soldier. What Apocalypse Now does is slowly skew that everyday reality into something increasingly surreal: while it’s doubtful a helicopter squadron ever dropped napalm on a village just so they could go surfing, it is a thoughtful (if twisted) illustration of the vast waste of American military might and resources that were poured into this war.
As for the second half of the film, it bears no resemblance to anything that’s even close to reality. Once the trippy, nightmarish scene at the Do Lung Bridge concludes, it becomes apparent that the film is using the Vietnam War to frame a more abstract, philosophical narrative about the intersection of civilization and war. Ultimately, Apocalypse Now becomes a glimpse into what lies past that intersection (symbolized by a literal bridge): raw human psyche, unbound by its own unconscious in a setting where the laws of nature govern, not the laws of man. As the film’s third act comes into focus, this is personified through the character Kurtz, a man driven so mad by what lies beyond, he knows there is no coming back for him — civilized life simply has no meaning left once exposed to nature’s true state. Before I dive into a deeper analysis of Kurtz, I should point out that Apocalypse Now is adapted from Joseph Conrad’s classic 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, which I must confess I have not read. I will get out of the way and defer to Roger Ebert’s description of the tale’s arc and significance, since he explains it better than I can:
Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” was inspired by Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad about a European named Kurtz who penetrated to the farthest reaches of the Congo and established himself like a god. A boat sets out to find him, and on the journey the narrator gradually loses confidence in orderly civilization; he is oppressed by the great weight of the jungle all around him, a pitiless Darwinian testing ground in which each living thing tries every day not to be eaten.
What is found at the end of the journey is not Kurtz so much as what Kurtz found: that all of our days and ways are a fragile structure perched uneasily atop the hungry jaws of nature that will thoughtlessly devour us. A happy life is a daily reprieve from this knowledge. … If we are lucky, we spend our lives in a fool’s paradise, never knowing how close we skirt the abyss. What drives Kurtz mad is his discovery of this.
Roger’s excellent insight there that “what is found at the end of the journey is not Kurtz so much as what Kurtz found” indeed applies to Apocalypse Now, as well: throughout the film, Willard reads over documents contained within a classified dossier that describe what he (and we) should expect to find when he reaches Kurtz. Willard is told when he receives the mission that Kurtz is a madman who has disappeared deep into the Cambodian jungle and now runs some sort of empire that’s an affront to humanity. Surprisingly, what Willard finds in the dossier are documents describing a model soldier — for a time. When Kurtz is one of the military advisors sent to South Vietnam — during what is now known as the “Advisory Period” stage of the Vietnam War from 1954 to 1963 — to help the new country set up its military in the face of a rapidly escalating North Vietnamese threat, he returns demanding to be reassigned to Special Forces, throwing away his shot at general and puzzling the army brass. Though he rises to be a Green Beret colonel (the highest possible rank in the order), he is brought up on murder charges — which Willard informs us is as ridiculous as “handing out [a] speeding [ticket] at the Indy 500.” Kurtz, of course, disputes the charges and disappears so far into the jungle he winds up in neighboring Cambodia.
In order for Willard to reach Kurtz, he must penetrate past the assorted fiascos that meet him along the river thanks to the American war effort. The film has a deceptively episodic structure, one that becomes glaringly obvious in the grossly overlong and mostly pointless Apocalypse Now Redux cut, which adds 49 minutes to the run time. (The theatrical cut is much more naturally paced, at least until the third act when the proceedings grind to a halt.) First, Willard has to enter the Nung River. No problem — Lt. Col. Kilgore can just pick up the PBR with one of his choppers and drop it in the mouth of the river during the raid on the village. A little later, the boat comes across a USO show put on for the troops that is aborted when the sex-starved soldiers leer at the Playboy models (who charmingly are flown in via helicopter) and storm the stage. At one point, Willard narrates something to the effect that if this is the kind of bullshit going on, Kurtz really must have done something above and beyond to piss off the Army to warrant an assassination. When the boat reaches the Do Lung Bridge, the last American outpost on the Nung River, someone who’s waiting there with the boat’s mail informs Willard, “You’re in the asshole of the world now, Captain!”
It’s here where Willard reaches the end of civilization; it’s a moment that doubles as Willard’s point of no return and as the story’s mid-point intensification. When Willard tries to get some answers from the disoriented (and drugged-out) soldiers stationed at the bridge, who fight on without an apparent commanding officer, he returns to the boat and tells Chief (Albert Hall) it’s time for them to go. “Which direction?” Chief replies. It’s a decision Chief knows will determine whether everyone on the boat will make it back alive. “You know which way,” is Willard’s response. From here, the film gets increasingly surreal, as the boat heads on a journey that’s almost backward in time; from this point forward, there are no Vietnamese to fight. First, an unseen enemy attacks the boat with automatic gunfire through jungle cover, killing Clean (a very young Laurence Fishburne) in the process. (In the Redux cut, Clean is buried at a French plantation that is somehow still in existence, despite French expulsion from the country in 1954.) Later, they are attacked again, but by increasingly primitive means: in the midst of an attack made with ineffective arrows, Chief is killed by a spear.
This barbarism Willard encounters is no less violent or threatening than what he faces during the first half of the film, and it serves as preparation for his encounter with Kurtz. Of course, the river is dotted with wreckage and death, as well — presumably collateral damage from Kurtz’s own journey. At first, the wreckage is recognizably American (e.g., a downed plane in flames), but gradually this wreckage becomes like the violence Willard faces: increasingly primitive. By the time Willard reaches Kurtz’s compound, the anticipation for the upcoming confrontation is through the roof, aided by an incredible piece of music — “Voyage” on the soundtrack — during the final approach that ratchets up the tension. When the boat arrives, they are greeted not by Kurtz but by a crazed American photojournalist (a magnetic Dennis Hopper) who spouts off quasi-philosophical garbage so nonsensical we can’t help but wonder what Kurtz has in store for us once we meet him. (It’s a remarkably clever way to diffuse the tension and throw something completely unexpected at us at the same time, I must say.) Outside Kurtz’s temple, we see the effects of barbaric violence — disturbingly, a naked dead man covered in blood hangs from a tree by the PBR and lingers in the background during Willard and the photojournalist’s initial conversation.
Curiously though, no one appears to be taking their orders directly from Kurtz — it’s unclear at this point whether this is the way they have always done things or if Kurtz instituted this system of human sacrifice himself. By the end of Apocalypse Now, it becomes increasingly clear that the latter is not the case, which is of course contrary to what Willard is told before embarking upon the journey. True, Kurtz wanders to and fro and is supposedly — we never quite see it all that directly — worshipped and glorified by the indigenous people there but the film deliberately omits any detail as to how Kurtz arrived there and what his own journey up the Nung was like. Did the wreckage, post-apocalyptic imagery, and barbarism exist past the Do Lung Bridge before Kurtz himself escaped past the borders of civilization? The picture we are painted of Kurtz before Willard’s arrival would point to no, but after meeting him, the answer is clearly yes. The film pulls off a nifty narrative trick in this regard: during Willard’s journey, we just assume it’s Kurtz that is responsible for the collateral damage we see along the river — that he’s evil incarnate. In reality, the film has entered mystical territory — a realm that exists not on a map, but in the primeval jungle every human still remains tethered to regardless of how fiercely civilized life has tried to hack away at the connection.
That’s why I have always found any “Kurtz = the heart of darkness” reading of Apocalypse Now to be extremely lazy. Instead, the “horror,” the anguish that Kurtz has discovered is his realization that not only does the “heart of darkness” exist in every living person, but it is hard-coded into our very DNA. In other words, even if every human on the planet at this very moment were magically transformed into a moral person incapable of killing or of other horrific acts, every newborn child brought into the world would still retain the primal instinct of killing; social progress is always on the verge of coming undone by the base aspects of human nature. In a way, this point of view is John Locke’s concept of tabula rasa in reverse, though philosophically the two are on separate planes. Locke’s proposal that humans are not born automatic sinners but are instead born with a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) — with only the potential to sin — only addresses the cosmic and has little to do with society’s ability to function in any practical way. Despite being worshipped like a god (again, supposedly), Kurtz’s focus is not on sin and what happens after death, but on the Earthly.
In fact, when he describes to Willard what an ideal army (or at least an army capable of victory in Vietnam) would look like, his analysis requires serious thought:
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.
If you think about it, this is an almost oxym