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 exactly 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 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 re-watching 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 said about the war-- and as a result, one discovers upon watching it a 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 on a mission by the government to assassinate him. However, film critic German E. Vargas discusses the issue of regarding Apocalypse Now as an adaptation.
If one holds fiction to be an imitation of nature, then likewise one would think that cinematographic adaptations of literary works would be imitations of literature. Apocalypse Now proves that this is not necessarily so. It also proves that there is more to literary adaptation than fidelity, infidelity, and additions. In this film, we see a multiplicity of texts, for instance, as well as musical and historical associations or adaptations, and the ways in which these texts and adaptations can all intermingle and cohere. By mixing rather than translating the images, narrative, and ideas of literary works as with other "texts" such as musical pieces and historical events, Coppola is able to develop a subtext for the film that freely incorporates any association that is relevant to its purpose.1
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 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 the 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 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 a projection, constructed from the country's collective memories of the war-- suggesting that perhaps the war was a 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 also 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."2 I know I've used Roger Ebert quotes a lot in the past, but here, I really think that here he really gets to the bottom of the central idea of the entire film. "Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover."3 In this film, Kurtz begins as a noble man-- an ideal man, even. But once he is 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. Hence, in the thick of the 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 Willard 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, then.
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 emerge 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 have seen cannot be unseen; the things we have done cannot be undone.
Sources:
1Vargas, German E. "Narrative Mode, Mixed Images, and Adaptation in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now'". Atenea, vol. 24, no. 2, p.91
2Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola, Paramount Pictures, 1991.
3Ebert, Roger. "Apocalypse Now". Review of Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. Chicago Sun-Times, 28 November 1999. Web. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
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