Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola’s movie “Apocalypse Now” draws heavily from Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness,” in which Kurtz, a European adventurer who has sailed up the Congo and appointed himself a god, is sought by a boat whose crew gradually lose faith in civilization as they are oppressed by the immense weight of the jungle around them a merciless testing ground of Darwinian nature where everything alive tries each day not to be eaten.

What is discovered at the end of that journey is not so much Kurtz as what he found: that all our days and ways are a flimsy structure atop the hungry jaws of an indifferent nature which will destroy us without thought. A happy life is a daily avoidance of this knowledge.

A week ago I was in Calcutta, where I saw mile after square mile of squatter camps stretching into the distance; hundreds of thousands live there for generations on land they do not own, in huts made from plastic sheets or cardboard or scraps of tin poverty so naked it leaves no room for hope. I don’t mean to compare their misery with any movie; that would be obscene. But I was shaken by what I saw, and reminded how easily happiness can be extinguished. It was then that I went to see “Apocalypse Now” again, and came this time to the scene when Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) tells Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) about “the horror.”

Kurtz is a highly decorated soldier who has gone AWOL, set up his own army deep in Cambodia’s jungles and begun treating Montagnard tribespeople like pet dogs. He tells Willard about one day when his Special Forces unit had been giving polio vaccinations to children in a village: “This old man came running after us and he was crying, he couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms.”

What he found out is that the Viet Cong could be more brutal in their quest for victory: “Then I realized they were stronger than we. They have the strength, the strength to do that. If I had 10 divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. 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.” That is what he calls “the horror,” and it starts closing in on Willard.

The whole movie is about how far into war where even Kurtz has gone crazed a man like Willard must travel before it becomes impossible for him not to shut his eyes forever against its awfulness.

The movie concludes extremely tragically, making it one of the most haunting endings in film history a poetic rendering of what Kurtz discovered and what we hope never to find out for ourselves. The journey on the river greatly builds up expectation about Kurtz, which Brando brings to realization. When it came out in 1979, his selection for the role was criticized along with his getting paid one million dollars, but it is obvious that he was right not only due to being an icon but also because his voice starts off-screen or half lit from darkness quoting T.S. Eliot’s pessimistic “The Hollow Men”. That voice sets tone at end.

Another thing which plays into this ending is Dennis Hopper as the photojournalist who has somehow found Kurtz’s camp and stayed stoned there as a witness. He babbles to Willard that Kurtz is “a poet warrior in classic sense” and “we’re all his children.” In these spaced-out ravings we hear snatches of poetry: If you can keep your head when all about you. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors silent seas.” This photographer is guide clown fool between Willard and Kurtz.

Why has Coppola been plagued by rumors for so long that he didn’t like the ending of “Apocalypse Now”? At Cannes during the first showing someone asked him if they could leave because there were no credits; he said yes as long as they came back when lights went down again. Originally planned on showing movie without credits (they would be printed in booklet) 70mm roadshow release, but 35mm release needed end titles.

After filming wrapped up at huge set for kurt’ compound Philippine government made him destroy it so he blew it up on camera and used that footage over closing 35mm credits even though (this matters) destruction wasn’t meant as different end than film. Unfortunately, confusion about ends spread from cannes to movie mythology and everyone thought that by “end” he meant all material involving Kurtz. In 20th anniversary DVD release Coppola explains this again.

In any case, seen now after 20 years have passed since its release, no doubt remains: “Apocalypse Now” stands out more than ever before among other movies produced during the same century. Most films are fortunate enough to include just one great scene. This one threads them together continuously along the river trip, with each being better than previous.

The best is when Col Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) leads an attack on village in Vietnam from helicopters armed with loudspeakers blaring Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” while they dive-bomb a yard filled with little kids attending school; Duvall was nominated for Oscar for his role here and his line became famous “I love smell napalm morning.” His hollowness is scary: A fanatical surfer, he agrees to do this only so that he can check out some waves at Charlie’s favorite beach (“Charlie don’t surf”).

There is yet the sequence wherever the patrol boat ceases a small fishing boat with a family on board. A little girl makes an unexpected dash, and in panic, the machine-gunner (a young Laurence Fishburne) opens fire, killing all of them. She was running for her puppy dog. The mother is not quite dead. The boat chief (Albert Hall) wants to take her for medical treatment. Willard shoots her; nothing can delay his mission. He and “Chief” are the only two seasoned military men on the boat, trying to do things by the book; later, in a scene with peculiar power, the chief is astonished to be killed by a spear.

One scene that really sticks with me visually is when Chef (Fredric Forrest), one of Willard’s crew members, insists on going into the jungle to find mangos. Willard can’t stop him so he goes along with him. They walk through these enormous trees where Storaro shoots them as little specks at their base and it’s such a Joseph Conrad moment because it shows how nature dwarfs us.

The rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack opens and closes with “The End” by the Doors, and includes disc jockeys on transistor radios (“Good morning, Vietnam!”). The music underlines surrealistic moments, as when Lance (Sam Bottoms), one of Willard’s crew water-skis behind the boat. It also shows how they try to use music from home and booze and drugs to ease their loneliness and apprehension.

Other very important films about Vietnam like Platoon or The Deer Hunter or Full Metal Jacket or Casualties of War have taken different approaches; once at the Hawaii Film Festival I saw five North Vietnamese films about Vietnam (they never mentioned “America,” only “the enemy,” and one director told me, “It is all the same we have been invaded by China, France, the U.S.”) but Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest films ever made, because it goes farther than any other film about Vietnam or any other war has gone into the dark places of the soul. It’s not really about war at all; it’s about what war does to us.

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, my thoughts since Calcutta have prepared me to know something about what Kurtz finds. If we’re lucky we spend our lives never knowing how close we come to this kind of horror. What drives Kurtz mad is his discovery of that fact.

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