Apocalypse Now /Redux

Apocalypse Now /Redux

Francis Ford Coppola’s film “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 made himself a god, is sought by a boat whose crew gradually lose faith in civilization as they are oppressed by the vastness of the jungle a merciless testing ground of Darwinian nature where everything alive tries each day not to get eaten.

What is found at the end of that journey isn’t so much Kurtz as what he found: that all our days and ways are a flimsy structure on top of the hungry jaws of an indifferent nature that will consume us without thought. A happy life is a daily evasion of this fact.

I was in Calcutta last week, 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’m not comparing their misery to any movie; that would be obscene. But I was rattled by what I saw, and reminded how easily happiness can be snuffed out. It was then that I went back to see “Apocalypse Now,” 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 ends very tragically, so that the ending is one of the most haunting in all of movies a poetic realization of what Kurtz has found out and what we hope never to know. The river journey builds up great expectations about Kurtz, whom Brando delivers. When it was released in 1979, his selection for the role was criticized along with his being paid one million dollars (his voice starts off-screen or half lit from darkness quoting T.S. Eliot’s pessimistic “The Hollow Men”), but obviously he was right as an icon whose tone sets at end.

Another thing about 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 for years has Coppola been rumored not to like the ending of “Apocalypse Now”? At Cannes during first showing someone asked 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 goverment 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. But 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, there is no doubt: “Apocalypse Now” still looks like the only film of the century. Most films are lucky enough to have one great scene; this has them all threaded together continuously on a river trip, each scene 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’s this scene where the patrol boat stops a little fishing boat with a family on board. A little girl makes a dash for it, and in panic, the machine-gunner (a young Laurence Fishburne) opens fire, killing them all. She was running to get her puppy dog. The mother is not quite dead. The boat captain (Albert Hall) wants to take her for medical treatment. Willard shoots her; nothing can stop his mission. He and “Chief” are the only two experienced military men on the boat, trying to do things by the book; later, in a scene of startling power, he is killed by a spear.

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

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

Other great war 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 said “America,” only “the enemy,” and one director told me, “It is all the same we have been invaded by China, France, U.S.A.”) but Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest films ever made, because it goes further than any other movie about Vietnam or any other war has gone into the dark places of the soul. It’s not really a movie about war at all; it’s a movie about what war does to us.

Somehow since Calcutta my thoughts have prepared me to know something about what Kurtz finds. We spend our lives never knowing how lucky we are that we don’t have to know this kind of horror. It is finding that out that makes him insane.

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