An analysis of Apocalypse Now-

Apocalypse Now is a retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, captured around the United States’
war with Vietnam and is set in the late 1960s. The protagonist, Captain Benjamin Willard, is given a
mission to terminate command of Colonel Walter Kurtz, a high-ranking officer who took matters into his
own hands in the war, disobeyed orders and formed his own compound in Cambodia. The plot revolves
around Captain Willard’s emprise as he goes up the Nung river with a crew set to come up against
scenarios that will challenge their psyche.

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore’s base, the performance stage and finally the Do Lung bridge act as the three
locations and sequential stages where most members of Willard’s crew face different aspects of
dehumanization.

Lieutenant Kilgore’s perception of the war is driven by sheer pleasure factor. He prioritizes reaping the
rewards and prefers to finish the job as early as possible. Since he has his troops manipulated into his
way of thinking, he is at ease and doubtless of himself prevailing, and he will use all means necessary to
ensure that. His duty to him is just an excuse that masks his barbarous actions.

The performance by the playboy bunnies later in the movie, sees another side of the soldiers. They spur
themselves across the barriers and onto the stage where they turn on each other, only looking at their
personal benefits and eliminating anyone that crosses paths with them. At this point, all they idolize are
models. Their humanity has been ripped of all human emotions, leaving behind such animal-like
behavior as they drift further away from the grip of the social view of sanity on them.

At the Do Lung bridge, the troops don’t have much left. They are completely free of any form of
judgement. At this point, their self is dehumanized, nothing much matters to them. There is no order,
there is no commanding body, all there is, is war. Exceptions at this point are the soldiers swimming
towards Willard’s boat with their bags in hope of getting back home, they have reached their breaking
points. But for the ones that have accepted it, there is not a home anymore.

In these three sections, the movie illustrates how the soldiers lose their grip on ‘sanity.’ The three
instances saw the crew members with an array of emotions, not Willard though. We understand that
Willard has already been through this process, he wasn’t affected by any of it and stuck to assessing his
mission, because he had his mind on what was beyond all along. Making it to Kurtz’s compound was the
only mission priority for Willard, and he also was willing to take matters into his own hands if anything
slowed them down or posed a threat to them. An example would be him shooting the injured woman
when the chief suggested they get her medical help in their encounter with the Vietnamese’s boat.

Not long after crossing the Do Lung bridge, the crew loses Clean to attacks from the jungle. And soon
after that they lose the Chief. Even under attack, Willard urges the Chief to stick to the mission and keep
on speeding. Following his moral obligation, he drops the wheel for the gun. Willard did not care about
the likes of Chef and Lance opposing the attacks, but the Chief did, he gets himself killed in this process.
He tries to strangle Willard in his dying moments, which shows the evil that dwells inside Willard. It’s an
important comparison between Willard and the Chief at this point, the Chief is not free of judgement, an
oddity that is apparently essential to survival in such a setting.
Let us talk about Kurtz. What led to all of this? There is a theme in Apocalypse now about the absolute
and ‘pure’ evil, termed popularly as the heart of darkness, inveigled audibly by the book it’s based on. In
his monologues with Willard, he mentions how he grew to admire evil. He talks about the inhumane
acts he had seen and how without any judgement or any care in the world, men had the will, the
strength to carry out such atrocious deeds. These made him realize that he was weaker than them. He
decorates these actions with words like genius and pure. He explains that one must make a friend of
horror and moral terror to gain the power of acting purely on instinct. It is this heart of darkness that
Kurtz possesses, and it is also the very thing that has drawn Willard this far in his quest.

Kurtz knew what was in store for him as soon as Willard arrived. He had been here before and knew
Willard better than Willard knew himself. “… only way home, was death or victory” said Willard earlier
in the movie and for a person at such a mental stage, there was no home. This meant that either he dies
or he becomes the next holder of the heart of darkness. Kurtz held Willard captive for some time as if to
measure him. During this period, he imparted knowledge in his way of thinking and once he was sure, he
set him free. Willard stayed, as Kurtz would have expected.

Who else made it this far? Lance nested himself in the culture of the Montagnards, whereas Chef was
beheaded for resistance towards the same. Lance shared the views of Willard at this point, he had gone
through the same and had managed to uproot from the idea of perception. He also performs the same
dance we see Willard performing in the hotel room in the beginning of the movie. Another person we
see performing the dance is Lieutenant Colby, this draws the parallels.

Before Willard, Colby was sent terminate Kurtz’s command, instead he became a disciple, like Lance.
Colby was not deemed worthy of his place by Kurtz but he saw the evil within Willard. He knew Willard
would end him, which he did in a ritual like scene which ran parallel with the sacrifice of a carabao.
There was an heir to the throne in Willard and his ‘children’ bowed before him. “Drop the bomb.
Exterminate them all” said a note on Kurtz’s desk, and Willard wouldn’t hesitate.

Willard left with Lance and probably called the Airstrike on Kurtz’s base. The last shot of the movie
shows the statue which we saw right in the beginning of the movie. It also gives us a clue that the shots
at the onset could well be those very airstrikes and The Doors’ The End playing over them gives us all the
more reasons to believe so.

Apocalypse Now at its core is a movie about the evil that resides in every human being, and throughout
its runtime, it explores the limits of the human mind in its ability to drift from the fear of being judged.
More than a movie about the Vietnam war or wars in general, it is a movie about war with the self. How
public perception shapes someone’s persona, and what it is capable of without it.
My take on Apocalypse Now-

From a current standpoint, what is there to be said that hasn’t already been said about Apocalypse Now.
Everything about this movie screams class, which has been proved over the years. From the soundtrack
to the shots, which have all gone down in cinema folklore, are open to homages and tributes. Coming
off the Godfather movies and The Conversation in the same decade, Apocalypse Now, in my opinion, is
Francis Ford Coppola’s best work. The movie does not feel dated and the themes and messages are very
realistic with notions that apply even in modern day. The cinematography by Vittorio Storaro is
breathtaking, he captures the environment in Philippines and recreates Vietnam with cogent measure.
The documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, shows the madness it took to film in
such surroundings and they molded an absolute gem out of it. It also shows the amount of
improvisation the actors had to do, which shows the prowess of Coppola to get in their heads and
squeeze such iconic performances out of them. I think Apocalypse Now is one of the best movies ever
made and is, to this day, a topic for endless discussion.