There is an infamous quote from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil that encapsulates Colonel Kurtz’s descent into madness in Apocalypse Now:“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” I thought of Nietzsche while observing Colonel Kurtz’s nihilistic worldview on the war in Vietnam. An outstanding military mind who was said to be on track to become a US General, Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, had a promising future. Frustrated that the war wasn’t going well in Vietnam, he decided to join the Special Forces to make a change. In his pursuit of that change, he adopted the guerrilla warfare tactics of his enemies. In such endeavors, he found the extreme measures people will take to triumph. One such example is the Viet Cong cutting off the arms of children who had been vaccinated by American troops. In such immorality, Colonel Kurtz recognizes strength. Yet, his acknowledgment of such “strength” makes him understand that there is no winning in a war where the enemy would go to such extremes. So, he takes his men deep in the jungle, never to be reached again.
That is where we meet our protagonist, Captain Benjamin L. Willard. Played by Martin Sheen, Cap. Willard is set on an assignment: “Terminate Kurtz’s command.” Kurtz is said to have gone “insane,” killing many in the process. Given a group of soldiers, Cap. Willard journeys through the jungle to find Kurtz.
During my time as a teacher at my Bible camp, I did an activity for my students. They, ages 8 to 9, had the assignment to carry a bag of weights across a short distance. This activity does seem a bit confusing without understanding the lesson’s context, but I do want to make an observation. Many of the students, particularly the boys, wanted to prove that they could lift the weights. Perhaps it was to impress the other students, or to impress me, but they all seemed to seek some kind of glory. In one attempt, a boy was able to lift the bag, but as he walked, another boy pulled it down, causing him to drop it. Since I was in charge I had to step in, but I was shocked by what that boy had done. At the same time, I asked myself whether it was fair to judge him so harshly. After all, he was just a child who hadn’t even graduated elementary school. While I watched Colonel Kurtz speak to Captain Willard, these questions arose again as I began to understand that he does not believe in judging others.
Kurtz tells Willard that young men are trained to drop bombs on their enemies, yet they are forbidden from writing vulgar words on their airplanes because that is considered “obscene.” He then delivers the infamous line: “It’s judgment that defeats us.” It may seem strange to compare young men fighting in war to my students carrying some weights, but there is a connection. Many of us don’t expect the worst from people, especially children. I didn’t expect one of my students to sabotage his classmate’s chances of succeeding, even though I had placed them in a position to do so. In that sense, I was responsible for creating the conditions for that behavior yet my first instinct was not to judge myself but to judge him. That made me realize how often we create the very conditions that lead to the behavior which we condemn.
The film’s orange tones made me feel hot, the type of heat that makes you feel suffocated in the middle of summer. I felt the oppressive jungle of Vietnam through Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography. One sequence that especially captured the film’s atmosphere was the journey down the Nung River on Chief Philip’s boat. This scene also introduces Colonel Kilgore, played by the late Robert Duvall. My father and I watched this film in honor of his recent passing, and his presence is unforgettable here. Colonel Kilgore, whose name immediately caught my attention for its combination of “kill” and “gore,” seems to enjoy the chaos of war. In one scene, a wounded Vietnamese soldier is lying there, holding his insides with a pot. Kilgore asks why no one is giving him water, to which someone responds “he killed our comrades.” Even so, Kilgore offers the man his own water, saying, “Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen any day!” Yet, when he catches sight of young soldier Lance Johnson, a famous surfer from the West, he completely disregards the injured man. He’d watch his soldiers surf on the beach while bombs exploded around them just to make them feel at home. Colonel Kilgore and Colonel Kurtz are two sides of the same coin. Both men recognize the immorality of the war, but respond in different ways. Kilgore tries to turn it into entertainment, while Kurtz finds only hopelessness and despair.
Captain Willard’s crew is made up of Chief Philips (Albert Hall), Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms), “Chef” Jay Hicks (Frederic Forrest), and “Mr. Clean” Tyrone Miller (Laurence Fishburne). Each of these men represents a different aspect of war. Chef, with his deep resentment toward the conflict, represents those who are forced into it, despite having other aspirations back at home. Tyrone Miller, portrayed perfectly by a young Laurence Fishburne, represents the loss of innocence that war brings. In one scene, Miller kills a family on an irrational impulse. Lance Johnson represents the conformity to war. In that same scene, Lance mimics Miller’s behavior and, for no reason at all, begins firing his rifle as well. Ironically, his nonchalant attitude allows him to survive the entire film alongside Willard. The same cannot be said for Chief Philips, who, to me, represents order and discipline. As the most organized man in the crew, what leads to his death is his abandonment of that order: he lets go of the steering wheel and begins shooting back at the enemy.
Captain Willard is one of the most complex protagonists I have seen in any film. In my understanding of the film, he represents the human conscience. Willard is psychologically disconnected from his crew because of the horrors he has already experienced. His confrontations with Chief Philips over where the boat should go genuinely made me think that Captain Willard would kill him. We are never sure whether or not Willard feels anything towards this crew, and that is what makes him so complex. We started this film, oblivious to what it contains, and as we witness the war, we see it alongside Willard. His journey down the river becomes a descent into self-confrontation. Speaking of Kurtz he says, “But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.” Perhaps it was more than Kurtz he feared; Captain Willard may have feared confronting the harsh reality of the unknown.
After Captain Willard kills Kurtz, Kurtz utters his final words: “The horror, the horror.” Those words echo again at the very end of the film. In a time when war remains frequent and men continue to lust for self-destruction, the wickedness Colonel Kurtz identifies as horror still exists in the world today. Director Francis Ford Coppola famously said about his film, “This isn’t about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.” Apocalypse Now will endure forever as a condemnation of war and a visualization of the horrors of men, and for that reason, it earns a “Classic” out of ten.
