Tiff

Apocalypse Now was Francis Coppola’s monster film of 1979. There is, of course another version which was released in 2001 (Apocalypse Now Redux), but which I did not watch. It was written by John Milius and Francis Coppola as an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Standing alone as a film, I believe it is far too tedious. Coppola turned a 70-page story into a two and a half-hour movie. He says in the commentary that he wanted the movie to be as big and as spectacular as possible. He said that ‘movies are what they are about.’ So the making of Apocalypse Now as well as the movie itself should be like the American presence in Vietnam: big and expensive with air-conditioning, lots of expendable money and quality food. There is one way this condition is amended, though. But should we give movies conditional reviews? Saying, “Apocalypse Now is too long and drawn out, and by the end almost not worth watching” fills me with a twinge of guilt because the film is about Vietnam. I feel as though this status, about a rather tender piece of American history, protects it. Although it is concerned with fictional characters, we know these people could have easily existed, especially the PBR Streetgang (the young soldiers on the navy patrol boat). As what feels like a dedication to the men who fought in this awful, terrible war, I can’t truthfully say that watching the movie is a waste of my time. It is now a historical piece – watching Apocalypse Now is like an investigation of sentiment. We view the Vietnam War through whatever out history books taught us. But watching this film allows us a new perspective – we see it in the same way as those who lived through it (maybe not the war, but the time).

It’s not all so bizarre and questionable. The first half of the movie is very good. I suppose it’s possible that as the film progresses, so every soldier loses a little more of his sanity. The first scene in particular is in my opinion the best, which is funny because Coppola claims it was a completely serendipitous. It begins with the sound of helicopter blades and a still shot of a line of palm trees being tossed about by their wind. The Doors’s ‘The End’ begins playing as a haze of napalm blocks our view of the trees. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is introduced, smoking in his hotel room, gazing upwards, probably at the blades of his ceiling fan, which eventually are linked to the blades of the helicopters. There is a montage of images, what we can only assume is Willard’s memory. He loathes being in the jungle as much as he loves it, as much as he needs to be there. He is trapped, physically and mentally, waiting for an assignment. Coppola says that as the making of the film progressed, it became less of what he originally planned – a spectacular war film, a real Hollywood hit – and more a surreality of war.  He also said that for him, Apocalypse Now is really about a conflict of morality. There is a quote from Kurtz toward the end of the film that clearly explains the contradictory actions of the American military: “We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write ‘fuck’ on their airplane because it’s obscene.”

Because I am sort of stumped by this film, I watched the commentary, as I have already mentioned. Coppola was really, truly concerned with the character ‘Willard’ rather than ‘Marlow.’ Also important was the forward action, the moving toward Kurtz. And as the men get closer to Kurtz (and start dying off one by one), Coppola describes what he saw as a movement back in time, from the present to a time existing before history: from ‘civilization’ to the ‘primitive.’ As they travel further up the Mung River and into Cambodia, the situations become more bizarre – not to mention more dangerous – and every soldier descends a little further into insanity. Speaking of the evolution of characters, the shooting of the film coincided with the actual progression of the film from beginning to end. As the actors took the same journey as the characters, their experience became a bit more real.

If you’re expecting a nice, faithful representation of the novel, Apocalypse Now is not what you’re going to want to watch. There are other adaptations out there – movies like Madame Bovary that are lower budget and what I have classified as ‘educational’ (I believe there is a tv movie [maybe a BBC production?] starring Tim Roth and John Malkovich that I am particularly interested in seeing, although I couldn’t get my hands on it for this posting). But just because Apocalypse Now is not a film you might show to a class full of students who have just read the book, does not mean it is completely unlike Heart of Darkness or that it lacks merit. When Willard passes into Cambodia (where Kurtz has stationed himself) he remarkably begins to experience almost exactly the same circumstances as Marlow and his crew: the heavy fog, arrows (although fake) from unseen archers in the dense forest and spear that kills his captain. And as a movie about Vietnam, its aim will be slightly different than the book. There are the extra characters of Kilgore and all of the sailors on the boat plus extra events such as the USO show and the “asshole of the world.” It is darker in a different way: the occasion of Vietnam makes for a much more vicious story.

I also want to acknowledge the use of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” How could I not? It’s always delightful to discover well-read, intelligent directors. Kurtz, who is known for reading poetry aloud, recites a portion of the poem while Willard is being held in his quarters. I suppose it is rather appropriate, seeing as how a quotation from Heart of Darkness headlines the poem. These hollow men are the same in the Belgian Congo as they are in Vietnam: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! / Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / Or rats’ feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar” (1-10). Traveling into a wilderness uninhabited by what could be called civilized man, whether trading for ivory or fighting an unknown enemy, these men are nameless ghosts fighting for a cause unrelated to them personally: “The eyes are not here / There are no eyes here / In this valley of dying stars / In this hollow valley / This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms” (52-56). In Heart of Darkness Marlow begins his tale by musing on the Romans, and how each man, maybe just some civilian, must have felt as they encountered and conquered territory after territory: “Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination” (4). This is the very center of the Heart of Darkness, and of Apocalypse Now – the fascination of the abomination.

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