The Rhetoric of "Apocalypse Now"

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 1999)

In the film "Apocalypse Now", we follow Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on his mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade Green Beret; Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has set himself up as a God among a local tribe. In a sense, Kurtz has set up his own army within the jungle that resembles that of a tribe. As Willard descends into the jungle he is slowly over taken by the jungle's mesmerizing powers and the battles and insanity which surround him. The further he takes his journey, the more he becomes like the man that he was sent to kill. Kurtz has succumbed to the power of the jungle around him. At one point Willard mentions that "The jungle is where he really takes his orders from". Willard can feel himself slipping into the same mode of human existence.
There are echoes of Bahktinian discourse within "Apocalypse Now" in that there are always two forms of rhetoric speaking and opposing one another. The first is the civilized western institution of the miliary. The second is a more primitive, instinctual world, where primal instincts prevail. These two voices seem to be always oppose one another, but when it comes down to the climax of the film, we see that the film has attempted to draw a relation between the two.
The structured, civilized, and supposedly moral institution of the military has given Willard a Â‘simple' assignment to travel up river, find Kurtz and terminate his command "with extreme prejudice". These orders laid out in a highly structured manner, which is characteristic of military discourse. Willard soon realizes that the mission really isn't as simple as his commanders attest it to be. In one scene later on Willard says "I thought I would know exactly what I was going to do when I saw Kurtz, but now I'm not sure". His journey along the river gives him a certain insight into Kurtz's psyche.
In practice, even the rest of the military that Willard encounters as his escorts up river seems to be undermined by carnivalization, meaning that there is more freedom from restraint than what the military would expectedly allow. We have Sgt, Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who seems more concerned with surfing than with the war they are fighting. He is constantly looking at the tides to determine the plausibility of a good surf, and having his men surf the beach whenever they invaded a village. There is even a scene where they bring in two Playboy bunnies to dance for the sex starved soldiers of Vietnam. Men also water ski behind the patrol boat, and suntan on deck. This is not something that we would expect to have occurred in Vietnam.
As Willard continues his journey, he still is aware of the mission that he has been sent to accomplish, but he sees more references to primitive and tribal ways, the closer he gets to Kurtz. In one scene, the jungle seems to come alive and attack the boat. Suddenly thousands of spears are hurled at the boat, from no apparent location except for the jungle itself. All we see are the arrows flying out from the brush, we never see anyone throwing them. And arrows in themselves are a symbol of tribal practice.
When Willard meets Kurtz, it is then that the voices of ordered military and primitive, tribal instincts are truly revealed, but Kurtz does not see them as opposing, as such. He suggests that the two may be amalgamated, which is perhaps a sign of his psychoses. In a long monologue, he argues that the military needs men who are moral, but yet at the same time are able to utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgement. "...It's judgement that defeats us". He says that "if I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly". This is where the two opposing discourses truly meet with one another.
There are multiple ways that one can interpret "Apocalypse Now". The film has a huge multiplicity of meaning and what I have said is only one of many ways of viewing it.
**** out of ****