Not a film about war, but about humanity...

Rating: 10/10 (17 August 2000)

"I am the way to the city of woe/I am the way to a forsaken people/I am the way to eternal sorrow./Sacred justice moved my architect/I was raised here by divine omnipotence, primordial love, and ultimate intellect./Only those elements time cannot wear/Were made before me and beyond time I stand/Abandon all hope ye who enter here."--Dante, "The Divine Comedy Part I: Inferno", Canto 3, Verse 1-3
Nothing could have prepared me for that opening scene: fade in on a jungle backdrop. Distorted swishing sounds coming through the soundtrack, getting slightly louder as an army copter comes by. Smoke begins to rise as a tinkly bell sounds, seguing into a haunting tune. All the while, like a leitmotif in a Wagner opera, the swishing continues, getting slightly louder as yet another copter goes by. The jungle explodes with fire as Jim Morrison begins singing the first lines of the only Doors tune that I can truly say that I have ever liked: "The End".
It wasn't until those first few moments that I understood what Harlan Ellison was talking about when he named Francis Ford Coppola as one of the greatest directors in the world (other notables on that list included Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, and Luis Buenel). I'd already heard a little about the background behind this film; Martin Sheen wrote an article about it a few years back. Having seen the finished product of "Apocalypse Now", I have no trouble believing whatsoever that every calamity that befell the production actually happened. The kind of chaos and darkness that wound up on the screen wouldn't be near as convincing if it hadn't been a reflection of what was really happening on the set.
As the POV character on this modern interpretation of Dante's Inferno (yes, I realize this is based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", but Dante's version of Hell served as a nice reference guide for reasons I will explain later), Martin Sheen as Capt. Willard is human enough to make the viewer sympathize with him a little and INhuman enough to make said viewer feel repulsed by the depths he winds up sinking to...which is, actually, straight down to the bottom. He's given a seemingly simple mission: kill an insane colonel who's become a law unto himself. But once things get rolling, the simplicity goes right out the window.
First we meet Col. Kilgore (a great, memorable performance from Robert Duvall), who actually isn't too dissimilar to Kurtz in that he's doing what he think will wind up winning the war (when he's not busy thinking about surfing; such an attitude would qualify him for the first circle of Hell, Virtuous Pagans). Then we see things escalate, little by little: the riot at the USO show (Lust), the massacre of the tampan crew(Pride), the endless battle of keeping one lousy bridge in operation(Wrath). Along the way, we get to know more about Kurtz's background, which makes him look a little less insane and more rational than the mess he's in. The lines begin to blur.
How could I not think of Cocytus, the very last level of the Inferno, when we finally get to meet Col. Walter E. Kurtz? In Dante's conception, the devil stands at it's center, mindlessly flapping it's wings and freezing souls over in the process. It's a fair description what Kurtz has managed to do to all his followers. After all, isn't man his own ultimate devil? The only one who doesn't seem to be too affected (though he's definitely touched in the head by the rest of the insanity) is Dennis Hopper's riddle-talking photojournalist. Kurtz himself (played with great and underacknowledged aplomb by Marlon Brando) is a little harder to figure out. He goes off on bizarre tangents in any conversation, will chop off the head of anyone who threatens him and then seems to regret it, talks seeming nonsense into Army radio frequencies, reads poetry aloud to anyone who'll listen (the choice of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" is no coincidence; it actually contains a quote from "Hearts of Darkness": "Mister Kurtz, he dead.")but one doesn't get the feeling that he's actually insane (my theory is that those who say that he is have given up trying to figure him out). There's a lot of pain involved with what he's become, but even that doesn't sum him up. Brando's Kurtz is like quicksilver; just when you think you've got a handle on him, he slips through your fingers.
Could his end really have come any other way? Eliot said it himself in "The Hollow Men": "This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang, but with a whimper." But it coming from Brando, what a whimper: "the horror...the horror". The horror he's talking about is what human beings can allow themselves to become. Not just in war, but any great disaster that strikes at and breaks the foundations of any person's view of the world. That is why this movie is ultimately NOT about Vietnam; it's about what happens to Everyman when he learns dark truths that can not be rationalized and can not be denied. The Vietnam War was Kurtz's catalyst...who can say what ours could be?