Imagery and insanity turn a mission into a gothic masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (26 May 2003)

Francis Ford Coppola needed only the simplest of plots and a motion picture's ability to lengthen a river, make a jungle denser, and expound upon a character's sense of isolation to create one of the most chilling experiences on film in history.
*This summary may contain spoilers*
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent upriver into Cambodia on a mission to seek out and destroy one Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a US military commander who has long since abandoned his ties to the American government and conducts his own war. We see later that his "war" is raging within himself; he is trying to save some part of his identity while entirely breaking himself free from the evil he sees in humankind, that has laid itself bare in the conflict in and on Vietnam.
From the outset of Apocalypse Now, we, the audience are made to see that although it sounds as if Kurtz is a dangerous individual and the movie's villain, more doubt is cast over the American command. Willard wonders why someone with a perfect military record would give up a chance to be general, to be in a position of great admiration and respect to slip into the shadows of Cambodia.
This doubt grows as Willard is assigned to a boat to be led to the river by the air cavalry under Col. Kilgore, a man so sane in the face of the deadly jungles that he appears more insane than anyone else, especially Kurtz. Kilgore has barbecues for his men, blasts a Vietnamese village (where children are seen playing) just so that his men can surf, and says he loves "the smell of napalm in the morning."
As Willard and the boat to which he is assigned go upriver, everyone around him is seen to become more and more insane. Memorable and increasingly haunting stops along the way include the stopping of a native boat carrying food and a puppy which causes the small American crew to shoot everyone on board before Willard can stop them, and a stop at the last American-held point on the river where the bridge gets built every day and is blown up by VC each night, where Willard is told he is entering hell, where the men have started shooting at trees and when one man is asked who the CO is, he responds, "Ain't you?" As Willard and the crew pass the bridge, it collapses behind them, signaling that there can be no going back. This unbelievably vivid, haunting, imagery shows the Vietnamese conflict in all its deadly glory, where those who have lost their heads have isolated Willard in his conquest, a conquest that has become not only a search for Kurtz, but a search for what, in this war, is really sanity, and for how Willard can find the truth among all the evil and protect this truth within himself.
In all reality, Kurtz is just a figurehead, the personification of haunting truth (and of what good there still can be in all the evil brought out in humankind in the war) that is hidden deep inside a Cambodian jungle. Willard must get around many obstacles to get to the end of the river and to be sure of this truth and take it home with him.
There is no character in this movie that does not contribute to either the black humor or the chilling gothicism that Coppola strives to portray. Sheen plays the central character masterfully and his supporting cast provides a darkening backdrop until the end. At first glance Brando didn't strike me as good, but then again his character needed to be a representation. He wasn't supposed to seem like a real person at all, and so he stayed both as eccentric and as simple as he could at the same time, although he could have been a little more low-key. It was a more difficult role than people imagine, which is probably why he was chosen.
The most poignant of statements in this movie, however, comes not from Kurtz (basically he was just an object), but from the daughter of the Frenchman. Her sentence echoes in the back of our minds, and its meaning grows stronger until the conclusion:
"Don't you see? There are two of you...one that kills, and one that loves..."
---
If anything can be turned into a modern gothic masterpiece, the war in Vietnam is it, and Coppola has done it with the utmost of skill and attention to theme and setting.