Heart of the Darkness - Journey to the Dark Side of our Souls

Rating: 10/10 (2 December 2009)

"This is the end,beautiful friend. This is the end,my only friend,the end. Of our elaborate plans,the end. Of everything that stands,the end. No safety or surprise the end. I 'll never look in to your eyes...again... Lost in Roman,wilderness of pain,and all the children are insane. All the children are insane,waiting for a summer rain"-Jimmy Morison,The Doors-The end. Year is 1969 or 1970. Does n't matter. We hear sound of rotor blades and see jungle being burned by napalm. Then we see helicopters flying around, but helicopters blades noise turns to noise of blades of an air conditioner on a wall of a hotel room in Saigon. Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is laying on a bed in some sort of mental brake down because he haven't seen any action for months. We see his story, why he is there. He is one kind of people dependent of adrenalin and his new mission is liberation from monotony driving him crazy.
But from this point,he will go on a journey of his life. His mission is to go to Cambodia, find renegade colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) and kill him. Colonel Kurtz ran out of any control and he is wagging his own war doing terrible crimes to local populations. We see his state of mind through captured recordings emitted from Cambodia. Captain Willard and his crew of four travel by rivers on a patrol boat through Vietnam before they enter Cambodia and on their journey we see their adventures and war madness. In my opinion "Apocalypse Now" is the best movie about Vietnam war,and not just war movie. This is film about duplicity of our society and most importantly, about Killer in our selves. You have to feel hatred and betrayal if you want to understand what made colonel Kurtz, intelligent and energetic man to become "Ghost of the Jungle". Movie offers most comprehensive picture about war in Southeast Asia. There is most famous scene of any Vietnam war movie when UH-1 "Huey" helicopters attack a village controlled by Vietcong. From their loud speakers they play "Ride of the Valkyries" of Richard Wagner,melody which i call "Symphony of Destruction". After village is captured colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) gives "historic statement"-"I like the smell of napalm in the morning...Once we bombed one hill for 12 hours and found no body. I climbed on the hill just to smell that. It smells like victory". This tells a lot about American approach to Vietnam war that ultimately led to victory of-Communists. Important scene in movie is conversation which they have in fictional French plantation in jungle (more then 10 years after French left). They talk about origins of war,about Vietminh (later Vietcong), about political betrayals and military mistakes. Their conversation is very interesting and useful in understanding the war. We see colonel's Kurtz perception of war. He says that "as long as American soldiers come in tours,as long as rock and roll and cold beer are inescapable for their deployment they will remain war tourists and dilettantes". He says that he could win war with two times less force but composed of dedicated people. But generals in Pentagon did not agree with him and after he killed four people working as double agents for Communists he ran away and formed his own forces to fight his own way.
When we see Playboy girls being brought to entertain soldiers and what happens, when we see fighting at the bridge that US forces defend from Vietcong and confusion in which they don't know who is their commander we understand why colonel Kurtz is right,even if he had gone mad and became mass murderer. Slowly we understand his state of mind, his mental pain. He talks about some village where they vaccinated children lots of years ago and after they left, guerillians cut of vaccinated hands of those children. When they returned and saw that,he suffered mental brake down. That changed him forever. He accepted that dedication necessary to commit such a terrible crime,it means mental strength of how he called them "educated and moral men". He became like his enemy. For local people and obsessed Photojournalist (Denis Hoper) he is greatest idol. Of colonel Willard 's crew of four only he and L.B.Johnson survived. Only reason for that is because Kurtz wanted them to stay alive. Kurtz wants somebody to kill him and exempt him from further suffering. He says to Willard-"You have a right to kill me,but you don't have a right to judge me". So in the end Willard kills him and liberates him from his mental hell. Nobody tries to stop Willard and L.B.Johnson when they leave at the end. "The horror,the horror" final words in the movie tell us about duplicity of those who send people like Kurtz and Willard to do "dirty job" for them and then disclaim them.In their moral hypocrisy Kurtz is their own mirror and this is what they are afraid of. There is an old saying-"Don't blame the mirror if you are ugly".But primarily last words in film tell us about our own dark side and what every one of us is capable of doing if put in a situation in which you lose your last regards. Side of us which we are afraid to admit that it even exists. Psychedelic perception of war and human soul. Both sides of what we are. Like when French woman says to Willard-"Don't you understand.There are two of you. One that kills,and the other that loves".