Random thoughts on a metaphor.

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 2017)

"Apocolypse Now, Redux" - if you are looking for an ACCOUNT of the Viet Nam war, look elsewhere. If you want a metaphorical look at the war, go right ahead, as in NOTHING is clear, there is no unity. There is no clarity. Everyone is dancing their own dance of death. You have Air Cav commander Kilgore (appropriate name) who commands a fleet of attack helicopters with deadly efficiency as they blare away with Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as a self-supplied soundtrack. They take out a coastal village that is also a VC outpost (It's pretty obvious, those sandbags aren't there for flood control, folks.) with the latest technology of the time, sending innocent and otherwise fleeing in a shower of burning napalm.
Why? In Kilgore's oblivion to the possibility that he too might be killed, that perhaps to him that none of what's going on around him is real and that it's all a grand illusion, the surfing's great. Clean out Charlie, hang ten, dude even as he lampoons every John Wayne cavalry western ever made, even down to the bugle calls and yellow scarves.
Kilgore's the warm-up act for Kurtz, the spider in the center of the web. His antics are funny, but not THAT funny.
Passing discarded symbols of American materialism (broken bicycles, refrigerators, shattered televisions in the mud, bridges being rebuilt and destroyed within the same 24 hours over and over and over to the point of pointlessness) you travel further upriver with Willard, the operative sent to kill the only other individual in the entire movie with a clear purpose, encounters further absurdities and denials of reality: a USO show where Playboy bunnies bump and grind untouchable on a stage before a barely controlled mob of hopped up sex-starved combat fatigued men who are expected to be civilized about it in the traditional audience/performer relationship only to have the whole thing turn into a total Dionysian riot, not orgy, because the nymphs/metaphorical sacrificial virgins/brides supplied are not only three too few, have been whisked away by a heavenly chariot (as in "helicopter") leaving the frustrated men to riot among themselves as the locals whom they've been sent to "defend" stoically sit eating rice on the other side of the chain link fence as gigantic "bullets" with unit and division insignia painted on their sides loom silently over the whole mess.
Symbols of toxic masculinity abound in this movie: the aforementioned bullets, fighter planes, helicopters, cigarettes, surf boards, water skis, bottles, even the boat that Willard finds himself on as he travels towards his destination/destiny.
Impotence is quieter presence as well, reminding the viewer that there is a price for everything: wrecked bombers and helicopters burning in the tops of trees for starters...) Southeast Asia as depicted IS a woman, to be groped, exploited, and violated at will by whomever happens to be in the neighborhood - no wonder she's furious and a blunt warning to all who would involve themselves in someone else's civil war!) All this as Willard travels up the river, inexorably, blindly as sperm to egg.
Only the egg awaiting him might as well be Satan at the very bottom of the lowest pit of Hell, trapped in a self-built tomb, a frozen morass of his own tears and sins - Lucifer, the paragon of angels who rebelled, a man who groomed for greatness who in some cases was RIGHT, who took things too far in his clarity and now lurks in the shadows of a ruined temple decorated with the remains of his victims - a revealing of the truth, the entire war in microcosm so that when Willard finally comes face to face with Kurtz in an abandoned temple that's really a thinly disguised TOMB, it's like looking into a mirror, monster to monster, face to face, father to son, passing on of a legacy.
As to understanding the power and truth behind pagan myth (Chef, one of the last surviving crewmen does instinctively, and is understandably alarmed when they finally enter the Kurtz domain with it's shrines, crucifixions and ranks of skulls), Kurtz DOES - there's a blatantly displayed copy of "The Golden Bough" in his sacred space. No wonder the finale happens during the ritual sacrifice of a water buffalo by hacking it to pieces - a murdered god, as in the legend of Dionysus who is cut to pieces by his own followers, of the Crucifixion: a god/son of God is executed, rises, walks out of a tomb, and resumes his place - which may also explain the rather hard to ignore three crosses (masts) of anchored Cambodian boats against the sky as Willard and the last surviving crew member numbly leave the site of the execution after walking unharmed through a crowd of Kurtz's primitive followers.
Viewed in this light, the journey down the river could also be viewed as a metaphor for the Stations of the Cross, with Willard and how he is treated by Kurtz when he gets there as part of the ordeals of Christ... interesting thought.
ANYWAY...
They are allowed to leave untouched: the Cambodians recognize that their god has risen anew, stopping him would be pointless. Kurtz is dead, long live Kurtz.