I re-watched Apocalypse Now and realized I remembered most of it rather clearly - except for the end. For some curious reason, I always forget how movies and books end. It also turned out that I found the end to be the weakest part; Marlon Brando's rendition of Mr Kurtz was not convincing - he repetitiously uttered the word 'horror' in a way that was supposed to be close-to-Conrad but I was unable to see that in him, the HORROR - instead, what I saw was the pretentiousness of Coppola, and perhaps Brando. I understood Coppola's attempt to bring forth the Voice and to hide his face in shadows, but somehow what I started to pay attention to was Coppola's techniques instead of being gripped by by the strangeness of the scenes. (I didn't have this problem when reading Conrad's novella.) Otherwise, Apocalypse Now in a successful way transforms Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness into a gloomy and surreal story about the Vietnam war. What Conrad etches with exact, yet strangely dreamy, words, Coppola conjures up with hallucinatory images and music (I am not sure whether it was a wise idea to give such a central role to the Doors song).
Like the narrator of Heart of Darkness, the main character of Apocalypse now remains anonymous; Martin Sheen was the right person for this role. Even though there are some scenes that allows for some psychological depth and background, the film doesn't really revolve around him. It's more that we see the world through his eyes. He's the man who is commissioned to look for Kurtz, a high-ranked military man, a renegade colonel who has lately dedicated himself to "bad methods". The guy is called Willard and the film takes him through the madness and despair of war. There are no heroes and no just cause. He is sent on his mission but most of all he is fascinated by this Kurtz. In scene after scene, the camera lingers on his almost blank, yet somehow bewildered face. Willard mostly occupies the place of witness: he sees deranged officers (insistent on surfing close to the battle field), disintegrating American camps along the river, jumpy soldiers shooting people who are only trying to protect a puppy. Are these scenes thrilling to watch? Not in the least, I would say. In the end of the movie, he witnesses what has happened to Kurtz. But this is also a story about transformation perhaps; a story about becoming-Kurtz, getting entry into the world and vision of Kurtz before even meeting him. Unlike critics like Roger Ebert, I have a hard time understanding the story - and Kurtz - as some kind of existential witnessing of the darkest truth of being, the cruel and merciless state of nature, "the madness at the heart of human nature" as a blogger puts it. At the same time, it's difficult to describe the film as a war movie. Maybe there are hints in the movie of such a story about the Primordial Conflict; didn't the film end with a ritualistic Killing of the Father-kind of thing? This is Coppola's problem, then.
A hard-boiled voice-over accompanies the dread of the images but the voice - it's not even clear whose voice it is, but probably the protagonist's - does not provide us with a safe level of explanation. Saturated colors and shadows are used to create the ominous or straight-out menacing atmosphere. Coppola doesn't introduce these elements gradually. Already from the get-go, we are introduced into a world of madness and colonialism. From the start to the finish, this is the logic of "drop the bomb, exterminate them all!" Nightmare all the way, from the first within-the-head-hallucinations/memories onward; Coppola never stops to throw in a breather or a consoling little love story or a moment of comic relief. And, most importantly, there is no preserved dignity; there is no character who represents Morality in Hard Times.
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