Admiral Kurtz
Apocalypse Now is a film about madness. In this film, Willard, played by
Charlie Sheen, is sent through madness, reminiscent of Dantes\' journey through
hell. His mission is to kill Kurtz, who’s gone insane according to military
intelligence. Kurtz has gone on his own, starting his own society in Cambodia,
where his troops and the local tribes worship him as a god. Kurtz has committed
murder by waging his own ferocious, independent war against Vietnamese
intelligence agents with his own native Montagnard army across the border in an
ancient Cambodian temple deep in the jungle. General Corman explains the
confused insanity of the war: \"In this war, things get confused out
there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity.\"
The colonel has become a self-appointed, worshipped godlike leader/dictator of
a renegade native tribe. General Corman describes Kurtz\'s temptation to be
deified: \"Because there\'s a conflict in every human heart between the
rational and the irrational, between the good and the evil. The good does not
always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the
better angels of our nature. Therein, man has got a breaking point. You and I
have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone
insane.\" Kurtz’s motivation behind his actions is his need to feel
godlike, to act without judgment.
In Kurtz\' camp, a site of primitive evil, they are greeted by a crazed,
hyperactive, fast-talking, spaced-out free lance photo-journalist played by
Dennis Hoper. The babbling combat photographer, garlanded by his camera
equipment, hopes for their sake, that they haven\'t come to take away Colonel
Kurtz. He describes the great awe all the natives have for their jungle lord:
\"Out here, we\'re all his children.\" The photojournalist appears to
be a fanatical follower of Kurtz, worshipping the enigmatic, genius
\"poet-warrior\" Kurtz as a personal god and expounding Kurtz\'s
cause: \"You don\'t talk to the Colonel, you listen to him. The man\'s
enlarged my mind. He\'s a poet-warrior in the classic sense...I\'m a little
man. He\'s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling
across floors of silent seas, I mean...He can be terrible. He can be mean. And
he can be right. He\'s fighting a war. He\'s a great man.\" He offers
first-hand advice from his own experience: \"Play it cool, laid back...You
don\'t judge the Colonel.\" Willard is impressed by Kurtz\'s power over
the people. He notices Captain Richard Colby among the native’s tribesmen.
The crew returns to the boat to wait until Willard can talk to Kurtz. Chef
feels that the Colonel is \"wacko, man. He\'s worse than crazy. He\'s
evil...It\'s f--kin\' pagan idolatry. Look around you.\" Willard leaves
with Lance to scout around and try to find the Colonel, keeping Chef on the
boat and instructing him to radio for help if necessary: \"If I don\'t get
back by 2200 hours, you\'ll call in the air strike.\" Willard sees
hundreds of bodies - proving Kurtz\' insanity: \"North Vietnamese,
Vietcong, Cambodians.\" He realizes Kurtz\'s power over life and death:
\"If I was still alive, it was because he wanted me that way.\"
Willard soon finds himself in awe of Kurtz’s power over people. He is
fascinated with him and his ways as a leader, and he begins to see Kurtz in the
same way the tribesman do.
Willard feels ambivalent about his mission\'s task, finding Kurtz brilliant but
rambling and spiritually troubled - as the camera pans across mythic texts (The
Holy Bible, From Ritual to Romance by Jesse L. Weston, and James Frazier\'s The
Golden Bough) in Kurtz\'s headquarters. Kurtz speaks of the
\"horrors\" that he has seen in the bloody conflict, and denies that
Willard has any moral right to judge his actions or behavior. Kurtz also believes
that \"moral terror\" and \"horror\" are necessary to
preserve civilization as he philosophizes with further pronouncements. Kurtz
believes the atrocities revealed for him the moral strength and commitment of
men who loved their families and could still act so monstrously \"without
judgment\" - with a primordial instinct to kill. According to him, those
revelations have accentuated the moral ambiguity of war and justified his
rampage in Cambodia - a mass-murder and mutilation of the enemy \"without
judgment,\" to shorten the war. Kurtz wants primitive men, similar to
agent Willard on his mission, who can kill without judgment \"because
it\'s judgment that defeats us.\" The conventional war effort of Americans
(with high-tech bombs and other machines and weapons of war) will ultimately be
defeated by triumphant opposition forces of primitives that are committed and
determined (http://film.tierranet.com/films/a.now/ix.html).
Kurtz, always seen in dark surroundings within his temple headquarters, allows Willard
to carry out his sacrificial mission at night. Willard\'s head rises up out of
the steamy primordial depths of filthy water as he begins to stalk his prey for
the slaughter - the imposing, bullish Kurtz. Lightning strobe effects and the
frenzied rhythmic sounds of the Doors \'The End\' accompany the slaying of
Kurtz with a machete. It is a ritualistic decapitation, brilliantly crosscut
with the brutal sacrificial slaughter/killing of a carabao/water buffalo by the
natives as a ritualistic sacrifice to their
gods(http://www.neo.lrun.com/12stark/12smith/Netpages/Apocal/bertram.html).As
he dies Kurtz mutters a few final words, accepting the evil present in the
human soul, “the horror, the horror.”
The old king/chieftain of the people is sacrificed, in order for the land to
become liberated. With the bloody machete in hand, Willard is given a path
through the awed, native throng. The subservient villagers bow down to their
new powerful god-like leader, but Willard refuses the opportunity to become
their new god and king. With his bloody mission accomplished, Willard guides
stoned-out Lance to the patrol boat so that they can begin their return
journey. They retreat in the gunboat as the natives close in on them on the
banks. As they pull away, a cleansing hard rain begins to fall and
static-filled radio transmissions play in the background, as soon the US planes
begin to rain down a cavalcade of explosives and destroy the Kurtz compound.
In the end, Kurtz’s final wishes were not fulfilled, as Willard did not take
his place as the leader of his people. Kurtz believed he has achieved his
godlike standing, feeling he could kill without judgment, like God, and in the
end, let Willard kill him, in and effort to make Willard like him, the perfect
warrior, to act without judgment.
References
American Psychology Association. (2000, March 19). Http://www.apa.org.
Available: [2000, March 26].
AmexII Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now, A hellish Journey (1999, September 17).
http://www.neo.lrun.com/12stark/12smith/Netpages/Apocal/bertram.html.
Available: [1999, September 19].
Apocalypse Now Site Index. (2000, March 26).
http://film.tierranet.com/films/a.now/ix.html. Available:[2000, March 26].
Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now Tribute. (2000, March 26). http://film.tierranet.com/films/a.now/.
Available: [2000, March 26].
IMDB. Movie Reviews Online. (1999, December 01). . Http://www.imbd.com.
Available: [2000, March 26].