Apocalypse Now
By: Elizabeth Bassett
Upon initiation of the Vietnam War, the United States went into an upheaval as many questioned the purpose of sacrificing the lives of American soldiers and innocent Vietnamese people through warfare. In order to gain closure and some sense of solace for the American people, filmmakers provided movies of the War in hopes of revealing the true purpose for engaging in combat and the actual happenings overseas. They also hoped to reveal the realities of war to many unaware individuals and provide an emotional emollient in a time of political and emotional trauma across the nation.
One movie produced during this time, Apocalypse Now, failed to fulfill many of the intended purposes of filmmakers of the time as it was based on the Vietnam conflict. Before watching a movie, one must first look at the title. In this case, the very title of Apocalypse Now speaks not only of the horrors of warfare, but the end of the world. This may have upset the American people more than provide comfort as it brought the war to a new level. Could this title reveal that the Vietnam War was simply the start of mass warfare or chaos worldwide? To me, it reveals desperation and sadness instead of consolace and sympathy as other movies of the time provided. To many Americans, it may have been a first glimpse of the horrors of warfare by showing the atrocities and death surrounding the conflict. Soldiers were not the only individuals at risk in this situation. One depiction of this in the movie was of the “PRB boat’s routine search of a peaceful sampan turns into a massacre less by inadvertence than from the pressure of the irrepressible violence� (Norris, 1998, p.2). Innocent lives of both soldiers and civilians were lost. Along with this, it also provided images of the terrain and extremely hot temperatures soldiers faced in Vietnam. Watching the hardships the troops were forced to endure may have struck pride in the hearts of some Americans as it illuminated the valor and toughness of the American boys. To others, it may have worsened the situation by showing the unhygienic, dirty, and muggy conditions that were considered normal in the Vietnam War. If anything, this movie left Americans continuing to question the validity and necessity of a war many in which many innocent lives were lost on all sides.
Apocalypse Now also contradicts the typical image of war films we as a society hold. Until that point, the United States had experienced victory in every war it had participated in as demonstrated in various films and stories throughout history. No resolutions were found in the Vietnam War, however, making it the only war we as a nation did not win. The movie portrayed Willard chugging back up the river at the end after killing Kurtz only to return to conflict and continued warfare instead of home to his family as seen in many war films. Many movies portray the United States military as a machine with all pieces greased, oiled, and running at the most optimal speed possible. Apocalype Now contradicted this image as it revealed holes in the United States armed forces. One example of this from the film was when Willard and his fellow boatmen stopped at an island in hopes of acquiring further information on Kurtz. Instead, Captain Willard found a rag-tag group of soldiers fighting with no particular semblance of order and no commanding officer to be found. “Another key feature of the film falsification of war is the importance of the individual, the solitary hero of American myth� (Cawley, 1987, p. 5). In this Captain Willard was the hero who received credit even though he was surrounded by a boat crew who took him to the innermost parts of the jungle in search of Kurtz. Although Willard was ultimately idolized, he would have been unable to accomplish his mission without his boat crew.