Hero or Misconstrued Myth- Chris Remy
It has been argued that movies regarding war in the late 60’s and early 70’s were merely films that center on the American “myth making.” Apocalypse Now, a Francis Coppola film, is a movie that fits this theme of “myth making.” According to Leo Cawley, American war films express the importance of the individual and the solitary hero of the American myth (71). In other words the American solider who fights alone can be that supernatural hero that saves the country for all. This type of “individualism” is outline vicariously thru Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
In a film set in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now, portrayed a man with a mission to assassinate a fellow solider. This man, Willard, was shown to be as John Hellmann calls the hard-boiled detective. Someone that is in search of clues to uncover the mystery of his victim and legally kill him, Willard plan of route is a small boat along the coast of Vietnam. Shown to be an area that is not so fair, Vietnam uncovers clues of devistation and foreign civilizations. It is admidst this foreign civilization that the victim, Kurtz, is found. This detective task not only lays out the American Myth it exemplifies that a hero goes above and beyond complete his task. Whether it is to continue even though one of crewmembers is killed or to murder another human in cold blood. What I found rather distasteful was when his crewmen was killed a tape of his grandmother was being played on his Walkman out loud. It really let in the fact that American lives were taken so easy and that their family would not know for a while. According to Hellman, 58,000 American lives were taken in the aftermath of Vietnam. Regardless of a hero being able to accomplish his task this myth was lay to dust when the war really ended. So what, Willard killed Kurtz, what about the real war that was going on? Nonetheless this movie really did portray the haberdashery that took in the Vietnamese war. A war that the US lost, but one that will go down in history as what Hellman says “the self projected historical nightmare thru which America can awaken from its dream of innocence into a mature consciousness.”