The film Apocalypse Now was intense. It started out relatively normal and then unraveled into something more than just war—it became insanity. Although it seems to be that the film goes from a more representation of reality to a presentation of reality, I think the presentation could definitely represent the psychological aspect of the Vietnam War. There seemed, in my mind, to be three major sequences of insanity that led up to the main sequence of insanity, which was the meeting and murder of Colonel Kurtz.
The first part of insanity was the idea of surfing during battle. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore was obsessed with surfing, even to the point where he made Lance Johnson and others surf while there were bombs going off, machine guns firing and things burning everywhere. Kilgore depicted the first step of insanity because the bombs, machine guns and fire did not bother him—he would never flinch in battle.
The second part of insanity was the Playboy display at the one camp. When approaching the camp, it seemed like there were carnival lights. The small white lights around everything looked like a lit up Ferris wheel at an amusement park or carnival. These soldiers were treating war like a carnival. I know that soldiers have to do things to release feelings and try to keep their sanity, but the Playboy display became a crazy mob-fest.
The third part of insanity was shown at the final camp before reaching Colonel Kurtz. This camp, like the last, had carnival lights. They were mostly on the bridge. There were no commanding officers or people in charge and the soldiers there seemed like they were playing some kind of crazed kid war game, except they were actually killing each other. In this scene, it seemed like Hell. On Willard’s way to the docks of this camp, there were people in the water trying to climb onto the boat. This parallels with an interpretation of Heaven and Hell—those in Hell trying to grab onto anyone going to Heaven. Heaven was the boat, because it was a way out of their Hell.
All of this took place on a river that seemed to go further into the depths of insanity, which culminated when Willard met Kurtz and killed him. Willard himself, I think, tempted to be trapped by the insanity that he was witnessing. When he killed Kurtz he had war paint and barely any clothing on—he killed Kurtz with a machete and then came out to find the tribal people looking to him as a leader.
This film took me on a journey through insanity within psychological warfare as much as literal warfare. It reminded me of Lord of the Flies. Kurtz was going about war in “non-humane” ways, yet isn’t the whole notion of war not exactly humane? In Lord of the Flies the boys were rescued by a Navy person. He represented the civilized way of going about war, while they represented the inhumane or unnatural way, but really, what is humane war? Perhaps all of war is insane and maybe we all have a bit of insanity within us…
Note: My next blog will be about how different aspects of cinematography contributed to the feelings of insanity.
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I thought of the Lord of the Flies thing, too, last night. There were some scenes, especially at the Kurtz compound, where you could constantly hear flies, and often see them, and something made me write down "lord of the flies...Beelzebub."
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