Apocalypse Now: film analysis and themes

¶ … MOVIE APOCALYPSE NOW Abstract: This is an analysis of the use of the Vietnam War as a cultural backdrop in the movie Apocalypse Now. It outlines how Francis Coppola uses Vietnam War as the basis for cultural differentiation, how director uses the narrator / voice over of Willard and it accounts for two combats during the journey up river. It uses only the movie as a source in MLA format.

Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now is one in a series of Vietnam War story. With Vietnam as the cultural backdrop, Coppola presents the bizarre war environment through the behavior of the various characters of the movie especially Kurtz and Kilgore. To make the Vietnam War experience more personal Coppola uses voice over of the protagonist Willard (played by Martin Sheen), transitioning his uncultured, all-American thoughts to gradually one of a soldier in Vietnam. In essence Willard is an assassin sent to terminate the command" of Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando). But as the plot of the movie develops, one sees Willard unfolding a humanistic side of himself. The opening scene shows he is in a Saigon hotel, awaiting his mission. He thinks how strange it is to kill one's fellow countrymen in a foreign land. "There were those six that I knew about for sure, close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. It wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did." [Apocalypse Now]. The other characters on the other hand become more chaotic. Their irrational behavior, the result of war pressure and a strange environment, contributed to the violent trip up river.

Although their mission is to eliminate Kurtz, during their trip they faced many incidents of combat as well. These combats only depict the change in behavior of rational men in a war. Coppola captures the essence of Vietnamese jungles and contrasts the American existence on foreign lands by placing the soldier against the Viet Cong. The first combat for instance shows Kurtz guiding his men, killing senseless. This battle against Lt. Col. Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) shows a realistic footage of napalms unit of a Vietnamese Village. Coppola justifies the position of these soldiers through the voice over of Willard claiming "charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." [Apocalypse Now]. Assigning leadership role like Kurtz only show how the American soldiers in Vietnam were misguided by their leaders. They were merely scapegoats in a senseless battle. There was no morality in killing people because it did not follow any code of conduct.