Apocalypse Now

There is something intoxicating about this film. The napalm strikes decimate entire jungles as if one of the seven seals had been opened in their ethereal sublimity. Hazes of sickly yellow smoke overwhelm frames as if it were an inescapable opioid. The river slowly winds and meanders down an endless jungle into the depths of the human soul, wading through time until it reaches pure primitivism. Each time Willard ventures out of the boat, another layer of humanity is peeled off, and through a barely perceptible, transparent mask, the face of evil becomes that little bit clearer. With Captain Kilgore, you encounter the feigned righteousness and heroism that justifies massacres and barbarism. War is a game here where you mow down impoverished rice farmers from the heavens in the name of freedom, a means by which one may have fun and gain glory. It’s a distraction on a surfing trip, a television broadcast, a dress-up game where you get to play Cowboys versus Indians. At the USO show, you encounter unadulterated greed and shameless lust, where man loses all concern but that for himself. And at the Do Lung bridge, you encounter the loss of the self, the loss of all concern for all that exists; that is to say, madness. It’s like an horrific circus or an inescapable freak show, where the only option is to revert into one’s darkest self.  And it is at the abode of Colonel Kurtz where the heart of darkness becomes but mere charcoal. It is here where the Odyssey of Evil culminates. If the heart of darkness has defeated you then you become a soldier of evil, succumbing to it in the form either of insanity of death. And if you do not succumb to the heart of darkness, then you may only become it, such are the parallel fates of Kurtz and Willard. Willard is a character who is characterised by his apathy. He does not exist outside of the jungle and his capacity for empathy is non-existent. His indifference makes him a perfect candidate to claim the heart of darkness, to become the shepherd of evil.  Apocalypse Now is a film that you drift through, where events and images do not appear as individual instances, but as a confused myriad of haunting beauty. On a stylistic level the images overlay one another, sort of falling into each other as opposed to existing as themselves. The music is often psychedelic in nature, which, in its somewhat euphemistic nature, assumes a whole other plain of terror. I mean, put quite simply, it’s probably the greatest artistic endeavour in the history of American cinema. It’s something I’ve only really seen with Raging Bull, where a piece of commercial or at least conventional cinema is so utterly masterful, so artful, and so sensorially compelling, that it transcends its boundaries and becomes high art. This film should have been a tremendous failure. It should have ended the career and a few of the lives of every single person involved. But through a thicket of practical hell, Coppola managed to push through and create one of cinema’s undisputed canonic pieces. The fact that this film is as good as it is must surely be one of the greatest filmic achievements of all time.