DAY 6: APOCALYPSE NOW (including a mini-review for “DEAR ZACHARY”)
Where to begin with what this film delivers? Well, the protagonist in the film was eager to cut the BS and learn his mission at the beginning, so let’s follow suit. This is actually one of the most creative adaptations of a novel I have ever seen, modernizing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and reworking it to suit the Vietnam War circa 1970. Immediately we are introduced to Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen), a special operations officer who is considerably seasoned and highly effective in his line of work…and for likely that same reason, struggled to return to normal Stateside life. So in a return to duty in Saigon, he is assigned a mission that does not exist, to take out a believed-to-be-rogue Special Forces officer in the Cambodian jungle named Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Why Kurtz is to be killed with “extreme prejudice”, considering his successes and decorated background, Willard is not sure, but he takes the job anyway.
Carried by the Navy Patrol boat identified as “Erebus”, a.k.a. “PBR Street Gang” on radio, Willard meets a variety of characters who respond to the war differently. Some soldiers come across as figures you normally would not expect to be war-hungry (such as famed surfer Lance Johnson, played by Sam Bottoms), some still come across as childlike (Tyrone “Mr. Clean” Miller, played by Laurence Fishburne in a way that comes across as “Morpheus before he found his swagger”), and a few who simply forget why they came to fight at all. Every effort to develop a connection to their homeland, from riding waves to Playboy Bunnies, seems hollow and makes the soldiers begin to feel the same way. Eventually, Willard is increasingly filled with the desire to encounter Kurtz as he learns more about him. The script really works well in gradually (through Sheen’s narration) letting the audience learn more about Kurtz’s history…even as Willard start to feel a connection to him, while peppering in enough grittiness and brutality to leave audiences battle-shocked for weeks. And that is before the final hour inside Cambodia, which pulls no punches and would absolutely not pass Hollywood censors today without an R rating or higher. The less I say about how Willard and Kurtz eventually meet, the better; but I can tell those of you who read Conrad’s book that this adaptation stays true to the original text.
Since I want to focus more on the bigger message (and why I have a second film mentioned here), let’s just get the simple weaknesses and strengths of the film out of the way first. In all honesty, I sometimes found the behavior of the ensemble cast a little “hammy”, as if they were trying to express their emotional states in such an extreme environment by merely amplifying their characters’ normal personalities. While I have been told this was normal in older war films, it is not very realistic (based on what I have been told by family in the military) and it threw me out a couple otherwise-great scenes. Also, I have never been in a combat setting like Vietnam, but…there seemed to be a huge lack of communication and discipline that was almost universal among the soldiers. Sometimes it seemed like Sheen was the only military-minded character on screen….was that a normal by-product of that war? I’d expect a couple soldiers or leaders to be lax or mentally unstable, but this was ridiculous.
But thank Heavens, the three most important elements were near-perfect. First off, the two main characters in this film were fantastic in their roles. Martin Sheen recalls a bygone era of true acting, where a performer believed he (or she) could use body language and subtlety to say just as much when not saying a word. His tone and mannerisms seem like a great representation of a soldier who hates war but can no longer function anywhere else, and any talent or charisma his sons picked up was largely hereditary. Marlon Brando, meanwhile, proves as General Kurtz that he can play subdued as well as imposing, while also demonstrating that you don’t need much time on screen to steal the spotlight. Meanwhile, in terms of both scenery and combat displayed, director Francis Ford Coppola did everything he could to help audiences comprehend and eventually despise what war is really about. Light and shadow are used brilliantly and consistently throughout the film, reflecting what changes Kurtz has undergone and what Willard is tempted to fall into; and anytime you can create a scene featuring severed heads and it doesn’t feel like overkill, you know a sense of brutality has been well-delivered.
And now, the big picture…oh boy…in all honesty, it was really hard for me to figure out what this film was trying to say as I was watching it. Did it involve the hypocrisy of the US calling natives “savage”, even as Lt. Col. “Napalm in the Morning” Kilgore (Robert Duvall, very deep impact for only having 15-20 minutes on screen) coordinated a brutal bombing of a village…for the sake of the surfing waves there? Maybe a little, but its message seemed to be deeper than that. Was it about the potential for savagery lying dormant inside of every man, or the implications of going home either with death or victory? Again, this is pretty clear in the battle scenes even before we get to Kurtz. The mysterious Colonel has to be the key to this, since the film build up to his being revealed…so maybe it is involves the “diamond-bullet” moment that Kurtz claims affected his perception of the way the Vietnam War was working. This is where the film Dear Zachary comes into play; bear with me for one minute.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about his Father involves director Kurt Kuenne’s effort to eulogize his deceased best friend Andrew Bagby, by travelling around the country (actually, across several countries) to talk with friends and gather photos and video that can paint a full picture of the wonderful life he lived. The reasons for this become apparent in the film, and I would be a disgrace as a critic if I gave away anything beyond what is revealed in the title. (It is on instant Netflix now; please see it whenever you can and DO NOT read any spoilers or summaries of the film. Trust me.) What I can say is that it is impeccably ruthless in how straightforward and raw its depiction of humanity is. Just as Apocalypse Now emphasizes the idea that good does not always prevail inside a man, Dear Zachary shows that it does not always prevail in how society chooses to act…even with the highest stakes.
I guess my point is that, for me, Apocalypse presents a notion that seems almost contradictory at first: if humans approached war without a sense of humanity or moral judgment, then they would get through wars much more quickly. Under this reasoning, it may seem very tempting to focus more on results than how your character may be perceived, on ensuring success instead of risking failure. But the price of choosing such a road is that morality no longer serves as your compass, only survival. Thus, when exposed to true evil and immorality, Apocalypse and Zachary leave audiences with a choice of their own. I won’t say which people in which film choose which path, but I will say that if you have 4 hours, this is a life-affirming double feature that I encourage every reader to undertake (see Apocalypse Now first). But then again, whether you accept my humble opinion is a decision to make as well.
Score for Apocalypse Now:
Score for Dear Zachary:
TOMORROW (DAY 7): CRASH
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