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Review: Apocalypse Now (1979)
I knew this was a critically acclaimed movie before I began. The thing is, war movies usually aren't my thing, so my expectations were a little tamped down. I think I watched the version that was shorter.
I think this is a good drama film. Though I still believe it to be a war film, I the journey of discovery for Willard was more interesting to me and I consider that to go hand-in-hand with the war themes. i.e. I think the movie is more than just "war bad."
These are just my initial thoughts immediately after watching the movie, so I'm not going to get everything. I am looking forward to reading other people's analyses though.
Spoilers.
Story
Benjamin Willard was a captain in the American military during the Vietnam War. He was put on a secret mission to kill Walter Kurtz, a highly decorated military officer who the military has believed to have gone rogue and possibly insane.
Willard was assigned a crew, but they weren't supposed to know the details of the mission as it was confidential. For the first part of the movie, we learned more about how the military was like. For a period of time, Willard's crew had to stick to Kilgore's helicopter unit to get where they needed to go. Later on, they split off and encountered their own series of misfortunes.
Willard did reveal a little bit of information to Chef about the mission just to convince him to keep going. Two of the crew eventually died, Mr. Clean and Phillips, leaving Chef and Lance to continue with Willard.
During their journey, Willard thought a lot about Kurtz and why he might "defect" the way he did, why he made certain decisions in his life. He was given a file of Kurtz's history and achievements, as well as things like letters that Kurtz had written, but not anything directly from Kurtz except for a short soundbite that he had heard before he left for the mission.
Finally, Willard, Lance, and Chef arrived at Kurtz's location. It looked to be a little like a cult. Before the mission, we were led to believe that Kurtz was somewhat of a demigod among his followers, and the set up felt that way. We saw some Americans that were among the followers, including a previous officer who had been sent to take Kurtz out, as well as a photojournalist who seemed to be completely rapt with Kurtz's genius.
Before Willard had went to talk to Kurtz, he told Chef to send in the airstrike if he did not come out after a certain time. Willard was put in Kurtz's prison for a while and shown Chef's decapitated head, which meant the airstrike would not happen.
Anyway, Willard and Kurtz had a series of conversations. Kurtz praised the cutthroat violence of the fighters he saw in Vietnam. I can't quite remember everything Kurtz said but his words seemed to explore a dichotomy in morality. The first time we heard him say anything was on that tape that Willard heard, where Kurtz talked about a snail walking along the edge of a blade. In his words to Willard, Kurtz showed admiration for the soldiers who he deemed to be normal loving family men, and yet did not flinch at the horrors of war. And he saw that as something to live up to. I'm not sure if I just made this up, but I also got the sense that Kurtz was convinced that if he had an army of these men, then he would be able to finish off the war faster.
The photojournalist said that Kurtz wanted Willard to kill him and then take his words back to his son so he knew the truth. Apparently Kurtz was old and dying. And Willard did just that. He killed Kurtz, and when he left, Kurtz's followers bowed to him and sent him back. But at this point, Willard said that he already did not feel a part of the American military anymore.
While this movie is definitely about the horrors of war and the ridiculousness of some things that happen in it, I thought the story between Kurtz and Willard to be compelling and it kept me engaged as I usually struggle to stay engaged in war movies.
Production
The movie definitely looked great. There were a lot of very nicely composed and purposeful frames that you could tell were meant to show contrasts in war. So overall, the movie looked really purposeful and I think that's neat.
I'm definitely not the first person to bring this up, but I did notice that Kurtz's face was largely in the shadows. We rarely saw his full face. It was usually hidden in the shadows, hidden by part of his hand, or shown from afar. It was really cool at the beginning too when Willard first met Kurtz because up until then, Kurtz was more of a legend to Willard, a mystery. Even towards the end, Kurtz was almost always in the shadows. I thought that perhaps it was meant to show that Kurtz was more of an idea than a man, or to represent how Willard was going to take his spot.
The acting was alright. I didn't care too much for the soldiers in general, I was more into the conversations before the mission and after Willard arrived at Kurtz's location. So while I did still feel the interactions on the journey to be important, I didn't bond with any of the characters.
Characters
Benjamin Willard
The movie followed Willard on his mission to kill Kurtz. At the beginning, we learned about Willard's backstory. Like many soldiers, the war changed him. Even when he went home, he was never with his family, and he got a divorce. And since then, he's always wanted to get back into the field. Being in Vietnam was not enough, he needed to be "in the jungle."
He was not in such a good place when the officers came to fetch him, so it kind of showed us how out of it Willard normally was, and that he was only ever himself in battle, in war. He was very professional in his conversation with the lieutenant and colonel, not revealing information about his past confidential missions. In any case, they put him on this secret mission to kill Kurtz. Lieutenant Corman basically said that Kurtz was insane, and perhaps the soundbite on the tape would suggest that, as Kurtz's talk about the snail would have sounded random and insane to most people.
Willard kind of butted heads with Phillips. I think he considered himself a leader but the problem was only he knew what the actual mission was, which kind of made the others suspicious fo him, particularly Phillips who was a little more serious, while the others, as Willard put it, were "kids."
During the journey, Willard read up on Kurtz's history. He wondered about why Kurtz noped out of politics and administration and went back into the field even when so decorated and well on his way up.
Something that may be a plot hole is Willard's journey into understanding and sympathizing with Kurtz. Considering Willard's long experience in the field, he would have encountered these horrors long ago. So why is he only questioning things now? My guess is that he had always thought that this was how things were, and he had never thought of there being another moral orientation that makes better sense of the war.
But we saw that he was already starting to be done with the bullshit of war. At first, with Kilgore, Willard just needed to get to where he needed to be and thus didn't really get too involved in how Kilgore ran his unit. We saw more of his actual thoughts and personality when he was with his own crew, because of the butting heads.
The point that popped out to me was when the crew ran into a Vietnamese boat and they shot at them in the confusion of searching their boat. One of the women had not died from the gunshots, and the crew was talking about bringing her to get medical help, which is incredibly ironic considering they did not hesitate to shoot at the boat. Willard shot the woman dead which shocked the others, which kind of demonstrated to a smaller scale the relationship between Kurtz and the American military accusing him of murder.
That being said, when Willard arrived at Kurtz's location, he still intended on following through with the mission, and had Chef call in the airstrike if he didn't return in time.
Willard was kind of stunned with Kurtz, in that he just didn't really know how to respond. He was restrained and frightened for a time, but there was also a long period of time where he was very civilly received as a guest and just talked with Kurtz. And I guess at that time Willard was processing what Kurtz was saying to him.
The photojournalist told Willard that Kurtz wanted him to kill him. And for whatever reason, Willard followed through, but it wasn't a kill on behalf of the American military. Willard had mentioned that he would have been promoted for completing his mission, even though he did not consider himself a part of their military anymore.
After killing Kurtz, Willard took his papers and his work with him as he exited the building. That could be interpreted a number of ways. My first instinct was to think that Willard was interested in Kurtz's teachings and he wanted to understand his mind and that was why he took the papers. Kurtz did also want Willard to tell the truth to his son, and that might be another reason why Willard took the papers. To a lesser extent, that reasoning would also pose Willard as being sympathetic with Willard. The less interesting option was that Willard was just taking Kurtz's papers as evidence of his crimes.
But Willard was treated reverently and sent off peacefully, so the movie kind of had an ambiguous ending, though I think it's safe to assume that Willard would begin following Kurtz's teachings.
Walter Kurtz
Kurtz was a very decorated military man. He was well on his way up through administration. However, at the age of 38, he applied for transfer to another unit that was more field-oriented, even though there was no future for him in it.
At the beginning, Kurtz was portrayed as somewhat of an insane cult leader who was acting independently of the American military's orders and interfering with their work.
As mentioned, during Willard's journey, he was trying to understand why Kurtz would make the decisions he did. I think it can generally be chalked up to "the horrors," as Kurtz so succinctly put it. But everybody takes away different ideas from their experiences.
And for Kurtz, his takeaway was that the war needed more violence. He seemed to admire the men that could turn their brains off and kill so gruesomely. As I mentioned, it seemed to me that he thought that being more violent would end the war earlier. Kurtz generally had a kind of nihilist point of view too. Not that he explicitly expressed this, but he seemed rather uncaring of what happened outside in the real world, and perhaps that was as a result of his own experiences, in which he tried to show kindness, and that kindness was immediately undone by gruesome violence.
The photojournalist said that Kurtz wanted to die, and that he wanted Willard's help. Why? What was special about Willard? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what set Willard apart from Colby, who became one of Kurtz's followers. But maybe Kurtz saw that Willard still had his wits about him and thus saw him as someone who could pass on his thoughts and teachings.
Kurtz said that he hated lies most of all, so he wanted Willard to bring the truth back to his son, so he knew why Kurtz did the things that he did.
I'm not sure whether Kurtz had the intention of building a following, whether he really thought he could make a difference in the war, or whether it happened accidentally. He seemed more self-immersed. That being said, I do think there was perhaps a bit of egotism with Kurtz. One doesn't build that kind of following without a little bit of it.
And now he found the perfect person to pass on his legacy to, and he did just that. All according to plan.
Bill Kilgore
Kilgore was a colonel that Willard joined up with in the earlier part of the journey. Kilgore was a typical jockbro army leader, cracking offensive jokes and such.
The first thing that made Kilgore stick out to me was the hypocrisy that was similar to the way that Willard's crew acted later on. There was an enemy soldier who was dying and wanted some water. The ally Vietnamese soldiers argued against it, but Kilgore expressed that any brave soldier was worthy of dignity. Just as he was going to give water to the dying soldier, he was distracted by the appearance of Lance Johnson, the surfer, and he immediately forgot the dying soldier. It again expressed the idea that heroics were very superficial and artificial. Created and solved by them.
Kilgore was obsessed with surfing and constantly talked to Lance about surfing, even in the middle of battles. He wanted Lance to show off his surfing during a bombing, which showed how flippant he was about the war.
Kilgore was generally a risk-taker, wanting to launch a strike at a place that was generally strong enemy territory, for its physical advantages.
Willard's Crew
Willard's Crew was made up of George "Chief" Phillips, Lance Johnson, Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller, and Jay "Chef" Hicks. Willard called them kids, and they were generally inexperienced. In the earlier days of the journey, they just had fun.
Willard butted heads with Phillips as Phillips saw himself a leader, but Willard was the one with the secret mission. Chief was killed in an attack and tried to kill Willard with him, but it didn't work.
As we know, Lance was a surfer, but here, everybody was a soldier. He generally spent most of his idle time surfing or tanning. Kilgore was the only one who cared about his surfing over in Vietnam. Even Lance himself didn't care for it because he was busy not dying.
Clean was quite young, only 17 years old. He seemed a little more reckless and young, interested in having a good time and possibly asserting dominance.
Willard revealed some of his mission to Chef to convince them to stick together, but Chef was a little upset about it, because he felt that they were taking out one of their own. Chef in general seemed the least interested in war. He was supposed to go to culinary school (hence the nickname Chef).
Richard Colby
Colby was an earlier officer who was put on the mission to kill Kurtz. However, he had eventually joined Kurtz's faction. He was rather non-responsive when Willard got to him, though clearly loyal to Kurtz.
My guess was that Colby saw some extreme things that put him onto the side of Kurtz real fast.
Themes
I know there are probably a ton of recurring themes throughout the movie that I've missed, but here are the few that came to me during the movie.
Cult leadership
This was one of the first that was introduced to us, since the Lieutenant was talking about how Kurtz had become somewhat of a god.
What was special about Kurtz was that he seemed to be ascending to godhood not with good but with evil. This wasn't a death cult, but something of a violence/horror cult, that just focused on making people as okay with the gruesome as possible, as Kurtz felt that that made people better.
Patriotism
Chef was very shaken up over the mission to kill Kurtz, since he considered Kurtz still an American and an officer. But he did not know what Kurtz had done, didn't even question it, and had decided then that it was a bad idea. I don't think he's super staunch about that, considering he goes with Willard in his mission to kill Kurtz.
But it just raises a question about how arbitrary war can be sometimes. It really is just "they're on my side/the other side" without questioning what a person has done other than existing.
War Politics
Everybody can tell that charging Kurtz with murder during a war is just a bullshit excuse to take him out, because all those people who died as a result of bombings and guns are ignored, and the deaths of the suspected double agents are more important. Of course, we know that the actual victims aren't the important thing here, it's the military wanting to take out the rogue Kurtz whom they perceive to be a threat.
Heroics for Show
The first time I noticed this was when Kilgore went on about how brave that enemy soldier was, and then promptly forgot about him. I am always a proponent of words being cheap, and that's the case here. Kilgore can say whatever he wants, but his actions show that he's not as much of a hero as he likes to think he is.
The second example of heroics for show was during the interrogation of that Vietnamese boat. All of the fuss was made by Willard's crew; they were arguing about searching the boat while those on the boat were totally being compliant. Clean started shooting for no reason other than that the people were scared and nervous because they didn't know what the soldiers wanted from them. And then afterward, when they found the woman not yet dead and wanting to bring her to get medical attention, it was so hollow because they were the ones who killed her and her friends to begin with. It was only an anomaly that she hadn't yet died, and Willard killed her anyway because that was the crew's original intention anyway: to shoot and kill.
Violence
So this was a big part of Kurtz's philosophy, that being able to stand the horrors made someone a stronger person. He was so wowed by the people who didn't even flinch at the children's amputated arms and that struck him.
But instead of being freaked out, Kurtz was admiring of them and wished he had more men like that.
And to a degree, I sort of see where he's going. The thing abour those horrors of war is that they exist on this earth. They aren't otherworldly. And so if I cannot stand them, does that say something about me? That I can't stand something that is natural? I don't agree with this, but this is just an example of an argument.
Overall
I will definitely have to read more analytical pieces on this movie because I do think there's a lot that I missed. I think the version that I watched was the shorter version of the movie, so if I ever get to rewatching this movie, maybe I should watch the full length version.
Overall, interesting movie, and it has an interesting personal story line that makes it more compelling to me compared to other war movies.
I think this is a good drama film. Though I still believe it to be a war film, I the journey of discovery for Willard was more interesting to me and I consider that to go hand-in-hand with the war themes. i.e. I think the movie is more than just "war bad."
These are just my initial thoughts immediately after watching the movie, so I'm not going to get everything. I am looking forward to reading other people's analyses though.
Spoilers.
Story
Benjamin Willard was a captain in the American military during the Vietnam War. He was put on a secret mission to kill Walter Kurtz, a highly decorated military officer who the military has believed to have gone rogue and possibly insane.
Willard was assigned a crew, but they weren't supposed to know the details of the mission as it was confidential. For the first part of the movie, we learned more about how the military was like. For a period of time, Willard's crew had to stick to Kilgore's helicopter unit to get where they needed to go. Later on, they split off and encountered their own series of misfortunes.
Willard did reveal a little bit of information to Chef about the mission just to convince him to keep going. Two of the crew eventually died, Mr. Clean and Phillips, leaving Chef and Lance to continue with Willard.
During their journey, Willard thought a lot about Kurtz and why he might "defect" the way he did, why he made certain decisions in his life. He was given a file of Kurtz's history and achievements, as well as things like letters that Kurtz had written, but not anything directly from Kurtz except for a short soundbite that he had heard before he left for the mission.
Finally, Willard, Lance, and Chef arrived at Kurtz's location. It looked to be a little like a cult. Before the mission, we were led to believe that Kurtz was somewhat of a demigod among his followers, and the set up felt that way. We saw some Americans that were among the followers, including a previous officer who had been sent to take Kurtz out, as well as a photojournalist who seemed to be completely rapt with Kurtz's genius.
Before Willard had went to talk to Kurtz, he told Chef to send in the airstrike if he did not come out after a certain time. Willard was put in Kurtz's prison for a while and shown Chef's decapitated head, which meant the airstrike would not happen.
Anyway, Willard and Kurtz had a series of conversations. Kurtz praised the cutthroat violence of the fighters he saw in Vietnam. I can't quite remember everything Kurtz said but his words seemed to explore a dichotomy in morality. The first time we heard him say anything was on that tape that Willard heard, where Kurtz talked about a snail walking along the edge of a blade. In his words to Willard, Kurtz showed admiration for the soldiers who he deemed to be normal loving family men, and yet did not flinch at the horrors of war. And he saw that as something to live up to. I'm not sure if I just made this up, but I also got the sense that Kurtz was convinced that if he had an army of these men, then he would be able to finish off the war faster.
The photojournalist said that Kurtz wanted Willard to kill him and then take his words back to his son so he knew the truth. Apparently Kurtz was old and dying. And Willard did just that. He killed Kurtz, and when he left, Kurtz's followers bowed to him and sent him back. But at this point, Willard said that he already did not feel a part of the American military anymore.
While this movie is definitely about the horrors of war and the ridiculousness of some things that happen in it, I thought the story between Kurtz and Willard to be compelling and it kept me engaged as I usually struggle to stay engaged in war movies.
Production
The movie definitely looked great. There were a lot of very nicely composed and purposeful frames that you could tell were meant to show contrasts in war. So overall, the movie looked really purposeful and I think that's neat.
I'm definitely not the first person to bring this up, but I did notice that Kurtz's face was largely in the shadows. We rarely saw his full face. It was usually hidden in the shadows, hidden by part of his hand, or shown from afar. It was really cool at the beginning too when Willard first met Kurtz because up until then, Kurtz was more of a legend to Willard, a mystery. Even towards the end, Kurtz was almost always in the shadows. I thought that perhaps it was meant to show that Kurtz was more of an idea than a man, or to represent how Willard was going to take his spot.
The acting was alright. I didn't care too much for the soldiers in general, I was more into the conversations before the mission and after Willard arrived at Kurtz's location. So while I did still feel the interactions on the journey to be important, I didn't bond with any of the characters.
Characters
Benjamin Willard
The movie followed Willard on his mission to kill Kurtz. At the beginning, we learned about Willard's backstory. Like many soldiers, the war changed him. Even when he went home, he was never with his family, and he got a divorce. And since then, he's always wanted to get back into the field. Being in Vietnam was not enough, he needed to be "in the jungle."
He was not in such a good place when the officers came to fetch him, so it kind of showed us how out of it Willard normally was, and that he was only ever himself in battle, in war. He was very professional in his conversation with the lieutenant and colonel, not revealing information about his past confidential missions. In any case, they put him on this secret mission to kill Kurtz. Lieutenant Corman basically said that Kurtz was insane, and perhaps the soundbite on the tape would suggest that, as Kurtz's talk about the snail would have sounded random and insane to most people.
Willard kind of butted heads with Phillips. I think he considered himself a leader but the problem was only he knew what the actual mission was, which kind of made the others suspicious fo him, particularly Phillips who was a little more serious, while the others, as Willard put it, were "kids."
During the journey, Willard read up on Kurtz's history. He wondered about why Kurtz noped out of politics and administration and went back into the field even when so decorated and well on his way up.
Something that may be a plot hole is Willard's journey into understanding and sympathizing with Kurtz. Considering Willard's long experience in the field, he would have encountered these horrors long ago. So why is he only questioning things now? My guess is that he had always thought that this was how things were, and he had never thought of there being another moral orientation that makes better sense of the war.
But we saw that he was already starting to be done with the bullshit of war. At first, with Kilgore, Willard just needed to get to where he needed to be and thus didn't really get too involved in how Kilgore ran his unit. We saw more of his actual thoughts and personality when he was with his own crew, because of the butting heads.
The point that popped out to me was when the crew ran into a Vietnamese boat and they shot at them in the confusion of searching their boat. One of the women had not died from the gunshots, and the crew was talking about bringing her to get medical help, which is incredibly ironic considering they did not hesitate to shoot at the boat. Willard shot the woman dead which shocked the others, which kind of demonstrated to a smaller scale the relationship between Kurtz and the American military accusing him of murder.
That being said, when Willard arrived at Kurtz's location, he still intended on following through with the mission, and had Chef call in the airstrike if he didn't return in time.
Willard was kind of stunned with Kurtz, in that he just didn't really know how to respond. He was restrained and frightened for a time, but there was also a long period of time where he was very civilly received as a guest and just talked with Kurtz. And I guess at that time Willard was processing what Kurtz was saying to him.
The photojournalist told Willard that Kurtz wanted him to kill him. And for whatever reason, Willard followed through, but it wasn't a kill on behalf of the American military. Willard had mentioned that he would have been promoted for completing his mission, even though he did not consider himself a part of their military anymore.
After killing Kurtz, Willard took his papers and his work with him as he exited the building. That could be interpreted a number of ways. My first instinct was to think that Willard was interested in Kurtz's teachings and he wanted to understand his mind and that was why he took the papers. Kurtz did also want Willard to tell the truth to his son, and that might be another reason why Willard took the papers. To a lesser extent, that reasoning would also pose Willard as being sympathetic with Willard. The less interesting option was that Willard was just taking Kurtz's papers as evidence of his crimes.
But Willard was treated reverently and sent off peacefully, so the movie kind of had an ambiguous ending, though I think it's safe to assume that Willard would begin following Kurtz's teachings.
Walter Kurtz
Kurtz was a very decorated military man. He was well on his way up through administration. However, at the age of 38, he applied for transfer to another unit that was more field-oriented, even though there was no future for him in it.
At the beginning, Kurtz was portrayed as somewhat of an insane cult leader who was acting independently of the American military's orders and interfering with their work.
As mentioned, during Willard's journey, he was trying to understand why Kurtz would make the decisions he did. I think it can generally be chalked up to "the horrors," as Kurtz so succinctly put it. But everybody takes away different ideas from their experiences.
And for Kurtz, his takeaway was that the war needed more violence. He seemed to admire the men that could turn their brains off and kill so gruesomely. As I mentioned, it seemed to me that he thought that being more violent would end the war earlier. Kurtz generally had a kind of nihilist point of view too. Not that he explicitly expressed this, but he seemed rather uncaring of what happened outside in the real world, and perhaps that was as a result of his own experiences, in which he tried to show kindness, and that kindness was immediately undone by gruesome violence.
The photojournalist said that Kurtz wanted to die, and that he wanted Willard's help. Why? What was special about Willard? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what set Willard apart from Colby, who became one of Kurtz's followers. But maybe Kurtz saw that Willard still had his wits about him and thus saw him as someone who could pass on his thoughts and teachings.
Kurtz said that he hated lies most of all, so he wanted Willard to bring the truth back to his son, so he knew why Kurtz did the things that he did.
I'm not sure whether Kurtz had the intention of building a following, whether he really thought he could make a difference in the war, or whether it happened accidentally. He seemed more self-immersed. That being said, I do think there was perhaps a bit of egotism with Kurtz. One doesn't build that kind of following without a little bit of it.
And now he found the perfect person to pass on his legacy to, and he did just that. All according to plan.
Bill Kilgore
Kilgore was a colonel that Willard joined up with in the earlier part of the journey. Kilgore was a typical jockbro army leader, cracking offensive jokes and such.
The first thing that made Kilgore stick out to me was the hypocrisy that was similar to the way that Willard's crew acted later on. There was an enemy soldier who was dying and wanted some water. The ally Vietnamese soldiers argued against it, but Kilgore expressed that any brave soldier was worthy of dignity. Just as he was going to give water to the dying soldier, he was distracted by the appearance of Lance Johnson, the surfer, and he immediately forgot the dying soldier. It again expressed the idea that heroics were very superficial and artificial. Created and solved by them.
Kilgore was obsessed with surfing and constantly talked to Lance about surfing, even in the middle of battles. He wanted Lance to show off his surfing during a bombing, which showed how flippant he was about the war.
Kilgore was generally a risk-taker, wanting to launch a strike at a place that was generally strong enemy territory, for its physical advantages.
Willard's Crew
Willard's Crew was made up of George "Chief" Phillips, Lance Johnson, Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller, and Jay "Chef" Hicks. Willard called them kids, and they were generally inexperienced. In the earlier days of the journey, they just had fun.
Willard butted heads with Phillips as Phillips saw himself a leader, but Willard was the one with the secret mission. Chief was killed in an attack and tried to kill Willard with him, but it didn't work.
As we know, Lance was a surfer, but here, everybody was a soldier. He generally spent most of his idle time surfing or tanning. Kilgore was the only one who cared about his surfing over in Vietnam. Even Lance himself didn't care for it because he was busy not dying.
Clean was quite young, only 17 years old. He seemed a little more reckless and young, interested in having a good time and possibly asserting dominance.
Willard revealed some of his mission to Chef to convince them to stick together, but Chef was a little upset about it, because he felt that they were taking out one of their own. Chef in general seemed the least interested in war. He was supposed to go to culinary school (hence the nickname Chef).
Richard Colby
Colby was an earlier officer who was put on the mission to kill Kurtz. However, he had eventually joined Kurtz's faction. He was rather non-responsive when Willard got to him, though clearly loyal to Kurtz.
My guess was that Colby saw some extreme things that put him onto the side of Kurtz real fast.
Themes
I know there are probably a ton of recurring themes throughout the movie that I've missed, but here are the few that came to me during the movie.
Cult leadership
This was one of the first that was introduced to us, since the Lieutenant was talking about how Kurtz had become somewhat of a god.
What was special about Kurtz was that he seemed to be ascending to godhood not with good but with evil. This wasn't a death cult, but something of a violence/horror cult, that just focused on making people as okay with the gruesome as possible, as Kurtz felt that that made people better.
Patriotism
Chef was very shaken up over the mission to kill Kurtz, since he considered Kurtz still an American and an officer. But he did not know what Kurtz had done, didn't even question it, and had decided then that it was a bad idea. I don't think he's super staunch about that, considering he goes with Willard in his mission to kill Kurtz.
But it just raises a question about how arbitrary war can be sometimes. It really is just "they're on my side/the other side" without questioning what a person has done other than existing.
War Politics
Everybody can tell that charging Kurtz with murder during a war is just a bullshit excuse to take him out, because all those people who died as a result of bombings and guns are ignored, and the deaths of the suspected double agents are more important. Of course, we know that the actual victims aren't the important thing here, it's the military wanting to take out the rogue Kurtz whom they perceive to be a threat.
Heroics for Show
The first time I noticed this was when Kilgore went on about how brave that enemy soldier was, and then promptly forgot about him. I am always a proponent of words being cheap, and that's the case here. Kilgore can say whatever he wants, but his actions show that he's not as much of a hero as he likes to think he is.
The second example of heroics for show was during the interrogation of that Vietnamese boat. All of the fuss was made by Willard's crew; they were arguing about searching the boat while those on the boat were totally being compliant. Clean started shooting for no reason other than that the people were scared and nervous because they didn't know what the soldiers wanted from them. And then afterward, when they found the woman not yet dead and wanting to bring her to get medical attention, it was so hollow because they were the ones who killed her and her friends to begin with. It was only an anomaly that she hadn't yet died, and Willard killed her anyway because that was the crew's original intention anyway: to shoot and kill.
Violence
So this was a big part of Kurtz's philosophy, that being able to stand the horrors made someone a stronger person. He was so wowed by the people who didn't even flinch at the children's amputated arms and that struck him.
But instead of being freaked out, Kurtz was admiring of them and wished he had more men like that.
And to a degree, I sort of see where he's going. The thing abour those horrors of war is that they exist on this earth. They aren't otherworldly. And so if I cannot stand them, does that say something about me? That I can't stand something that is natural? I don't agree with this, but this is just an example of an argument.
Overall
I will definitely have to read more analytical pieces on this movie because I do think there's a lot that I missed. I think the version that I watched was the shorter version of the movie, so if I ever get to rewatching this movie, maybe I should watch the full length version.
Overall, interesting movie, and it has an interesting personal story line that makes it more compelling to me compared to other war movies.