(detailed information about this entry from Wikipedia)
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script by John Milius (rewritten by Coppola) which was inspired by Joseph Conrad's classic novella Heart of Darkness. Set during the Vietnam War, the film tells the story of a taciturn American soldier who is sent to "terminate with extreme prejudice," i.e. assassinate, a rogue United States Army Special Forces colonel named Kurtz. The narrative of his journey upriver and its culmination are studded with increasingly surreal and phantasmagoric events, some of which, while bizarre, are based on real stories told to the filmmakers by Vietnam veterans. As the film continues, it turns more and more nonlinear and hallucinatory. Much like the novel on which it is based, many critics see the film's subtext as a journey into the darkness of the human psyche.
The film features performances by Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard (who is named Marlow in Conrad's novel), Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, Dennis Hopper as a fast-talking hallucinogen-imbibing, burned-out photojournalist, and Robert Duvall in an Oscar-nominated turn as the gung-ho borderline-psychotic Lt. Colonel Kilgore. Several other actors who were, or later became, prominent stars had minor or supporting roles in the movie including Harrison Ford, R. Lee Ermey and Laurence Fishburne. Fishburne was only fourteen years old when shooting began in March 1976, and was credited as "Larry Fishburne". Ironically, the film took so long to finish that Fishburne was eighteen, the same age as his character, when the film came out.
The movie became notorious in the entertainment press long before its release due to its lengthy and troubled production. Director Coppola financed the film completely with his own money, earned from the blockbuster Godfather films, and faced the possibility of bankruptcy if the film was not a success. The making of the film was chronicled by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, in the book Notes and in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which makes use of documentary footage shot by Eleanor Coppola during principal photography. The tempestuous story of the film's production has now passed into Hollywood legend.
The movie poster art for Apocalypse Now is one of the more famous paintings by Bob Peak, who is considered an influential artist in the world of movie posters.
Background and Production
The film was originally written in the late 1960s by John Milius, who would go on to direct films such as The Wind and the Lion and Red Dawn. Milius claims to have been inspired by his film professor's claim that no one had been able to successfuly adapt the book Heart of Darkness, despite attempts by such legendary directors as Orson Welles and Richard Brooks. Ironically, given that the finished film is seen as an anti-war movie, Milius, who is politically rightwing, originally conceived the title as a cynical answer to the hippie slogan "Nirvana Now!" and his original screenplay includes several speeches by Kurtz exalting the virtues of combat and the warrior way of life.
The script was originally to be directed by George Lucas, who at that point was Francis Coppola's protege at American Zoetrope. Coppola founded Zoetrope in order to create an alternative to the major Hollywood studios which would support the work of the rising generation of film-school graduates who would become known colloquially as "the movie brats." The war in Vietnam was still going on at the time and the initial plan was to shoot Apocalypse Now guerilla-style in Vietnam itself. Warner Brothers, which had a production deal with Zoetrope, refused to finance the project both for commercial reasons and the fear that the filmmakers would be killed trying to shoot it in a war zone. Lucas has claimed that the studio saw the project, as well as him and his colleagues, as "crazy." After Lucas found success with American Graffiti and the blockbuster Star Wars, Coppola chose to direct the film himself. This reportedly caused some friction between the two men. Coppola chose to finance the film entirely with his own assets, using the money he earned from the two Godfather films and a bank loan, in order to retain total creative control over the final product.
Coppola also rewrote the script to accommodate his vision, removing much of Milius's macho dialogue and changing the film's ending. Milius's original ending showed Kurtz and Willard joining forces to fight an American air assault on Kurtz's compound. The compound is destroyed in a massive air strike and Kurtz dies of his wounds as Willard looks on. Coppola dismissed this ending as cartoonish. The ending would be rewritten multiple times over the course of production and most of Kurtz's role would eventually be improvised by Marlon Brando. The film's narration was written during the editing process by Michael Herr, who had written the book Dispatches while a war correspondent in Vietnam.
Apocalypse Now was the first time Coppola worked with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who had shot one of Coppola's favorite films, The Conformist, for Bernardo Bertolucci.
The film was shot in the Philippines (most notably the Pagsanjan River and Hidden Valley Springs) and the shoot has become legendary for its length and difficulty. The film went far over budget and over schedule for several reasons. A typhoon destroyed many of the sets, which had to be rebuilt at great expense. The Philippine Air Force helicopters used for shooting Col. Kilgore's attack on a Vietnamese village were constantly being called back by President Ferdinand Marcos to serve in actual combat against anti-government rebels. The lead role, originally to be played by Harvey Keitel, was recast after shooting had already begun and all of the actor's footage had to be scrapped. Martin Sheen, who replaced Keitel, then had a near-fatal heart attack. It took him weeks to recover and return to production, during which time the film was in danger of being shut down. Being similar in appearance and remarkably similar in voice, Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez stood in for the unwell Sheen in some of the long shots and would later record some of the film's narration. Marlon Brando appeared on set massively overweight, despite his character's description as sick and emaciated. He refused to learn his lines and had not read the book Heart of Darkness as Coppola had requested. The majority of Brando's dialogue had to be improvised, despite the short time during which the actor was available. Coppola himself was mentally fragile. He would famously say of the shoot that "Little by little we went insane." The director faced bankruptcy and financial ruin if the film was not finished or shut down and the pressure on him was immense. At one point, Coppola's marriage almost fell apart and the director suffered a nervous breakdown.
The film took over a year to edit, mostly on state of the art editing equipment purchased specifically for the production by Coppola. The initial rough cut was over six hours long and had to be severely cut. A three hour version was screened as a "work in progress" at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme D'Or for best film. It was at the Cannes press conference that Coppola made his famous comment that "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." This comment, in the eyes of the press, only confirmed the director's incipient megalomania. The original released version of the movie was just over two and a half hours long, and was a box-office success in the United States and overseas. It eventually made over 100 million dollars at the box office.
Coppola re-released the film in 2001 under the title Apocalypse Now Redux, restoring footage and sequences cut from the original release print. This version runs slightly longer than 200 minutes. The new print was supervised by Vittorio Storaro, who used a color process of his own invention to restore the film for release. Storaro has claimed that Apocalypse Now Redux looks better than the original release print of the film. For background information on the film, see Eleanor Coppola's documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, released in 1991.
Synopsis
U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard is stationed in Saigon; a seasoned veteran, he is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers approach him with a special mission up-river into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces.
They state that Kurtz, once considered a model officer and future general, has apparently gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep in neutral Cambodia. Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and/or recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is asked to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and "terminate…with extreme prejudice."
Willard studies the intelligence files during the boat ride to the river entrance and learns that Kurtz, isolated in his compound, has assumed the role of a warlord and is worshipped by the natives and his own loyal men. Another officer, sent earlier to kill Kurtz, has apparently become one of his lieutenants.
Willard will begin his trip up the Mekong River on a PBR (Patrol Boat, Riverine), with an eclectic crew composed of by-the-book and formal Chief Phillips, a black Navy boat commander; GM3 Lance B. Johnson, a tanned all-American California surfer; GM3 Tyrone, AKA "Clean", a black 17-year-old from The Bronx; and the Cajun Engineman, Jay "Chef" Hicks.
The village attack scene in
Apocalypse Now.
The PBR arrives at a Landing Zone where Willard and the crew meet up with Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore, the eccentric commander of the AirCav in the region, following a massive and hectic mopping-up operation of a conquered enemy town. Kilgore, a keen surfer, befriends Johnson. Later, he learns from one of his men, Mike, that the beach down the coast which marks the opening to the river is perfect for surfing, a factor which persuades him to capture it. The problem is, his troops say, it's "Charlie's point" and heavily fortified. Dismissing this complaint with the explanation that "Charlie don't surf!", Kilgore orders his men to saddle up in the morning so that the AirCav can capture the town and the beach. Riding high above the coast in a fleet of Hueys accompanied by H-6s, Kilgore launches an attack on the beach. The scene, famous for its use of Richard Wagner's epic "Ride of the Valkyries", ends with the soldiers surfing the barely claimed beach amidst skirmishes between infantry and VC. After helicopters swoop over the village and demolish all visible signs of resistance, a giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard in a famous speech:
You smell that? Do you smell that? That's napalm, son! Nothing else in the world smells like that!
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, this one time, we bombed this hill, for twelve hours...when it was over I went up there...we didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. But, you know, that smell...that gasoline smell...the whole hill...it smelled like...victory.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning…It smells like…victory."
The lighting and mood darken as the boat navigates upstream and Willard's silent obsession with Kurtz deepens. Episodes on the journey include a run-in with a tiger while Willard and Chef search for mango fruits, an impromptu inspection of a Vietnamese sampan that leads to massacre, a surreal stop at the last American outpost during a Vietnamese attack against a wood bridge under construction there, and the shocking deaths of both "Clean" and Chief Phillips during a gunfire ambush with hidden Viet Cong soldiers and a spear thrown by a native on the shore, respectively.
Once arrived at Kurtz's compound, Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an air strike on the village if he does not return. They are met by a borderline-psychotic freelance photographer (Hopper) who explains Kurtz's greatness and philosophic skills to provoke his people into following him. Brought before Kurtz and held in captivity in a darkened temple, Willard’s constitution appears to weaken as Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity, and civilization. Kurtz explains his motives and philosophy in a famous and haunting monologue:
I've seen horrors… horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.
And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God… the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that...these were not monsters. These were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment. For it is judgment that defeats us.
While bound outside in the pouring rain, Willard is approached by Kurtz, who places the severed head of Chef in his lap. Coppola makes little explicit, but we come to believe that Willard and Kurtz develop an understanding nonetheless; Kurtz wishes to die at Willard's hands, and Willard, having subsequently granted Kurtz his wish, is offered the chance to succeed him in his warlord-demigod role. Juxtaposed with a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz's chamber during one of his message recordings, and kills him with a machete (This entire sequence is set to "The End" by The Doors). Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror...the horror." (This line is taken directly from Conrad's novella.) Willard walks through the now-silent crowd of natives until he comes upon Lance, who seems to have integrated himself into the society. The two of them make their way to the PBR and float away as Kurtz's final words echo in the wind as the screen fades to black.
Production dates
March 1976 - August 1977
Redux
"We French always pay respect to the dead of our allies."
"We stay because it keeps our family together..."
In 2001 Coppola released Apocalypse Now: Redux in theatres (and subsequently on DVD), an extended version that restores 49 minutes of scenes that were cut from the original film. The major additions are:
- A scene in which Willard's team steals Kilgore's surfboard as they begin their journey up the river.
- In a follow-up scene to the dance of the Playboy playmates, Willard's team finds the playmates awaiting evacuation after their helicopter has ran out of fuel. Willard deals two hours of good time with the bunnies for his men, in exchange of two barrels of fuel. One of the playmates tells her life story, revealing her feelings of shame and sexploitation.
- After the death of Mr. Clean, the team encounters the de Marais family's rubber plantation, a holdover from the French colonization of Indochina. They solemnly bury Mr. Clean and later have an elegant and proper -though animated- dinner where the de Marais men and Willard discuss the French experience of the war. Afterward, Willard takes drugs with a de Marais widow and sleeps.
- At Kurtz's base, Kurtz reads from a Time magazine article about the war, surrounded by Vietnamese children. This is the only scene in which Kurtz appears in daylight.
The Redux cut polarized audiences to a greater degree than the original version with several of the film's admirers criticizing it as overlong and that it added little to the original. [citation needed] Coppola himself continues the circulation of the original version, which will be included on the upcoming 'Complete Dossier' DVD on August 15th, 2006.
The most significant footage added in this Redux version (Latin for "redone") is the anticolonialism chapter involving the de Marais family's rubber plantation. This touchy French political critic was removed from the 1979 cut which was premiered at Cannes, in a time where the French Communist Party was the country's first political strength and the Indochina War was a taboo. The French colonist family patriarchs are arguing about the positive side of colonialism in Indochina -which is ironicized through the quarrels- and in the same time are denouncing about the stab in the back the militarymen received during the First Indochina War (the Vietnam War being known as the Second Indochina War) by the communist activists in France. Hubert de Marais also explains how entire French battalions were sacrificed at Dien Bien Phu by the politicians. Director Coppola shows the French as allies but significantly eludes the Cold War background and the historical fact that the United States were deeply involved in the war led by the French, financing 80% of the France's war effort (around $400.000.000) and positioning the French as "the only rampart of the Free World against the evil of communism". The American government has supported the French the same way it did earlier with the South Koreans, as a way of stopping the communist expansion in South-East Asia since uniforms, helmets, rifles, and tanks used by the French in Indochina were all "made in America".
Alternate endings
The set in the Philippines was required by law to be torn down after filming was wrapped. Francis Ford Coppola decided to demolish the set with explosives and film it, hoping to somehow use it. Coppola and crew set up multiple cameras fitted with different film stocks and lenses to capture the explosions at different speeds. This is what was shown over the credits in the film's initial 35mm runs, leading many to think that Willard had called in the air strike. After hearing this reaction, Coppola pulled the film from it's 35mm run, and put regular credits on it. Coppola denied the destruction of the Kurtz compound as being an actual alternative ending. In the DVD commentary, he states that the scene should be thought of as completely separate from the film, and that he and his editors simply had a massive amount of footage to edit with and thus had some choices to make.
As stated above, there are multiple slightly varying versions of the ending credits.
The 70 mm release ends with no credits (save for a 'Copyright 1979 Omni Zoetrope' right after the film ends), and shows Willard's boat pulling away from Kurtz's compound sumperimposed over the face of a stone idol which then fades into black. This mirrors the lack of any opening titles, and supposedly stems from Coppola's original intention to "tour" the film as one would a play. The credits would appear on printed programs provided before the screening began. This was, in fact, done in certain cinemas and was repeated during the theatrical release of Apocalypse Now Redux. Another version, the 35 mm wide release, rolls the credits in silence while the Kurtz compound is destroyed in what must be assumed to be an air strike. Yet another version ends silently, without the explosions, and the credits roll over a black background. Finally, the credits to Apocalypse Now: Redux are essentially conventional, with ambient music and jungle sounds over a black background. The initial DVD of the 'theatrical' version plays without beginning or ending credits, and has them on a separate part of the DVD.
Themes
Apocalypse Now is a thematically rich film. The primary motif is the same as in Heart of Darkness, i.e., an Odyssey in the epic tradition of Homer and the Orpheus myth into the dark side of the human soul. The secondary motif of the duality of man is illustrated by the conflict between Kurtz and Willard, and is made explicit in the Redux cut through the added line "You are both: one that kills and one that loves."
Willard's constant narration gives us a glimpse into his fractured psychological state. This is particularly true in the opening scenes, in which he lies in his bed and stares blankly into the ceiling before erupting into a drunken rage. In the course of this rampage he punches his own reflection in a mirror, reinforcing the theme of the doppleganger, or shadow self. Willard relates that he is on his second tour of duty and that he has returned to Vietnam because he is unable to re-integrate himself into civilian life.
- Saigon... shit... I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.
This chilling monologue, besides suggesting how man is fundamentally connected to war, is also an allusion to post traumatic stress disorder, a condition common to many war veterans. In the same way, Willard's quest for Kurtz's compound parallels Kurtz's own descent into madness. Willard never tells his fellow shipmates on the PBR the true purpose of his mission and, in a chilling scene in which his crew massacres civilians sailing on a sampan, Willard murders the only survivor, a young girl, in cold blood. In the same fashion, Kurtz, a committed family man and a highly respected colonel, is driven insane after witnessing a vile atrocity committed by his enemies while on a peacekeeping mission. He realises that he can never win the war unless he surrenders his morality and kills without judgment. In other words, by becoming as horrific and savage as his enemy. Kurtz gatheres other disillusioned soldiers and natives and starts a bizarre civilization in the Cambodian jungle, ruled by him in the archetypal guise of a primitive war god.
This may be a subtle allusion to the bureaucracy that directs soldiers in the war. The bureaucrats propagandized the Vietnam War as a just cause to save the world from the evil of Communism.
The anti-war movement and several Vietnam war veterans fiercely condemned the war and believed that the government lied and misled the public. Even Willard who is assigned the mission is cynical about it from the beginning:
- Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500
On the other hand, it has also been interpreted as a rightwing attack on the American government's conduct of the war as hypocritical and unwilling to undertake the necessary measures to win the war.
The climax at Kurtz's compound is the most confusing and the most frequently debated aspect of the film. Many critics believe it to be an anticlimax after the earlier more action-oriented scenes and also the fact that it differs greatly from other war films in that there's no final battle scenario. There are others who charge that the ending is too long, slowly paced, and disjointed, probably due to Coppola's lack of a coherent scripted ending and his reliance on improvisation.
Film critic Roger Ebert, in his original review, defended the ending:
- Coppola doesn't have an ending, if we or he expected the closing scenes to pull everything together and make sense of it. Nobody should have been surprised. "Apocalypse Now" doesn't tell any kind of a conventional story, doesn't have a thought-out message for us about Vietnam, has no answers, and thus needs no ending. The way the film ends now, with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and the final violence, feels much more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could.
When Willard arrives, he is captured and put into containment where he is "interrogated" by Kurtz, who lectures him at length about his philosophies. While other interpretations exist, it can be assumed that Kurtz wishes to die a soldier's death and has been waiting for his chance to achieve a noble death in battle, but his followers refuse to kill him and Colby (Scott Glenn), who was sent to kill him before Willard, ended up joining his "tribe". He wishes or rather hopes that Willard will be able to do so. Willard, at first, does not want to as he too is converted by Kurtz's beliefs, but after Kurtz's monologue and his statement on judgment Willard understands Kurtz's desire and so decides to complete his mission by subverting his moral judgment.
- Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.
The 'jungle' is seen as a metaphor for savage nature or more specifically the animal side of man's human nature. After killing Kurtz, Willard is revered by the denizens of Kurtz's tribe, but instead of taking Kurtz's place he departs, suggesting that perhaps he is capable of escaping the horror of war.
An underlying metaphor is the Perfume River being the mythological and biblical Hell river Styx's counterpart: I was going to "the worst place in the World", [...] a river that "snakes" through the war. The journey upriver to an unknown goal is an often used literary device and a variation on the quest myth.
Another often remarked theme of the film is that of insanity, and of war as a fundamentally insane phenomenon. Kurtz's insanity is presumed at the beginning of the film, but by the time the film ends we have witnessed so much bizarre and obviously psychotic behavior that Kurtz seems to be less insane than in his natural element. Kurtz himself can be seen as the personification of the fundamentally deranged or fundamentally savage nature of man. This was also a major theme of the novel Heart of Darkness, whose title refers quite frankly to the idea of man as being a fundamentally savage creature hidden under a thin and very fragile veneer of civilization. The film emphasizes the ease with which war destroys this veneer and releases man's basic destructive urges. Willard seems to admire Kurtz to a certain extent because Kurtz is willing to acknowledge this basic savagery without resorting to hypocrisy. On the other hand, Willard eventually revolts against this acceptance of insanity and destroys Kurtz. However, he takes Kurtz's testament back with him on his return to the "civilized" world. The film ends in a profoundly ambivalent fashion, leaving us with nothing to indicate Willard's eventual success or failure in readjusting back to normative human society. The end of the movie seems to leave the audience with the question of whether war or the abscence of war is the "real" normative state of mankind.
Responses
Apocalypse Now premiered in 1979 to mixed reviews and received polarized responses from audiences. It is said that it was as lauded as it was reviled. Many critics slammed the film, calling it overly pretentious, while others felt that it ended anticlimatically after a splendid first act.
Roger Ebert, who hailed it as the best film of 1979 and added it to his list of Great Movies, stating:
- "Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover."
Today, the film is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. It is on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list at number 28. Kilgore's quote "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" was number 12 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list. In 2002, Sight and Sound magazine polled several critics to name the best film of the last 25 years and Apocalypse Now was named number 1.
The catastrophic production of the film unfortunately made it symbolic of the dangers of excessive directorial control over major productions. The shooting was said to have taken a toll on on all involved, especially Coppola, both mentally and emotionally. To many cinephiles, Apocalypse Now is the last great film by a legendary director whose subsequent work has failed to live up to his initial promise.
Adaptation
Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novel, based on Conrad's real experiences as a river boat captain in Africa, is set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century. Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) are both agents of a Belgian ivory company that brutally exploits its African native workers. When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers that the once humane and brilliant man has gone insane and reverted to his savage nature, lording in bloody fashion over a small tribe of natives. (The fence of his outpost, for instance, is constructed of human skulls.) The novel ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and Marlow musing that the river seems to run endlessly on into "a heart of immense darkness."
One of the most basic changes the film makes regards the motivations of its main character. In the novel, Marlow is the pilot of a river boat sent to bring the ailing Kurtz home. In the movie, Willard is an assassin dispatched to kill Kurtz. Moreover, some sequences in the film, such as the Do-Lung Bridge, the helicopter assault, and Colonel Kilgore's character, have no resemblance to anything in the novel and are original inventions by the screenwriters. Marlon Brando's physical appearance is also very different from Kurtz as described in the novel. Conrad's Kurtz is extremely thin and emaciated after a long illness. Other aspects of the film, however, such as Dennis Hopper's character, the concept of Kurtz as a god-like leader of a tribe of natives, Kurtz's malarial fever, his written exclamation "Exterminate them all!", and Kurtz's final lines "The horror! The horror!" are lifted almost verbatim from Conrad's novel.
Coppola has maintained that many episodes in the film—the spear and arrow attack on the boat, for example—respect the spirit of the novel and in particular its critique of the concepts of civilization and progress. While Coppola substituted European colonization with American interventionism this does not change the universal message of the book. [1]
Influence
As one of the most iconic films of the 20th century, the film has been referenced and parodied countless times.
Film
- The film was parodied in a short film called Porklips Now, about health inspector Will Dullard, who makes a trip to inspect the meat processing shop of a man named Mertz.
- British film Nil by Mouth, by Gary Oldman, has a scene where the character Danny (played by Steve Sweeney) dubs the scene that the photojournalist talks to Cap. Willard (when he is in the wood cage), as the film is played on a TV.
- In True Romance, Clarence Worley calls Apocalypse Now "the greatest Vietnam film ever made".
- Apocalypse Pooh is a nine-minute short which marries visuals from Winnie the Pooh cartoons with audio from Apocalypse Now.
- Hot Shots! Part Deux starring Sheen's son Charlie Sheen parodies the film. Charlie Sheen's character narrates ominously, but suddenly an overlapping voice startles him. Martin Sheen is seen on a passing PBR, also narrating, appearing once again as Willard (and quoting from the film verbaitim). Charlie Sheen's character 'Topper' and Willard stare at each other while passing in opposite directions on the PBRs. As they meet each shouts in unison, "I loved you in Wall Street!".
- Another movie starring Charlie Sheen, The Chase, has a gag scene after the end credits, in which Sheen quotes Kilgore's famous napalm line.
- In the 1995 film Casper, Casper's three uncles come enter the kitchen in a manner that parodies and humming the music from the helicopter attack scene from Apocalyse Now, as well as Stretch saying Kilgore's famous napalm quote with a slight twist, replacing "napalm" with "fleshies."
- In Kevin Smith's 1995 film Mallrats, Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) enters a mall and proclaims "I love the smell of commerce in the morning!"
- In Jarhead, shortly before "Swoff" and the guys are sent into action, they are watching Apocalypse Now in a theater inside the base, singing along and interacting with the infamous helicopter attack scene, much in the way one would at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening. Oddly enough, Walter Murch was editor/sound designer for both Apocalypse Now & Jarhead.
- In Back to the Future Part II, right after Marty meets up with Doc and the police take Jennifer away, you can see a sign behind them reading "Surf Vietnam."
- In "Major Payne", a parody of Willard's hotel room scene is performed by Major Payne, including an overdubbed monologue about a military man adjusting to the civilian world.
- In the 1998 film Rushmore, there are multiple references to Apocalypse Now in a play put on by protagonist Max Fischer. Taking place in Vietnam, the play he puts on depicts soldiers running off with surfboards.
- In the 2000 film The Beach, the main protagonist travelling in South-East Asia sees other tourists watching Apocalypse Now in a hotel. The movie mirrors the boyish fantasies of the protagonists to experience the excitement of jungle warfare.
Television
- In an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine Benes visits her employer, J. Peterman, in a scene that parodies Willard's eventual meeting with Kurtz.
- The same scene is also parodied in an episode of Sealab 2021, with Captain Murphy as Kurtz and Marco as Willard.
- Parodied in the episode "Kamp Krusty" of The Simpsons with Bart assuming the role of Kurtz. Marge Simpson also tells her husband, Homer, in another episode, "your character provides the comic relief, like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now". The 'Ride of the Valkyries' helicopter sequence was humorously homaged in a "Treehouse of Horror" short. Also in episode where Homer's long lost mother returns as a fugitive, Monty Burns hunts her down in a tank. He eagerly puts on a tape blaring out "Ride of the Valkyries" mimicking the helicopter scene in "Apocalypse Now" (only to find Mr Smithers has taped over it with an Abba song). In another episode, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore" Homer is relocated to India, where he assumes the role of a god. When Marge, Lisa, Mr. Burns, and Bart go to retrieve him, The End plays, mimicking the river journey in Apocalypse Now.
- In an episode of The Critic, one of the films Jay Sherman reviews is a musical remake titled "Apocalypse Wow."
- The episode "Eekpocalypse Now!" of the cartoon series Eek! the Cat cast Eek as Willard, Elmo the Elk as Colonel Kilgore and Sharky the Sharkdog as Colonel Kurtz.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Restless," contains Xander's dream version of Apocalypse Now, including Principal Snyder as Kurtz.
- Claymation cartoonist Corky Quakenbush produced "A Pack of Gifts Now", which is part of his Rudolph Trilogy (the other two being "Raging Rudolph" and "The Reinfather.") The short is set in Saskatchewan, with Rudolph in the Willard role and Santa Claus in the Kurtz role. Rudolph's mission is to "terminate the Kringle (Santa) with extreme prejudice." This short would air on the Christmas edition of MadTV in 1999.
- In the TV series Scrubs, the episode "My Heavy Meddle" ends with the janitor's comment: " The horror!", quoting Kurtz.
- In The Beach Richard dismisses those tourists who visit Thailand only to indulge in their own culture. This is against a backdrop of Apocalypse Now in a cinema.
- In an episode of Animaniacs, there is a very extensive spoof of the film. Warner Brothers sends Yakko, Wakko and Dot Warner on a mission to stop a crazed movie director (a parody of Jerry Lewis, which also makes it a spoof of a simmilarly troubled production, The Day the Clown Cried) from filming a movie the studio had cancelled. The trio find the director, who has created a kingdom for himself in which stunt doubles worship him. A photojournalist who bears resemblence to Dennis Hopper tries to stop them from entering (even delivering the "these are all his children, man!" speech). Many of the director's lines mirror Marlon Brando's Kurtz character (including a scene where he accidentially swallows a bug while delivering a monolouge, a reference to an outtake seen in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse in which Brando stops and mutters "I swallowed a bug." while filming a monolouge as Kurtz). They stop the film and smash the director with a 50 ton weight. His last words are "The hurting... the hurting..." Throughout the episode, a singer who looks and sounds very much like Jim Morrison drones "This is the beginning, the beginning of our story, the beginning." He does the same for the middle and end of the episode, a la The Doors singing "The End". At the ending, the Warner kids accidentially back over him in their golf cart.
- "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," an X-Files episode features a flashback scene where "the Cigarette Smoking Man" is tasked with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The scene has many things similar or identical to the Scene where Willard is tasked with the assassination of Kurtz, most prominently both have a question that goes something like "have you ever met myself this man or the general before?" to which Willard and the CSM both reply "Not personally".
- The cartoon Yvon of the Yukon has an episode that parodies the opening scene, as well as a helicopter pilot stating "I love the smell of lip balm in the morning"
- In a sketch in Alas Smith and Jones, Mel Smith sits in a darkened room and expresses philosophies similar to that of Kurtz at length to a man who has been sent to find him, at the end of the sketch Griff Rhys Jones switches on the light to reveal that they are in fact sitting in a rather mundane bathroom with Smith sitting in the bath. Jones (a fairly dull tax inspector perched on the toilet) reveals that he is merely investigating Smith for Child benefit fraud.
- A special presidential election show of "Dead Ringers" parodies the plot of "Apocalypse Now"
- An Australian television comedy program that used Greek stereotypes for most of its jokes was titled "Acropolis Now".
- In the television drama Invasion one of the characters Sherrif Tom Underlay (William Fichtner) awakes in a hospital after being shot. The doctor enters and asks him to repeat the words "Snail, Razor, Napalm" an obvious nod to Apocalypse Now and Kurtz's quote in particular.
- In the premiere episode of the second season of "Battlestar Galactica", in a flashback sequence to 20 years earlier now-Colonel Tigh is seen as a drunken wreck in a hotel room about to commit suicide, before patrolmen arrive at the door to inform him that he has been reinstated into the Fleet, in an homage to the similar scene with Willard at the beginning of the film.
- In an episode of the Nickelodeon (TV channel) TV show Rugrats, Chuckie Finster is quoted as saying, "The horror... the horror..." alá Kurtz.
- The South Park episode Free Hat depicts Francis Ford Coppola, along with Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas. While it's not mentioned, this is probably in reference to Coppola's Redux version of this movie.
- In an episode of Pinky and the Brain they meet Brain's nemesis Snowball, who has taken over a jungle village where lost tourists worship him like Kurtz, plus one of Snowball's followers acts and looks like Dennis Hopper's Photojournalist.
- On the 1999 series "Spaced", Mike Watt decorates his room to look like Willard's Saigon hotel room, much to the dismay of the other characters.
- In the British comedy series "Big Train" there is a scene where a character played by Simon Pegg, clearly depicting one of Kurtz' monologues, describes a torture method involving making someone sick by pretending to pull off one of his own fingers.
Music
- Iron Maiden's "The Edge of Darkness" on their album The X Factor (1995) is very closely based on the film. Most lyrics are very close to being a direct quote from the movie.
- The Canadian band Death From Above 1979 take their name from the 'Death From Above' motto on Kilgore's helicopter, as do New York label DFA Records.
- The band Dismember uses the quote "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" to start of their song "Let the Napalm Rain."
- The band Sodom uses the full quote, including "smells like... victory" in their song "Napalm in the Morning".
- The band Ministry uses a sample of Dennis Hopper saying "Alright, it's alright" on their song "N.W.O."
- Additionally, the guitar sample at the end of Ministry's "N.W.O." is taken from the Soundtrack of Apocalypse Now. It is the music playing on a tape player owned by "Roach", one of the soldiers in the Bridge scene.
- The band The Clash's song "Charlie Don't Surf" from their album Sandinista! derives its title and concept from the movie.
- The band Milhaven samples extensively from Kurtz's monologue at the end of the film in their song "Drink a Pint of Blood a Day."
- Jedi Mind Tricks use a few clips on their CD release Violent By Design.
- 2Pacalypse Now was rapper Tupac Shakur's debut album, released in November 1991.
- The Dead Milkmen song "Beach Party Vietnam" is a parody of the surfing scene, and the Vietnam War in general.
- Reggie and the Full Effect song, "Apocalypse, Wow!" is a direct reference, though has little to do with the film or otherwise.
- Fall Silent incorporates a clip of Kurtz's "The Horror...the horror" in their song entitled "The Great White Death."
- UK Goth/dance band Shriekback used samples of Kurtz' monologue in their 1985 single, "Nemesis".
- The album Fancy by Idiot Flesh quotes the film several times, along with referencing several of Joseph Conrad's works. The Hollow Men, a T.S. Elliot poem quoted in the film, is turned into a song at one point (complete with a man saying at the beginning "Mistah Kurtz, he dead."). The very end of the album has an audio sample of the film with the photojournalist stating "And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack!"
- Radio transmissions from end of movie when Willard leaves on a boat ("PBR Streetgang, do you copy?") are sampled in tune "Jailbreak" by Paradox
- On the track "Incubus" by Recoil from the album "Unsound Methods" (Mute 1997), Douglas McCarthy (from Nitzer Ebb) speaks parts of the Willard opening voiceover during the track. The original demo used dialogue direct from the film, but Recoil was not given sample rights. McCarthy does his best - and impressive - Martin Sheen inpersonation.
- The quote, "I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies." is used by the metalcore band Poison the Well on their album Tear From the Red. The song is titled "Karsey Street".
- The band GWAR sampled parts of Kurtz' monologue in the song "Horror of Yig" from the album titled Scumdogs Of The Universe.
Video games
- In the videogame World of Warcraft, a series of quests in the Stranglethorn Vale zone take you to the camp of a crazed Colonel Kurzen who has brainwashed his men, in an attempt to kill the Colonel.
- In a homage to the infamous village attack scene, the computer game "Battlefield Vietnam" offers up "Ride of the Valkyries" as a song to be played while inside helicopters and other vehicles. One of the maps in the game even features a village modeled after the very same scene.
- The Half-Life singleplayer mod 'Heart of Evil' is partly inspired by the film (the Vietnam War setting, a U.S. Army captain sent to assassinate a rogue colonel, the helicopter ride with "Ride of the Valkyries" in the background, the boat ride to the colonel's compound).
- In StarCraft, one of the Firebat's quotes is "I love the smell of napalm." The Firebats are flamethrower wielding infantry.
- In Soldier of Fortune 2, the main character is extracted from the Columbian Jungle at one point by an army helicopter. The pilot asks your character to man the door machine gun for the trip back and begins playing "Ride of the Valkyries". This only lasts a few seconds before a bullet knocks out the radio.
- In the 1995 military capture-the-flag game Return Fire, each vehicle has background music to match it. The helicopter features Ride of the Valkyries.
- In the first Spider-Man (video game) for the Playstion, if you type in the 'What if Contests' cheat, on the second appearance of the helicopter in the 'Escape From The Police' mission The helicopter pilot is humming the Ride of the Valkyries over the speakers.
Literature
Spoilers end here.
Primary cast
Academy Awards
Award wins:
In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
It is widely believed that Apocalypse Now did not win the Best Picture Oscar in 1979 due to the fact that another Vietnam epic, The Deer Hunter, had just won the previous year. It is often regarded as a far superior film to the 1979 winner of the award, Kramer vs. Kramer.
Award nominations:
Quotes
- "You smell that? Do you smell that? ... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like ... victory. Someday this war's gonna end." - Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
- "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." - Col. Walter E. Kurtz (on tape)
- "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because ... it's obscene!" - Col. Walter E. Kurtz
- "They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their fuckin' army anymore." - Captain Willard
- "Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" - Willard, when beginning his assigned mission
- "What are they going to say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans? Bullshit!" - The photojournalist to Willard, on how Kurtz will be remembered
- "Never get out of the boat!" - Chef
- "I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and after it was done, I'd never want another." - Willard
- "Tear 'em in half with a machine-gun and then give 'em a Band-Aid." - Willard
- "An angel is passing by... let's eat it!" - Hubert de Marais, joking about the lack of food in Paris during WWII (quoting Sacha Guitry)
- "You Americans are fighting for the biggest nothing in the History." - Hubert de Marais
Trivia
"our motto: apocalypse now!"
- The boat which carries Willard and his crew on their mission is called "PBR Streetgang".
- Sheen had a serious heart attack during filming and nearly died. He made a full recovery and filming resumed some weeks later. He attributed the attack to his excessive consumption of cigarettes and high stress level.
- Dennis Hopper's character quotes from Rudyard Kipling's poem If- when he says; "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;/If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you." He goes on to quote T. S. Eliot's early poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock when he says "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
- Kurtz reads from the T.S. Eliot poem The Hollow Men. Eliot was inspired to write this poem by the novella Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad. The first line of the poem reads, "Mistah Kurtz - he dead". Kurtz leaves this line and the following line out when he reads. Also, Dennis Hopper (the photojournalist) says "This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fuckin' shit we're in, man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack." This is from the last two lines of the poem: "This is the way the world ends // Not with a bang but a whimper."
- One book shown at the Kurtz compound is The Golden Bough, one that Eliot said, along with From Ritual to Romance, his poem The Waste Land was largely based.
- The movie's title is shown in the graffiti "our motto: apocalypse now!" painted on top of the altar in Kurtz's compound.
- Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket are linked by their cast. Martin Sheen's son Charlie Sheen plays the central character of Platoon, another acclaimed Vietnam War film, which was shot in some of the same locations as Apocalypse Now and also features extensive narration by the main character. Lee Ermey, who plays drill instructor Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, appears in Apocalypse Now as Kilgore's chopper pilot.
- Kilgore's helicopter is spraypainted with the words "Death from above".
- The correct spelling of the French family's surname is "de Marais" (as seen on the credits). The full name is only pronounced one time by Hubert de Marais using the English way, with "dé" for "de". Writing "dé Marais" or "De Marais" is incorrect as "de" stands for the French noblemen particle. "Desmarais" (with "Des" pronounced "dé") is used in the French version's subtitles.
- Dennis Hopper wore the same set of clothes for the entire filming.
- Brando despised Dennis Hopper and refused to work with him. Their scenes were shot separately and cut together during editing. This is why Brando and Hopper never appear together in the same shot.
- Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was a notoriously meticulous dresser. He wore immaculate and stylish clothes throughout the production. Coppola commented later that Storaro could fall into the mud wearing a white suit and get up without a spot on it.
- Storaro was also notoriously slow. Coppola said that at the end of a day of shooting with Storaro "You will get two beautiful shots, but you will not get five."
- Storaro brought his own crew with him for filming. They were all Italian and most did not speak English. Coppola reportedly took up smoking for awhile to fit in with them.
- The film was originally intended to be directed by George Lucas as a low-budget guerilla production, possibly shot in Vietnam itself and incorporating stock footage of the war. Lucas told Coppola before he left for the Philippines "If you go over there as a big Hollywood production, they're gonna kill you."
- Screenwriter John Milius's original ending had Kurtz and Willard joining forces to fight off an American air assault. Kurtz dies on the boat from his wounds and is not killed by Willard.
- Milius loved the final version of the film, although he claimed to prefer the three hour original cut.
- Michael Herr, who wrote the film's narration, was a friend of Stanley Kubrick. During a phone conversation with Kubrick, Herr remarked that Apocalypse Now was "a pretty tough shoot." Kubrick responded "They're all tough, Michael."
- In the scene in which Willard receives his assignment, the anonymous officer played by Harrison Ford wears a nametag identifying him as "Col. G. Lucas". This was apparently something of a peace offering to George Lucas. Lucas reportedly resented Coppola's decision to film Apocalypse Now, which had initially been Lucas's project.
- Martin Sheen's character Benjamin Willard is named after Harrison Ford's sons, Benjamin and Willard.
External links
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Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) 
