Diagnostic Essay
Apocalypse Now: The Death of Common Morality During The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, a conflict spanning roughly twenty years, was one of the most turbulent, divisive events in American history. Opposition to the war was ever-growing in political spheres on the homefront, leading to an increasingly antagonistic perception of soldiers by American society even though roughly 1 in 4 had enlisted involuntarily (“VIETNAM WAR STATISTICS.”). The psychological distress only intensified on the battlefield; it was often difficult to distinguish civilians from enemy combatants, which complicated the familiar rules of “gentlemen’s warfare” as American soldiers had no choice but to fight for their lives against an unclear opposition. Moreover, the North Vietnamese army was known for its savagery and trickery, to which U.S. troops responded with equally barbaric tactics such as the use of Agent Orange and napalm. Many films have attempted to capture the Vietnam War from the eyes of American soldiers; perhaps the most prolific and powerful of these is Apocalypse Now. As characters such as Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film attempt to cope with the barbaric nature of the Vietnam war, their individual experiences exhibit the collective moral apocalypse suffered by American soldiers and their subsequent “revolution”, an ethical acquiescence to an inherently immoral conflict.
Captain Benjamin L. Willard serves as a static character in the film; as he journeys into the jungles of Vietnam to eliminate Colonel Kurtz, viewers are able to see the reality of the war from the eyes of a soldier. In the first scene of the film we become familiar with the aforementioned moral apocalypse faced by soldiers through a dramatic, thought-provoking montage. Visuals of a lush jungle erupting in flames are juxtaposed with Willard’s distressed face as he lies in bed staring at the ceiling, presumably reflecting on the horrors of war. The camera pans across the room from the cigarette in his hands, to the dark liquor and handgun sitting beside him, and diegetic sounds of battle blend with The Doors’s “The End” to create an appropriately melancholy auditory experience. As Jim Morrison’s haunting voice sings “This is the end/Beautiful friend”, we come to understand that this “end” is the end of conventional morality and sanity (“The Doors – The End.”). Vietnam veterans, many of whom were fighting for a cause they did not themselves believe in, witnessed an unprecedented degree of death, destruction, and atrocity. Though the war itself was apocalyptic in nature, the true apocalypse captured in Apocalypse Now was the death of rectitude, decency, and honor as soldiers were forced to adjust to a life in which barbarity was the new norm.
Just as the apocalypse of the Vietnam War was largely metaphorical, the revolution was not a revolution in the traditional sense, but rather a collective detachment from commonly accepted laws of morality. In a court of law, sanity is defined as the ability to distinguish right from wrong. However, the paradox of Vietnam was that in order to stay sane, many soldiers underwent a redefining of the words “right” and “wrong”; those unable to redefine their personal values within the context of war often unfortunately spiraled into madness.
Perhaps the most thought-provoking character in Apocalypse Now is Colonel Kurtz, a man whose sanity is debatable. He seems to be fully cognizant of, rather than desensitized to, the horrors he has both committed and witnessed; however, despite the preservation of his moral compass, he has allowed himself to succumb to a life without one. Once an educated, “humanitarian” military officer on a fast-track to the Pentagon, Kurtz was changed by his time in Vietnam, becoming ruthless, violent, and according to his former peers, “unsound” (“Apocalypse Now: Redux Script by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola.”). In contradiction to this unofficial diagnosis, Kurtz managed to deliver one of the most eerily lucid monologues in film history detailing the “revolution” of morals one had to undergo in order to survive the war, both in body and in mind:
“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. Because it’s judgment that defeats us” (“Apocalypse Now: Redux Script by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola.”).
In a guerrilla war fought against an elusive opponent with a tendency to use unconventional, morbid tactics, virtually any successful American soldier knew he had two choices: adapt or die. Through Francis Ford Coppola’s film, we are exposed to the barbaric conditions that troops had to witness day in and day out, helping us to understand the aforementioned “moral apocalypse” as soldiers adjusted to a world wherein there was no “right” or “wrong”, only “victory” and “defeat”. These men were not killers, nor monsters, nor psychopaths; they were average men with wives, children, and gods, who had no choice but to completely redefine or revolutionize their own ethical codes in an attempt, often in vain, to preserve their sanities. Coppola’s unique ability as a director to capture the truth of the moral dilemma of the Vietnam War is what makes Apocalypse Now one of the most hauntingly beautiful and powerfully honest war films of all time.