Somewhere in the middle of all this is Johnson and McNamara…the best and the brightest…the MIC…Wall Street. And the soldiers who fought there. And I was one of them. But it all quickly becomes simply overwhelming. You try to capture it in a narrative and you just become all tangled up in hundreds of them. The individual here is just a speck. All you can do is either know [and accept] it or not.
Almost everyone agrees this is an “anti-war” film. But really only in the most abstract [or, paradoxically, most visceral] sense. In fact, it could be argued it is basically neutral regarding our involvement in Vietnam. Instead, the focus [through Kurtz] is on the manner in which the war was fought. If we had fought it his way, we would have won.
All of these terrible things happen but there is no effort made to delve into why we were over there in the first place. It just seems to be the way folks [men, in particular] are. They clamor towards the heart of darkness and it’s almost pointless to try to explain it much beyond that. And maybe this narrative really is more applicable than my own. I have no illusions whatsoever regarding things like this. We piece them together into conflicting fabrications…and then we trade “the facts” back and forth until one of many conflicting consensuses are arrived at. Always here, always now.
I often complain about folks who reduce everything down to logos, forgetting the pieces that emanate from all the other parts of the brain…in particular the emotional and psychological elements. But here it is just the opposite. The narrative seems awash in subjunctive references…with hardly any attention given at all to the reasons people give for going to war. And how that is related to such things as subsistence and the distribution of wealth and power. They hint at these things in the French sequence [from Redux] but that was shelved from the orginal release. Their honest reactions to Communism and politics for example. Here it is the psychological tug of war between Kurtz and Willard. Kurtz actually being well on the way to insanity.
Watch this [especially the Kilgore sequences] and then revisit Obama, Biden and Kerry Inc. remonstrating against the Assad regime in Syria. Like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush remonstrating against Saddam Hussein. The sheer fucking hypocrisy of it all!!
IMDb
[b]Francis Ford Coppola believed that Marlon Brando was familiar with Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and had prepared for the role before the legendary actor arrived on the set. When Brando did come out, Coppola was horrified to find that Brando had never read “Heart of Darkness”, did not know his lines, and had become extremely fat (Kurtz had always been written as a tall but starvingly-thin man). After some panicking, Coppola decided to film the 5’10" Brando as if he was a massively built, 6’5" brute (to explain Brando’s size) and steered the camera clear of Brando’s huge belly.
The scene at the beginning with Captain Willard alone in his hotel room was completely unscripted. Martin Sheen told the shooting crew to just let the cameras roll. Sheen was actually drunk in the scene and punched the mirror which was real glass. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed by his actions that they wanted to stop shooting, but Coppola wanted to keep the cameras going.
Francis Ford Coppola lost 100 pounds while filming and threatened suicide several times during the making of the film.
Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming and some shots of Willard’s back are of doubles, including Sheen’s brother Joe Estevez who was flown out specially.
The total length of film printed for the movie was approximately 1,250,000 feet. That number roughly translates to a total of around 230 hours worth of footage.
The character of Colonel Kurtz is inspired by the story of the traitor Lope de Aguirre, sixteenth-century Spanish soldier.[/b]
Remember him? The wrath of God?
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now
APOCALYPSE NOW [1979]
[Redux edition]
Written in part and directed by Francis Ford Coppola
[b]Willard [voiceover]: 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.
…
Willard [voiceover]: Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.
…
Colonel Lucas: Your report specifies intelligence/counterintelligence with ComSec I-Corps.
Willard: I’m not presently disposed to discuss these operations, sir.
Colonel Lucas: Did you not work for the CIA in I-Corps?
Willard: No, sir.
Colonel Lucas: Did you not assassinate a government tax collector in Quang Tri province, June 19th, 1968? Captain?
Willard: Sir, I am unaware of any such activity or operation…nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir.[/b]
A company man, in other words.
[b]General Corman [to Willard]: Walter Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this country’s ever produced. He was brilliant. He was outstanding in every way. And he was a good man, too. A humanitarian man. A man of wit and humor. He joined the Special Forces, and after that, his ideas, methods, became…unsound. Unsound.
…
General Corman: Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irration, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You have and I have them. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And, very obviously, he has gone insane.
…
Willard: Terminate the Colonel?
General Corman: He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.
Civilian: Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Colonel Lucas: You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist…
…
Willard [voiceover]: How many people had I already killed? There were those six that I knew about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. That wasn’t supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do? But I really didn’t know what I’d do when I found him.
…
Willard [voiceover]: The machinist, the one they called Chef, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam; probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. Lance, on the forward .50s, was a famous surfer from the beaches south of LA. One look at him and you wouldn’t believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life. Clean… Mr. Clean… was from some South Bronx shithole and the light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. Then there was Phillips, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure as shit was the Chief’s boat.
…
Willard [voiceover]: At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier. I couldn’t believe they wanted this man dead. Third-generation West Point, top of his class…Korea, Airborne, about a thousand decorations, etc., etc. I’d head his voice on the tape and it really put the hook in me, but I couldn’t connect up that voice with this man. Like they said, he had an impressive career. Maybe too impressive. I mean, perfect. He was being groomed for one of the top slots in the corporation.
…
Lance: Hey, Captain, what’s that?
Willard Death cards.
Lance: What?
Willard: Death cards. Lets Charlie know who did this.
…
Kilgore: Charlie don’t surf!
…
Chef [in a helicopter]: Why do all you guys sit on your helmets?
Soldier: So we don’t get our balls blown off.
…
Kilgore [to soldier]: You can either surf, or you can fight!
…
Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.
[he kneels on the beach]
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 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…
[sniffing, pondering]
Kilgore: …victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…
…
Willard [voiceover]: If that’s how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn’t just insanity and murder; there was enough of that to go around for everyone.
…
Chef: A tiger! A fuckin’ tiger!..Never get out of the boat! Never get out of the boat! I got to remember, never get out of the boat!!!
[he tears off his shirt…then his pants]
Chef: I’m done with this goddamn fucking shit! You can kiss my ass on the county square, because I’m fucking bugging out! I don’t fucking need it! I didn’t get on the goddamn eight grade for this kind of shit! All I wanted to do is fucking cook! I just wanted to learn to fucking cook, man!
…
Willard [voiceover]: “Never get out of the boat.” Absolutely goddamn right! Unless you were goin’ all the way… Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program. How did that happen?
…
Willard [voiceover]: Kurtz could’ve gone for general, but he went for himself instead.
…
Willard ]voiceover]: Oh man…the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.
…
Clean: This sure enough is a bizarre sight in the middle of all this shit.
…
Willard [voiceover]: Charlie didn’t get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory.
…
Willard [voiceover]: No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command’s ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.
…
Lieutenant Colby: [in his last letter to his wife, as read by Willard]: “Sell the house. Sell the car. Sell the kids. Find someone else. Forget it. I’m never coming back. Forget it.”
…
Willard [incredulous]: What are you talking about?
Chief Phillips: We’re taking her to some friendlies, Captain. She’s wounded, she’s not dead.
Willard: Get off there, Chef.
[Willard shoots the injured girl dead]
Chef: Fuck it!
Willard [to Chief]: I told you not to stop. Now let’s go!
…
Willard [after the boat crew kills everyone on the sampan…and he shoots the lone wounded survivor…a young girl…dead]: It’s a way we had over here for living with ourselves. We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.[/b]
But he’s perfectly okay with cold-blooded mureder.
[b]Willard: Hey soldier, do you know who’s in command here?
Soldier: Ain’t you?
…
Willard [voiceover]: He was close, real close. I couldn’t see him yet, but I could feel him, as if the boat were being sucked upriver and the water was flowing back into the jungle. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn’t gonna be the way they call it back in Nha Trang.
…
Willard: My mission is to make it up to Cambodia. There’s a Green Beret colonel up there who’s gone insane, and I’m supposed to kill him.
Chef: That’s fucking typical! Shit! Fucking Vietnam mission! I’m short and we gotta go up there so you can kill one of our own guys? That’s fucking great! That’s just fucking great, man! Shit! That’s fucking crazy! I thought you were going to blow up a bridge, or some fucking railroad tracks, or something!
…
Willard: Could we, uh… talk to Colonel Kurtz?
Photojournalist: Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? 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”… I mean I’m… no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s…he’s a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
…
Photojournalist [to Willard]: The heads. You’re looking at the severed heads. Sometimes he goes too far. He’s the first one to admit it.
…
Chef: This colonel guy, he’s wacko, man. He’s worse than crazy, he’s evil! That’s what the man’s got set up here, man! It’s fucking pagan idolatry! Look around you! Shit, he’s loco…I ain’t afraid of all them fucking skulls and altars and shit! I used to think that if I died in an evil place, then my soul wouldn’t make it to heaven. But now…fuck. I don’t care where it goes, as long as it ain’t here.
…
Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It’s no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I’m a soldier.
Kurtz: You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
…
Photojournalist [to Willard]: The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He’s dying, I think. He hates all this. He hates it! But the man’s a…He reads poetry out loud, all right? And a voice…he likes you 'cause you’re still alive. He’s got plans for you. No, I’m not gonna help you. You’re gonna help him, man. You’re gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna sat when he’s gone? 'Cause he dies when it dies, when it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? He was a kind man? He was a wise man? He has plans? He has wisdom? Bullshit, man! Am I gonna be the one that’s gonna set them straight? Look at me! Wrong! You!
…
Kurtz [reading a poem aloud]: “We are the hollow men and the stuffed men together filled with straw. Alas dried voices, when whisper together quiet and meaningless wind in dried rats’ feet over broken glass our dry cellar.”
…
Photojournalist: This is dialectics. It’s very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That’s dialectic physics, okay? Dialectic logic is, there’s only love and hate. You either love somebody, or you hate them.
[Kurtz throws his book of poetry at him]
Photojournalist: This is the way the fucking world ends! Look at this fucking shit we’re in, man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I’m fucking splitting, Jack.
…
Willard [voiceover]: On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I’d know what to do. But it didn’t happen. I was in there with him for days. Not under guard. I was free. But he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do at I did. If the generals back in Nah Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want, if they ever learned just how far from them he’d really gone. He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I’d never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.
…
Kurtz [to Willard]: 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 some 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, then 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! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.
…
Willard [voiceover listening to the ship radio request bomb coordinates]: They were gonna make me a Major for this, and I wasn’t even in their fuckin’ army anymore. Everybody wanted me to do it. Him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take his pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier. Even the jungle wanted him dead. And that’s who he really who he took his orders from, anyway.
…
Kurtz [making a recording just before Willard kills him]: “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!”
…
Kurtz: The horror… the horror…[/b]