An Epic Evaluation of Apocalypse Now Essay

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola unleashed a film that reshaped the candidate of the American Vietnam war. The film was heralded as an grand of modern film. However, is it real an epic or is that term become a widely apply word for great works of cinema? Does Apocalypse Now film the epic criteria of religion, a journey, a vast setting, a sense of marvelous and other key factors? The journey in Apocalypse Now is headmaster Benjamin Willards mission to assassinatorate Army Colonel Walter Kurtz.The former car park Beret has deserted his com soldieryd and now leads a rogue army of commandos and Montagnard, the innate people of the central highlands of Vietnam(Human Rights Watch). This film is also a journey into the nefariousness of the human soul. As Willard travels up the river he spends most of his magazine exercise the Armys dossier on the rogue Kurtz who has been deemed insane after his handling of unsound methods. Willard tries to understand the actions of Kurtz, and as the film progresses, Willard experiences more than and more of the absurdities and crime of war that lead him to understand the villainous Kurtz.His understanding comes with his own neat into near madness. After he senselessly kills a churl cleaning lady on a sampan Willard states, It was the way we had everywhere here of living with ourselves. Wed cut them in half with a machine gun and destine them a Band-Aid. It was a lie and the more I saw of them the more I hated lies. These words sound as though they were verbalise by the insane Kurtz. The setting for Apocalypse Now is the fictional Nung River(Milks). almost of the film takes place on a Navy river patrol gravy ride (PBR) with a four-man crew.The captain, Chief, a military man who follows protocol to a Tand feels personally responsible for the fate of his crew. He blames Willard for the predica ment that they find themselves in. blanched is a s typesetters caseeen-year-old mechanic from the South Bronx. He is symbo lic of the young men that fought in Vietnam that were ignorant to the ways of war and only waste time waiting to end their service c areers. Chef, a saucier from New Orleans, who emphatically does non want to be in this antic land and Lance, a calcium surfer, make up the rest of the crew. Lance and Chefs use of rugs and locating in the primitive hobo camp help them withdraw from the war somewhat them as the film proceeds(Milks). This is symbolic of how many of the drafted youth felt in Vietnam. The film begins in the classic tradition of en medias res. It opens with captain Willard in an alcohol induced depressive state in a hotel dwell in Saigon in 1968. He already completed one tour of barter in Vietnam only to return home and be miserable with the hold in of civilization. He states, I was dis keepingd from the army four years ago. I went home, wasted some time, bought a Mustang Mach 1, drove it a week.Then I re-upped for a nonher tour. No, everything I love is here. He ha s been irrecoverably c shineed by the war. He feels that the jungle is the only place he belongs and he cannot wait to get sustain in action, Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. The film does not follow all the guidelines of an Epic in the Greek sense. In the beginning, Willard does not invoke the muses and the only religion is the Montagnards belief in Kurtz as a god. The film contains no epic lists and the film is not divided into twenty-four books.The only division in the film could be seen in the different episodes the crew faces traveling up river. The starting is the rendevous with deputy Colonel Kilgore, commander of the Air Ninth Calvary. Then, the tiger attack in the jungle, the U. S. provide depot complete with Playboy Playmates, the French rubber plantation, the small sampan, and the superannuated temple where Kurtz resides. Each event contributes to the mayhem of the journey and creates a cre puscularer liking for the film. The narrator and protagonist of the film is Captain Willard. However, he is not the epic hero because he does not meet the criteria.He is male, and he does bedevil a task to complete, but that is active his only heroic characteristics. First, in terms of strength, he does not possess outstanding physical strength, nor is he mentally strong. As a character is quite passive, everything he does is influenced by someone, or something else. When he takes the mission he says, What the hell else was I gonna do? On the PBR, he withdraws himself from the actions of the crew, and spends most of his time studying the file on Kurtz, trying to get into the mind of his target. This only puts him in a more detached state.At Kurtzs compound he is swayed by the teachings of Kurtz and makes the earreach ponder if he will indeed carry out his mission, or join Kurtzs group. Lance, as well as the last assassin sent to kill Kurtz, did clean that. Willard confesses It was the foreignst thing I dont know that I can explain it. Two of my men short and all I could think of was whether Kurtz was dead too. Thats all I wanted to see Kurtz, to hear Kurtz. Kurtz actually helps make that decision for him. Kurtz is scare away of his life as a demigod and is expecting, and actually welcoming his death. You came up my river in that small boat. So simple. I always thought the terminal justice would come from the sky, like we did. You are the final justice, arent you? In one episode, on a sampan, a small fishing boat, Willard shows his rightful(a) moral state. When Clean opens fire killing several civilians in a botched search of the boat, Chief decides to take the lone survivor, a peasant fair sex, to a military base for medical attention. Willard, thinking only of his mission, kills the woman so that she will not impede his journey to assassinate Kurtz.This event causes the rest of the crew to turn on him and cast a dark shadow over Willard. When C hef asks, When you kill cong, dont you feel something? Willard responds, Sure, retract I feel the recoil of my rifle. This statement alone solidifies the fact that Willard is not a fundamentally good soul. The supernatural is an important element in any Epic. In Apocalypse Now, the supernatural pertains more to a interval from reality than to a ghost, miraculous events, or the common notion of the supernatural. In this sense, the film is rife with the supernatural.First Kilgores calvary, the surfing calvary charge into battle listening to the Ride of the Valkyries. Kilgore boasts, Well come in low, out of the move sun, and about a mile out, well put on the music Yeah, I use Wagner scares the hell out of the slopes My boys love it The music and the surfing are completely out of place in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. However, this is just the first stop on the tour of mass mayhem. Later in the film, the PBR comes crosswise the remains of a rubber plantation. This is a plant ation carry out by the de Marais family, a hold over from the French colonization of Indochina.In the philia of a war zone, a family is trying to hold onto a foregather of property in a country in which they are not natives. Several of their family members have given their lives for that property and they believe they have just as much as a claim to it than anyone else. Even when a family member makes a symbolic gesture that makes a statement about Americas involvement in Vietnam and cracks an egg, which represents Indochina, lets the egg white run out and exclaims, White goes, yellow stays The symbolism is poignantly blunt. It is phantasmagoric that they even attempt to keep their property.Also, they try to maintain their heritage in speaking French and having a tradition plantation life without tour of duty from the outside world. The scene, including the burial of Clean is rife with symbolism and detachment from reality. The boat heads further up river and reaches an outpos t where American forces are testing originators theory of insanity. Einstein once said, The definition of insanity is doing the aforementioned(prenominal) thing over and over and expecting a different result. (Moncur) Each night the Viet Cong bomb a bridge and each day the G. I. s build it.All of the soldiers at this base are either scared or confused, those that are not, are high on drugs. The colored flares and tracer rounds add to the effects of the psychedelic drugs and the whole theater of battle is in pith chaos. Finally, Kurtzs compound is the scene of total lack of reality. Rotting corpses hang from the tress, and heads litter the ancient temple. The scene is surreal. A burnt out picture show journalist exclaims how great Kurtz is, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around him. The man himself is a larger than life omnipotent character.He remains in the shadows for almost every scene and quotes poetry from T. S. Eliot. He is the all regnant in this land even though he is gone over the edge mentally, spiritually, and physically. He is supernatural. The film as a whole doesnt fit the standards of an epic in the Greek tradition. However, it is an awesome tale of a mans journey into the physical unknown of a strange land that forces him to search inside himself for some form of morality in the difficult circumstances of war. Willard is a stranger in a strange land, even to himself.