Blog 8 DRS

An allegory aims to teach a lesson through metaphor and symbolism. The lessons extends beyond its literal representation, and can ultimately hold different meanings for different people. Coppola's Apocalypse Now: the Complete Dossier (Redux) is an allegory--each person and event represents something much deeper than the plot would allude to. The film is adapted from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a novella which toys with the ideas of the duality of human nature and the capacity for evil in man. Fittingly, these ideas find their way into the film, along with other themes reminiscent of a Vietnam War film: loss of innocence, corruption, and survival to name a few.

The protagonist, Captain Willard, begins the film grappling with the horrors of his war experiences. He has nightmares of bombing raids, and the whooshing of a ceiling fan brings up memories of helicopter sounds. When he wakes up, he laments that he is still only in Saigon. These initial images introduce Willard as a soldier who has already experienced the harshness of war, and may even be combating feelings of PTSD. He is also a drunk, drinking whiskey out of the bottle "bottoms-up," suggesting that he has, like many soldiers of Vietnam, resorted to alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Throughout the film Willard is consumed with his mission, and never really succumbs to the distractions and events that occur while traversing upstream. This devotion to the mission gradually escalates, resulting in the killing of the woman on the farm boat, and the ultimate deaths of several crew members. As the crew continues upstream, the events that unfold become more chaotic, and the film itself becomes further shrouded in darkness and fog, suggesting the obscurity of the events, the mission, and ultimately the war itself. The further they travel down the river, the further they are venturing into 'the heart of darkness.' Willard's experiences along the river and his imprisonment by Kurtz almost cause him to succumbs insanity, but he wrests himself from that fate by movie's end, and is able to fulfill the mission.

The members of the boat crew, as well as people Willard encounters before taking off down the river, represent some aspect of the war. Willard encounters Lieutenant Kilgore on VC controlled beach. The name Kilgore foreshadows the lieutenants mentality. Kilgore is a sort of 'gung-ho' leader, who either is unaffected by the horrors around him, or has been desensitized to all the occurrences by his war experiences. This is made clear when in front of several cowering soldiers he says (enthusiastically) "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." The members of the boat crew also represent some unique aspect of the war. The crew sets of enthusiastically on this mission, only for them all to reach a point of insanity. Clean represents the naive youth of the war. The name Clean is ironic, since there is hardly anything in the war that is "clean," from their clothes to their conscience. His turning point occurs with the shooting of the farming boar. Chef is conspicuously less grounded than the other crew, and relies on marijuana as a coping mechanism. He breaks down after an encounter with a tiger in the jungle. Lance's experiences causes him to become more introverted, and turn him to drugs. By film's end he becomes part of Kurtz's crazed community, but is 'saved' in the end by Willard. Chief is the C.O. of the boat, and clearly the most grounded, but even he breaks down after Clean's death.

Colonel Kurtz, the subject of Willard's mission, has been driven to insanity by the horrors of war and by the corruptive influence of power. He fully embraces the horrors and atrocities of war, and he has accepted them as a necessary aspect of the human condition. Kurtz embodies man's capacity for evil, and the war has driven him to this state of mind. However by film's end, Kurtz seems to come to terms with what he's done, and sees his death delivered at the hands of Willard as a sort of way out. His final words are"the horror, the horror!", showing an acknowledgment of all the horrible atrocities he has experienced and committed. The slaughter of the water buffalo during the killing of Kurtz represents the type of insanity that war and lack of moral restrictions fosters.

The film portrays the war as violent and absurd theater. Near the beginning of the film, as Willard was just entering the war, there was a camera crew and cameraman yelling for him to not look at the camera; the Vietnam War almost takes on an entertainment value, with expectations of excitement and violence from the viewers. Such violence, confusion, and absurdity fosters insanity and, ultimately, more violence and absurdity. For instance, at every stop the boat made, none of the soldiers' campsites had a clear commanding officer. One encampment was in perpetual conflict with a dubious enemy in the forest, which is no doubt partially caused by lack of leadership. This lack of a clear leadership and lack of a clear mission propelled the war into an absurd, violent, and futile debacle.