An allegory is an extended metaphor, in which the people or actions in a narrative have other meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. There is an underlying meaning which is usually moral, social, or political and the characters are personifications of abstract ideas.
The film Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Redux) is an allegory for the Vietnam War. Coppola uses Kurtz as a symbol of the American loss of innocence. Kurtz was an established colonel of the United States Special Forces, but presumably went insane, forming a group of followers who treated him as a sort of demi-God and are settled in Cambodia, at the end of the Nung River. The fact that Captain Willard was sent on a mission to ‘terminate’ Kurtz’s authority by the American government is a symbol of how corrupt and secretive the government was during the occupation in Vietnam. The two intelligence officers that assign Willard to the mission, Corman and Lucas, told Willard that his assignment ‘didn’t exist’ if anyone was to ask.
After Willard joins the PBR, the crew stumbles upon Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore of the Air Force, who is supposed to transport the boat to the Nung River. Kilgore is symbolic of American attitudes and poor moral values. Kilgore refuses to transport the boat, until he learns that a famous surfer is part of the PBR crew. When Kilgore heard this news, a man was lying dead in front of Kilgore, and Kilgore was acting interested and helping him by letting the man drink out of his canteen, but he immediately stopped and was completely interested in Johnson. In the midst of an air raid, Kilgore made his soldiers ‘surf or fight’. The visual of American soldiers surfing while bombs and gunshots are going off is ironic and symbolic; it depicts America’s carelessness and self interest during Vietnam. Kilgore also represents America in the sense that he never flinched when attacked, even if other soldiers were ducking for cover. This represents that America appeared fearless and ignorant towards the Vietnamese, as if nothing could ever defeat us, or even harm us. When Kilgore said, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning… smells like victory,” he was representing America’s aggressive, ‘destroy everything’ attitude.
The women in this film also symbolize the American loss of innocence. When the Playboy bunny was talking to Johnson, she was telling him how the magazine made her do things she didn’t want to and thought she went too far in pictures. This is parallel to how the young soldiers were drafted into the war, and they were forced to do things they didn’t want to, like killing to keep themselves alive.
Also, the scene in which PBR lands on a French plantation parallels to the movie Indochine, because there is a French family living in Vietnam. Willard asks when the family is moving, and the family gets upset and claims that Vietnam is their home, and that America didn’t learn from the France’s mistake. Willard sits at the table, silent, while one of the family members argued that they are fighting for their land, but America is fighting for ‘a huge nothing’. Roxanne, a widower in the family, shares a night with Willard and tells him that, ‘there are two of you… One that kills, and one that loves”. This represents the duality of the soldiers in the war, that although they are trained to kill, they are not machines and still have the ability to love.
Kurtz’s camp symbolizes the Vietnamese jungle and the warfare that took place there. There are dead bodies being completely ignored by the citizens, and severed heads all around. The camp is complete anarchy, chaos and insanity, just as the Vietnamese jungle is.
Willard was let go out of his capture and given a machete by a villager, which meant that Kurtz wanted Willard to kill him like a soldier, as Willard narrates, ‘standing up’. Kurtz’s killing symbolized that American soldiers had seen horrifying things in Vietnam that no one should ever see. Kurtz’s last words were ‘the horror… the horror,” which correlates to the story of the Vietnamese children whose arms were cut off that he was telling Willard right before his death. Kurtz’s represented the American defeat in Vietnam.
The film, like many pieces of literature and film about the Vietnam War, expresses the issue that there is no good or evil in war, war is simply hell. No one truly won or lost the war, but the war changed everyone, and even caused insanity.
An allegory is an extended metaphor, in which the people or actions in a narrative have other meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. In an allegory, there is an underlying meaning which is usually moral, social, or political and the characters are personifications of abstract ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe film Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Redux) is an allegory for the Vietnam War. Coppola uses Kurtz as a symbol of the American loss of innocence. Kurtz was an established colonel of the United States Special Forces, but presumably went insane, forming a group of followers who treated him as a sort of demi-God and are settled in Cambodia, at the end of the Nung River. The fact that Captain Willard was sent on a mission to ‘terminate’ Kurtz’s authority by the American government is a symbol of how corrupt and secretive the government was during the occupation in Vietnam. The two intelligence officers that assign Willard to the mission, Corman and Lucas, told Willard that his assignment ‘didn’t exist’ if anyone was to ask. Also, the fact that Willard blindly followed these orders symbolizes how soldiers in Vietnam easily followed orders from those in high command, regardless of the mission and how immoral it was.
After Willard joins the PBR, the crew stumbles upon a Lieutenant Colonel, ironically named Bill Kilgore, of the Air Force, who is supposed to transport the boat to the Nung River. Kilgore is symbolic of American attitudes and poor moral values. Kilgore refuses to transport the boat, until he learns that a famous surfer, Johnson, is part of the PBR crew. A man was lying nearly dead in front of Kilgore, and he was acting interested in this man, helping him by letting the man drink out of his canteen. As soon as heard there was a famous person in Willard’s crew, he immediately stopped aiding the man and was completely interested in Johnson. In the midst of an air raid, Kilgore made his soldiers ‘surf or fight’. The visual of American soldiers surfing while bombs and gunshots are going off is ironic and symbolic; it depicts America’s carelessness and self interest during Vietnam. Kilgore also represents America in the sense that he never flinched when attacked, even if other soldiers were ducking for cover. This represents that America appeared fearless and ignorant towards the Vietnamese, as if nothing could ever defeat us, or even harm us. When Kilgore said, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning… smells like victory,” he was representing America’s aggressive, ‘destroy everything’ attitude.
The women in this film also symbolize the American loss of innocence. When the Playboy bunny was talking to Johnson, she was telling him how the magazine made her do things she didn’t want to and thought she went too far in pictures. This is parallel to how the young soldiers were drafted into the war, and they were forced to do things they didn’t want to, like killing to keep themselves alive.
Also, the scene in which PBR lands on a French plantation parallels to the movie Indochine, because there is a French family living in Vietnam. Willard asks when the family is moving, and the family gets upset and claims that Vietnam is their home, and that America didn’t learn from the France’s mistake. Willard sits at the table, silent, while one of the family members argued that they are fighting for their land, but America is fighting for ‘a huge nothing’. Roxanne, a widower in the family, shares a night with Willard and tells him that, ‘there are two of you… One that kills, and one that loves”. This represents the duality of the soldiers in the war, that although they are trained to kill, they are not machines and still have the ability to love.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness relates to this film because it has a similar story line. At the end of the film, when Kurtz says, “the horror, the horror” right before his death, this symbolizes the heart of darkness; the jungle took him over and he went into his heart of darkness. Coppola is depicting that the war made the whole country of Vietnam go into their heart of darkness. Each situation Willard experienced on the river was a reflection of his mind and his worsening of his PTSD. The deeper down the river the PBR traveled, Willard progressed more into his heart of darkness.
Kurtz’s camp symbolizes the Vietnamese jungle and the warfare that took place there. There are dead bodies being completely ignored by the citizens, and severed heads all around. The camp is complete anarchy, chaos and insanity, just as the Vietnamese jungle is.
Willard was let go out of his capture and given a machete by a villager, which meant that Kurtz wanted Willard to kill him like a soldier, as Willard narrates, ‘standing up’. Kurtz’s murder and parallel scene of a water buffalo being slaughtered, symbolizes the motif that we are all animals in war, just at the wrong place at the wrong time when we die. Kurtz’s last words, ‘the horror… the horror,” correlates to the story of the Vietnamese children whose arms were cut off that he was telling Willard right before his death. Kurtz’s represented the American defeat in Vietnam. After killing Kurtz, Willard left the camp and got out of the psychosis.
The film, like many pieces of literature and film about the Vietnam War, expresses the issue that there is no good or evil in war, war is simply hell. No one truly won or lost the war, but the war changed everyone, and even caused insanity.