CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND THE MOVIES
War: Apocalypse Now (1979, rated R)
By David A. Thomas
The best movie class I ever attended was conducted by Paul Porterfield, media director at the University of Richmond. I invited Mr. Porterfield, an amateur film buff, to be the guest speaker one day for my class in rhetoric and film. He focused the entire class period on the brief opening montage of Apocalypse Now. That introductory sequence packs many images into one continuous pan shot of an air assault team dropping napalm on a Vietnamese jungle. Many of those images are subliminal, as the clip fades several double-exposures in and out of view. It sets the motif for the entire 153-minute movie.
The movie was almost never finished. Francis Ford Coppola began filming without having his production money fully committed. To meet the budget, he set a preliminary six-week filming timeline. Things worked out differently than he hoped. It took sixteen months to make the movie. Unforeseen problems caused major delays. He was constantly scrambling to find new backers while trying to keep the production underway, and he wound up fronting several million dollars out of pocket, literally gambling everything he owned on it.
Much of the Coppola`s script was in rough shape as filming began, so he was constantly editing and re-writing it. More than a few scenes were improvised while the cameras rolled, including most famously the hypnotic opening scene. You get drawn into it as if you were watching a poisonous snake loose in your room. We are introduced to Coppola`s little-known leading actor, Martin Sheen, as Capt. Willard, reeling about in his underwear in a seedy Saigon hotel room. He broke a bureau mirror with his fist while he flailed about, drunk out of his mind. In fact, he actually lacerated his hand during the take, because the mirror was real glass. And he really was staggering drunk.
For his small but important role as Col. Kurtz, Marlon Brando demanded a million dollar fee in advance. He then pulled one of his trademark artistic diva stunts, showing up late for work and 75 pounds overweight. He had not read the script or the novel on which it was based. Once on the set, Brando fussed obsessively over his super-weird role, demanding line changes and special camera set-ups, further delaying the proceedings.
On top of those problems, Sheen suffered a major heart attack halfway through the production, too late to replace him with Harvey Keitel or another actor. Sheen`s brother was flown to the location and used in a few scenes, shown from his back. When filming resumed, a typhoon destroyed the set, causing numerous other delays stretching over several more months.
The Story. Based somewhat on Joseph Conrad`s The Heart of Darkness, the plot is structured as a simple journey or quest, much like Huckleberry Finn or The Canterbury Tales, but with a tragic tone. The protagonist, Captain Willard, is on a mission to locate and "terminate with extreme prejudice" Col. Kurtz, a rogue Army officer turned delusional god-like dictator, who proves to be an elusive quarry. The story consists of numerous episodes of what happens to Capt. Willard and his crew along the way, like stringing pearls on a necklace. Willard`s trek up-river is often subjected to enemy ambushes and an occasional Playboy Bunny USO tour. Using such a plot device, countless other quest stories have been made into successful films. That`s nothing new.
When Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) cranks up the volume on The Ride of the Valkyries during his harrowing helicopter assault on the Viet Cong village, he signals the movie`s overall operatic qualities. Willard`s mission turned into a sprawling, lengthy struggle far beyond killing Kurtz. It became a personal quest to master one`s own fate.
Hitting the Movie Lottery. One consequence of Coppola`s creative technique was that after seeing all the disparate scenes he had "in the can," he could not think of a suitable ending. Three endings were filmed. Coppola shopped an unfinished version of one of his prints at the Cannes Film Festival as a work-in-progress. Much to his surprise, they gave his work the Golden Palm. Apocalypse Now subsequently received eight Oscar nominations, and won two. Coppola was nominated as Best Director. The movie, the screenplay, and the editing all were nominated. Among other awards, both Coppola and Duvall received Golden Globes. The American Film Institute has listed Apocalypse Now as Number 38 in its list of the Top 250 movies of all time.
Coppola`s Personal Heart of Darkness. Roger Ebert`s original review of the movie predicted that graduate students would be cataloguing the images and metaphors in Apocalypse Now for years to come, but there is only one idea in it – that War is Hell.[1] Coppola thought he was using Conrad`s literary boat trip up the Congo into "the heart of darkness" as a metaphor for the U. S. getting drawn into the Vietnam quagmire. But at that stage in his life, Coppola was using booze, and drugs, and womanizing, to assuage his own psychological and spiritual imbalances. Unfortunately, his problems were not helped by his being the central figure in the middle of an multi-million dollar moviemaking project that was spiraling way out of control. Coppola seriously contemplated suicide on more than one occasion. He lost one hundred pounds before his multifarious ordeal was over.
In the making of the film, Coppola was drawn into a metaphoric descent into his own spiritual darkness, where he encountered his own personal Hell at every turn. The violent, chaotic images that adorned Coppola`s epic were subconscious depictions of his own spiritual disarray. How does a movie that was such a disaster in the making turn into one of the greatest war movies of all time? As a Vietnam movie, the plot is riddled with holes and historical goofs. But as one man`s symbolic quest for redemption in a world without much meaning, Apocalypse Now still speaks to a many viewers.
Christian Ethical Issues. What are the Christian ethical issues suggested by Apocalypse Now?
First, there is the classic "heart of darkness" motif that constitutes the backbone of both Conrad`s novel and Coppola`s Apocalypse Now. Kurtz is Satan incarnate, and Willard is possessed. Kurtz is the Great White Whale; Willard is Ahab. His mission is a mission of self-exorcism.
Second, as an allegory, Coppola intended for Col. Kurtz to represent the megalomaniacal Vietnam war policies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. (Remember, Apocalypse Now was the first movie to criticize the war. Platoon and others came later.) Capt. Willard stands in for the campus antiwar movement, trying to bring them down and turn them around. The crew on Capt. Willard`s river patrol boat for his mission was a miniaturized cross section of San Francisco`s Haight-Asbury scene`s hippie generation. The Vietnam War, in short, was a story about America`s "heart of darkness," her demonic possession, during the 1960s and 1970s.
What were the "lessons of Vietnam?" Many conservative politicians and military hardliners would say that the biggest lesson was all about matching the correct tactics to the mission. The war was lost, but it should have been won. Apocalypse Now as a social text says the Vietnam War itself was a national psychic episode reflecting our own heart of darkness in the world. Christian ethical analysis of American foreign and military policies and actions since then might argue that we still have to study whether it is the proper business of our country to undertake unilateral military interventions halfway around the world.
[1] Roger Ebert, Apocalypse Now, Chicago Sun-Times, June 1, 1979.
David A. Thomas is Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Emeritus, from the University of Richmond. He retired in 2004 and now resides in Sarasota, FL. He may be reached at davidthomas1572@comcast.net
