2020 Tarkovsky Prize Runner Up: Lilo Bergensten Oliv

Isolation and Unfamiliarity in Apocalypse Now

by Lilo Bergensten Oliv (Lowell)

I watched Apocalypse Now for the first time, ten days into a citywide shelter-in-place order and about a month into what Twitter was calling the end of the world. I hadn’t spoken to anyone outside my family in almost two weeks, my sleep schedule was abandoned entirely, and my list of activities to occupy myself with was becoming so short that I decided to get a start on an English assignment. So it was about ten at night when I started watching, and almost one by the time I reached the last minutes of the film. After nearly three hours of machine gun fire, helicopter blades, “Ride of The Valkyries”, and the Rolling Stones, the closing shot was quiet and placid – just a figure on a boat on a river, the quiet murmur of an FM radio and the lapping of waves.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic is a gut punch, a smoke grenade, a spray of swamp water straight to the face. It is overflowing with color and sound and emotion and vitriol, packed with nuances and messages. But the interpretation that lends itself most easily to the viewer is the one that feels most relevant in the moment, and so the concepts that struck me the most, sitting in the living room alone, watching the closing screen fade to scrolling credits with bleary eyes, were isolation and unfamiliarity. In Apocalypse Now, protagonist Captain Jack Willard is pushed to his physical and mental limits, forced by the carnage and complexity of his mission to meet moral crisis after moral crisis and explore the question that I myself am now asking: what does the human mind do when shoved into the unknown, when left to contemplate its surroundings, its own choices? What does it reach for to calm itself? Unfortunately for Willard, the answers are difficult to find, but the film nevertheless explores them through the actions of its characters and its use of cinematography.

A moment at the beginning of the film places Willard on a beach with a Colonel who is meant to show him to the boat he will be using on his assignment. The Colonel is electric and unflappable and capable of shouting out orders with a cigarette in his mouth, a thoroughly Californian military man with a passion for surfing. As rockets and grenades rain down on the shore, the Colonel tells the soldiers around him to try the waves, which he insists are excellent. When met by reluctance, he yells “If I say it’s safe to surf this beach, Captain, it’s safe to surf this beach!” and so he and three of his soldiers crawl out of trenches in the mud to surf on waters being bombarded with explosives and crashing helicopters. The visual juxtaposition of the extremely hazardous circumstances with aquatic recreation feels bizarre, which is, of course, the intended effect. The screen is bright with gleaming water, white sand, blue skies, and fiery blasts. War is still Hell here, but the Colonel is determined to make the most of it, to bring something with him from home to comfort him and his men.

Once they have acquired a boat, Willard and his team venture down the river towards the disgraced Colonel Kurtz’s hideout in Cambodia. Just about every other scene in this section of the film opens with a pan through fog, smoke, or fire obscuring the boat. They are alone in the wilderness, silhouettes under a hazy, surreal facade punctuated with explosions. Willard fixates on the dossier he has been given on Kurtz, dissecting his past and interrogating his motives. Meanwhile, his own moral direction begins to swing astray. He executes civilians, leads the other soldiers into dangerous situations, and begins to question the purpose of his assignment. As the mission devolves and his companions are killed, more frames feature only Willard, in close-ups of his face gazing into the aether and shrouded by mist or night. He is becoming enveloped by the strangeness of the world he has entered. Unable to trust his surroundings or himself, the only thing he can truly focus on is Colonel Kurtz.

When he is finally introduced, Kurtz is shown only partially obscured by darkness; a quiet voice in the shadow and light catching on the suggestion of a face. Although this is mainly the result of Marlon Brando’s refusal to be filmed from the waist down due to his weight gain, it draws a parallel between Kurtz and Willard as they become more similar to each other in one major aspect: their disillusionment. They meet at the very end of the film, when Willard has grown so conflicted that he cannot decide whether he truly should carry out his mission. Thus, they are now both in the dark, isolated from their families, their values, and the army they used to be so loyal to. Kurtz is described by Willard as a man who is torn up and destroyed, so captivated by the terrors he has witnessed and the violence he has committed that he is consumed by them. He monologues feverishly to Willard about “the horror” that he refuses to let himself forget. Kurtz refuses to give up command, refuses to leave his post. He is obsessed with the fear he faces.

When entering the unknown and the unfamiliar, whether in war or pandemic, whether on foreign, battle-torn seas or locked up at home, we find something to cling onto; be it cigarettes, rock and roll, surfing, morality, or fear. Apocalypse Now will certainly leave an impression on me, especially considering I’ll have a lot of time alone with my thoughts to dwell on it in these coming weeks. In the meantime, I’ll try to avoid starting a cult in the Cambodian jungle. I think I’ll stick to playing Tetris.

2020 Tarkovsky Prize Runner Up: Alex Clare

Apocalypse Now - The Horror of War

By Alex Clare

“The horror, the horror.” These were the final words of Colonel Walter Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 war film, Apocalypse Now. Unlike most American war films, which glorify the heroism and grand spectacle of war, Apocalypse Now illustrates an honest depiction of all aspects of the Vietnam War, horror included.

Right from the beginning of the film, Coppola introduces the horror of war in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Our protagonist, Captain Willard, is returning to war after having been sent back to America. Imagery and audio of choppers flying, forests being scorched, and the chaos of war are superimposed on Willard’s restless head. Immediately, we can see the effects war has on a man. Willard can’t integrate back into society, all he knows is war. He needs war. He needs to be given another mission, and his wishes are granted. His mission is to find and kill Colonel Walter Kurtz, who the military deems too crazy to be kept alive. The war has gotten to his head, and he’s become a bloodthirsty maniac. However, we come to find that every soldier in the war has become a killing machine.

In many American films, war is glorified by depicting heroic characters saving the day with loud, triumphic scores. Unlike the typical American war film, Apocalypse Now’s score is eerie and subtle. In Apocalypse Now, war is ironically glorified to criticize the morals of the American people. The characters are enthusiastic about committing terrible acts against innocent people. War is even sexualized in one scene in which Playboy models dance for the soldiers while holding guns. Any morsel of sympathy has been buried deep within the exoskeleton of masculinity that the soldiers exhibit. They call the Viet Cong by the name “Charlie.” This effectively dehumanizes the enemy by categorizing each individual under one homogenous entity. The soldiers don’t know who Charlie is, they just know he must die.

Colonel Kilgore, the commander of an attack helicopter squadron, is the epitome of the emotionless killing machine. He agrees to invade a beach, killing numerous innocent civilians, because of the prospect that the beach may have good waves for surfing. Kilgore’s character has all of the stereotypical masculine values that were instilled into young men of this era. In perhaps the most famous scene in the film, the helicopter squadron annihilates a Vietnemese village as Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” plays. In this brilliant use of music, the irony is that the song is about a group of flying women warriors. The soldiers are so engrossed in the war that they are ignorant to the fact that their anthem is about powerful women, the antithesis of their masculine personas. It is a horrifying notion that the men of this era could be turned into killing machines because their masculine values are exposed to a war.

While Captain Willard already had war experience, other characters entered the war without any exposure to such experiences. The most notable of these characters is Lance Johnson, a surfer. Lance comes from a background that is vastly different from what he’ll come to experience in Vietnam. He grows fond of a puppy that the crew finds after killing a group of Vietnamese civilians. This puppy is a symbol of innocence in a land that is becoming less and less innocent each day. While he holds onto the puppy for as long as he can, Lance eventually loses the puppy during firefight with the Viet Cong, an experience that traumatizes him and contributes to his loss of innocence. Throughout the film, Johnson’s entire appearance changes drastically. He goes from having a perfectly toned, unscathed figure to being completely inundated in Vietnam through his appearance. He paints his face in order to blend into his environment and he makes a sort of headdress out of an arrow that was shot at him, fully embracing the violence of war. It is a common motif in the film for characters’ appearances to reflect the effect the war is having on them. Willard himself completely camouflages himself as he finally completes his mission. In the moments in which Willard commits his most cruel acts, the soil of Vietnam covers his skin. He is fully consumed by the war.

The horror of the war is incredibly harmful to almost every character in the film. However, one character stands as the lone exception to this generalization. Colonel Kurtz has learned to accept the horror of the war rather than be harmed by it. He has become acquainted with the horror, and as a result he thrives in this environment. While other characters may thrive in a war environment, they are still greatly harmed by the war, whether it's from PTSD or because they’ve lost their human qualities and have become war machines. Kurtz is not harmed by the war, but rather benefits from it, and that’s because he embraces its horror. When he is killed, it is intercut with the ceremonial slaughter of a bull. This powerful moment drives home the idea that Kurtz has embraced the culture of Vietnam. After Captain Willard kills Colonel Kurtz, images of war once again spiral in his head. This serves as a book end for the film. The difference is that this time, Willard understands the horror of war, and that is conveyed by Kurtz’ final words replaying in his head: “The horror, the horror.” Captain Kurtz, the embodiment of the horror of war is finally dead: the only semblance of a happy ending in the film. However, the horror of war still lives on.