Apocalypse Now Essay

Kurtz’s lack of restraint and hunger for ivory consumes not only his soul but drains all of his physical existence. Upon seeing him, Marlow states, “I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving (126)”. Conrad focuses on the physical features of Kurtz to display the madness that has consumed him. However, though Kurtz’s body is deteriorating, Kurtz’s mind continues to thrive. Conrad shows this in Marlow’s shock of witnessing a flame of passion that remains in Kurtz’s eyes as he converses without signs of exhaustion (126). Conrad continues to describe Kurtz as a shadow composed of tranquility and satisfaction. Conrad’s incorporation of this detail signifies the evil and greed that consumes Kurtz and is reflected through his physique. However, the power of Kurtz’s presence is personified through the action of his words. As the strength in his voice captures Marlow’s attention, it merely reflects his influence upon his followers. The power reflected through his voice displayed his confidence as well as his position as a leader for the natives. Hi demeanor displays an air of arrogance that makes others feel less equal to him. Those who follow him fear him, but also continue to respect him.

The horrors of war were depicted by the constant threats to the characters lives, the brutal conditions of the bad weather, hunger and combat. Soldiers had to battle the enemy along with nature. Soldiers would become stressed, paranoid and start losing their personalities. As Captain Miller says, “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.” This quote shows the mental toll on these soldiers.

When Joseph Conrad sat down to write Heart of Darkness over a century ago he decided to set his tale amidst his own country's involvement in the African Congo. Deep in the African jungle his character would make his journey to find the Captain gone astray. Over eighty years later Francis Ford Coppola's Willard would take his journey not in Afica but in the jungles of South Asia. Coppola's Film, Apocalypse Now uses the backdrop of the American Vietnam War yet the similarities between the Conrad's novel and Coppola's film remains constant and plenty.

   Apocalypse Now is a very vivid and sometimes disturbing film centered on the Vietnam War. Because it was based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, it is possible to draw some parallels between the two. Both can be interpreted as metaphors for a journey through the inner self, and each has its own singular message to convey. Apocalypse Now very perspicuously depicts the fact that men have hearts of darkness, and it explores the evils of war. At the same time, however, it seemingly glorifies some aspects. The anti-war sequences were often brutal and portrayed destruction as a result of the human condition. The film Apocalypse Now, directed by

Leaving Vietnam ala Apocalypse Now, in a helicopter soaring over the water to an aircraft carrier in 1975, is definitely the best way to get out of a war zone, in style. Diem (pronounced Ziim, later changed to Ziem) Nguyen grew up in a Buddhist family, that spoke Vietnamese and basic French. As a child, Ziem lived in a four-story house in Ho Chi Minh City, on the south side of Vietnam. Her dad worked as a pharmacist on the first floor of the building. When she was too young to go to school, she spent her days sitting on a tall stool greeting customers, always with a smile. As Ziem got older, she started “diagnosing” the customers’ illnesses when they walked in the door, suggesting drugs to help them, but the customers thought it was more cute than practical. On the second floor was a lab where her dad made the medications that he would later sell. Her family lived on the third and fourth floors of the building. Outside of Ziem’s house was a city where car

Apocalypse Now starts with U.S. Army captain, Benjamin Willard, waiting in the room of his hotel in Saigon to receive a mission. After his tour in Vietnam, Willard is very psychologically stressed and often has hallucinations of the war, but he continues to have the need to undertake special operations missions. It is then that two special intelligence officers reach out to him. They tell him about his mission, which is to travel along the Nung River into Cambodia to end the command of Special Forces Colonel Walter Kurtz, who has apparently gone insane.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is the 1979 epic Vietnam War film based on the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. However the word ‘based’ as to be called into question as the two differ quite dramatically. The periods in which the two stories are about are completely different, within 70 years of each other, as is the setting and the circumstances. However, through the ideas of savagery and madness character, plot, and the themes which both pieces seem to convey the two stories are very similar and it is clear that Coppola was heavily influenced by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s critically acclaimed movie “ Apocalypse Now” he portrayed a journey of five soldiers into psychological madness down the harsh Vietnamese jungle river, and through these four specific scenes in cinematic order of the boat’s landings, Francis used this screenplay to boast utter psychological madness of the human mind.

Disgusted with the hypocrisy of charging someone with murder amidst a war, Kurtz created his own army where he makes his own decisions in which he can act outside the civilised definition of morality. Kurtz is the conclusion of Willard’s journey, so is Willard to Kurtz’s. Kurtz wishes to die but he must first convey his philosophy to Willard so that he can excoriate the war after he finishes his mission. Kurtz does not hold himself accountable for his actions, believing that morality has no place in war. He has become a dark, godlike figure, emphasised by his

The political and social unrest of the 1970s provided Hollywood with some of its most influential films, often stemming from unlikely sources; two decades after melodrama's heyday, the genre re-emerged in an original form that continues to affect modern filmmaking. The historical influences of Italian opera and Hollywood family melodramas spawned a type of film that has been described as "historical, operatic, choral or epic" (Greene 388). Filmmakers of the 1970s explored the traditional modes of melodramatic expression in order to address the socially charged times they lived in. Filmed in the wake of the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is a complex treatise of human morality

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

The danger of the war and their age are not the only thing that creates uncertainty, our soldiers are uncertain of their presence in the war, and ultimately, their future. According the critic’s perspective, our involvement is a result of our government’s ideology, defender of the democracy, thus, the government determines what is “good and evil, right and wrong, civilized and uncivilized, freedom and oppression for Vietnam” (1). As a result, he suggests that soldiers might perceive the cause as unjust; they struggle to justify their role in the war. As O’Brien depicts, the war is “just the endless march, village to village, without purpose” (5), and they march and fight “but no volition, no will” (5). Certainly, the low morale manifests the soldiers’ uncertainty of the war. For many of them, the war is meaningless, evil, and “a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility” (5). They fight not to win but to survive. The boundary between life and death is almost nonexistent; every step they take on that land is a bet for their life.

He is worshipped as a god of sorts amongst the people of the station and has started acting in accordance with their 'savage' ways, killing off the very inhabitants who worship him. This is observed much to the confusion of Marlowe, who had thought Kurtz to be an honourable and intelligent man, not the poster-boy of madness in front of him (Conrad, 2016). Marlow will later go on to describe how Kurtz did not take responsibility for his actions. He ingeniously is described when he says that Kurtz had "kicked himself loose of the earth" (Conrad, 2016:98). This means that Kurtz didn't hold himself grounded as to what was right nor wrong. He was no longer himself.  Marlowe isn't innocent himself. Marlowe loses himself when he loses his soul just like Kurtz, but it could be argued that Marlowe won this struggle against madness, that same way Willard had, and insanity as he did not succumb to the greed for ivory that Kurtz had. This is demonstrated when they both  choose to leave the ivory behind when they leave the inner station after Kurtz's death (Conrad,

In the twentieth century alone over 108 million people have lost their lives due to war. This does not include only soldiers and those who set out to risk their lives, but civilians and children too. In the movie Apocalypse Now, the film follows the voyage of veteran Benjamin L. Willard and his mission to terminate the noted and recently turned insane Colonel, Walter E. Kurtz. In the backdrop of this mission is the Vietnam War and throughout the movie there is clips of savagery and barbaric actions shown by the the Vietnam and American soldiers and even the Vietnam civilians. When Willard arrives at Kurtz’s outpost, he is introduced to the civilization in Cambodia that Kurtz has become a god too. Kurtz rejects the undefined ‘Rule of War’ that

I have always enjoyed movies. But at some point I started to think of movies as more than just entertainment. I began to view them as a movie critic would, rather than just a casual viewer. Because of this perspective, I think of "Apocalypse Now" as one of the best American made movies I have ever seen. As a student of and an active participant in the late twentieth century media age, I feel justified in making this statement. In my lifetime of observation of American media, including fourteen months of intense movie watching in conjunction with my employment at a local video store, I have had an opportunity to observe a broad sampling of the films, and feel more than qualified to make this statement. By referring to