An Epic Evaluation of Apocalypse Now Essay Example for Free

An Epic Evaluation of Apocalypse Now assayIn 1979, Francis Ford Coppola unleashed a delineation that reshaped the view of the American Vietnam war. The movie theatre was heralded as an big of modern film. However, is it truly an big or is that term become a widely used leger for great works of cinema? Does Apocalypse Now contain the epic criteria of religion, a voyage, a enormous setting, a sense of wizardly and other key factors? The journey in Apocalypse Now is original Benjamin Willards mission to assassinate Army Col peerlessl Walter Kurtz. The former Green Beret has deserted his command and instanter leads a rogue army of commandos and Montagnard, the indigenous people of the central highlands of Vietnam(Human Rights Watch). This film is also a journey into the darkness of the human soul. As Willard travels up the river he spends most of his time reading the Armys dossier on the rogue Kurtz who has been deemed insane after his use of unsound methods. Willard trie s to understand the actions of Kurtz, and as the film progresses, Willard experiences to a greater extent and more of the absurdities and immorality of war that lead him to understand the villainous Kurtz.His understanding comes with his own decent into effective madness. After he senselessly kills a peasant woman on a sampan Willard states, It was the way we had everyplace here of living with ourselves. Wed cut them in half with a machine gun and bring in them a Band-Aid. It was a lie and the more I saw of them the more I hated lies. These linguistic communication sound as though they were uttered by the insane Kurtz. The setting for Apocalypse Now is the assumed Nung River(Milks). Most of the film takes place on a Navy river patrol boat (PBR) with a four-man work party.The captain, promontory, a military man who follows protocol to a Tand feels personally responsible for the fate of his crew. He blames Willard for the plight that they find themselves in. Clean is a sevent een-year-old mechanic from the S pop outh Bronx. He is symbolic of the young men that fought in Vietnam that were ignorant to the ways of war and and waste time waiting to end their service c beers. Chef, a saucier from New Orleans, who emphatically does non want to be in this strange land and Lance, a calcium surfer, assoil up the rest of the crew. Lance and Chefs use of rugs and placement in the primitive hobo camp help them withdraw from the war around them as the film proceeds(Milks). This is symbolic of how many of the drafted youth tangle in Vietnam. The film begins in the Greek tradition of en medias res. It opens with captain Willard in an alcohol bring on depressive state in a hotel room in Saigon in 1968. He already completed one tour of duty in Vietnam only to return home and be miserable with the confines of civilization. He states, I was discharged from the army four years ago. I went home, wasted some time, bought a Mustang Mach 1, pack it a week.Then I re-uppe d for another tour. No, everything I love is here. He has been irrecoverably changed by the war. He feels that the jungle is the only place he belongs and he cannot wait to get back in action, Every arcminute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the furnish he gets stronger. The film does not follow all the guidelines of an Epic in the Greek sense. In the beginning, Willard does not invoke the muses and the only religion is the Montagnards belief in Kurtz as a god. The film contains no epic lists and the film is not divided into twenty-four books.The only division in the film could be seen in the different episodes the crew faces traveling up river. The first is the rendevous with Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, commander of the Air Ninth Calvary. Then, the tiger attack in the jungle, the U. S. supply depot complete with Playboy Playmates, the French rubber plantation, the small sampan, and the antediluvian temple where Kurtz resides. Each event adds to the mayhem of the journey and creates a darker mood for the film. The narrator and protagonist of the film is Captain Willard. However, he is not the epic hero because he does not meet the criteria.He is male, and he does have a task to complete, but that is about his only heroic characteristics. First, in terms of strength, he does not possess outstanding physical strength, nor is he mentally strong. As a character is quite a passive, everything he does is influenced by someone, or something else. When he takes the mission he says, What the hell else was I gonna do? On the PBR, he withdraws himself from the actions of the crew, and spends most of his time studying the file on Kurtz, try to get into the mind of his target. This only puts him in a more detached state.At Kurtzs compound he is swayed by the teachings of Kurtz and makes the consultation ponder if he will indeed carry out his mission, or join Kurtzs group. Lance, as well as the last assassin sent to kill Kurtz, d id just that. Willard confesses It was the strangest thing I take int know that I can explain it. Two of my men dead and all I could think of was whether Kurtz was dead too. Thats all I wanted to see Kurtz, to hear Kurtz. Kurtz actually helps make that decision for him. Kurtz is weary of his life as a demigod and is expecting, and actually welcoming his death. You came up my river in that small boat. So simple. I always thought the final justice would come from the sky, like we did. You are the final justice, arent you? In one episode, on a sampan, a small fishing boat, Willard shows his trustworthy moral state. When Clean opens fire killing several civilians in a botched search of the boat, Chief decides to take the lone survivor, a peasant woman, to a military base for medical attention. Willard, thinking only of his mission, kills the woman so that she will not impede his journey to assassinate Kurtz.This event causes the rest of the crew to turn on him and cast a dark shad ow over Willard. When Chef asks, When you kill cong, dont you feel something? Willard responds, Sure, recoil I feel the recoil of my rifle. This control alone solidifies the fact that Willard is not a fundamentally good soul. The supernatural is an important element in any Epic. In Apocalypse Now, the supernatural pertains more to a detachment from reality than to a ghost, miraculous events, or the common notion of the supernatural. In this sense, the film is rife with the supernatural.First Kilgores calvary, the surfing calvary charge into battle listening to the devolve on of the Valkyries. Kilgore boasts, Well come in low, out of the rising sun, and about a mile out, well put on the medicinal drug Yeah, I use Wagner scares the hell out of the slopes My boys love it The music and the surfing are completely out of place in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. However, this is just the first stop on the tour of mass mayhem. afterwards in the film, the PBR comes across the remai ns of a rubber plantation. This is a plantation run by the de Marais family, a hold over from the French colonization of Indochina.In the middle of a war zone, a family is trying to hold onto a piece of property in a country in which they are not natives. Several of their family members have given their lives for that property and they believe they have just as much as a claim to it than anyone else. Even when a family member makes a symbolic gesture that makes a statement about Americas involvement in Vietnam and cracks an egg, which represents Indochina, lets the egg white run out and exclaims, sportsmanlike goes, yellow stays The symbolism is poignantly blunt. It is surreal that they even attempt to keep their property.Also, they try to declare their heritage in speaking French and having a tradition plantation life without interference from the exterior world. The scene, including the burial of Clean is rife with symbolism and detachment from reality. The boat heads further up river and reaches an outpost where American forces are testing Einsteins theory of insanity. Einstein once said, The definition of insanity is doing the identical thing over and over and expecting a different result. (Moncur) Each night the Viet Cong bomb a yoke and each day the G. I. s rebuild it.All of the soldiers at this base are either scared or confused, those that are not, are high on drugs. The colored flares and tracer rounds add to the effects of the psychotropic drugs and the whole theater of battle is in total chaos. Finally, Kurtzs compound is the scene of total lack of reality. Rotting corpses hang from the tress, and heads litter the ancient temple. The scene is surreal. A burnt out photo journalist exclaims how great Kurtz is, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around him. The man himself is a larger than life almighty character.He remains in the shadows for almost every scene and quotes poetry from T. S. Eliot. He is the all powerful in this land even thoug h he is gone over the edge mentally, spiritually, and physically. He is supernatural. The film as a whole doesnt fit the standards of an epic in the Greek tradition. However, it is an awesome news report of a mans journey into the physical unknown of a strange land that forces him to search inside himself for some form of morality in the difficult circumstances of war. Willard is a stranger in a strange land, even to himself.