Apocalypse Now Analysis Essay

The line Mistah Kurtz he dead from T. S. Elliots poem The moil Men refers to one of the movies main characters Mr. Kurtz, a European trader who had gone into the heart of darkness ie the lay of the im handsse Vietnamese jungle with European standards of life and behavior. Because hes disaffect from the morals and spiritual strengths he can non maintain his sanity and soon turns into a barbarian. Eyes they d ar not meet in dreams in my mind, these are the eyes of the innocent Vietnamese whose death they ordered.They being the American soldiers who, passim the duration of their journey done the jungle lost their sanity and were brainwash because of the weapons they were given. What I was particularly fascinated by in the film revelation Now was the way the unspoilt can somehow turn into the evil, not on their own, but because of their surroundings. .. We were in the jungle, there were too patchy of us, we had feeler to too much money, too much equip ment and humble by li ttle we went bats said by director and producer, Coppola at the Cannes film fiesta in 1979.Even the director had, little by little, gone insane being exposed to the Vietnamese jungle for so many years. The make of the film had taken more than 10 years and $30million to create which had brought Coppola to attempt suicide a couple of times. The film is based on the novella Heart of Darkness which took place during the Vietnam War, where the American and the Vietnamese soldiers showed no favor when it came to a matter of life and death.Throughout the film, I realized that the main character, Captain Willard, sent to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, began to be more and more enthr aloneed by Kurtzs achievements and was beginning to think like him as he was exposed to immoral atrocities of the Great War. When General Corman described Willards boot to him he told him In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical(a) military necessity. Out the re with these natives it must be a lure to be god.Because theres a conflict in either human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the part angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane. This quote reminds me of Dantes Inferno mentioned in the poem The golf hole Men a journey through the different circles of hell depending on the type of psyche one was and the type of crime they had committed during their lifetime.The man is clear in his mind but his soul is mad. Like Alberto Giacometti, Kurtz and Willard come apart two faces during the time of the war. The only difference is that Giacometti didnt need a war to show this, his dual soulality was natural in criticizing himself, his paintings and his sculptures. Whilst observance the film I found it mainly distur bing how these men, men with families, men who had peaceful souls, could casually blow off the head of a Vietnamese person without feeling just a tiny bit of smart in their hearts.They could kill without feeling without passion without judgment without judgment Because its judgement that defeats us. The fact that these characters, sent out on mission through the rivers of a foreign place, were simple men, one a chef, the other a surfer, and the other a sailor gives the audience the feeling that this could happen to anyone. macrocosm placed in the jungles of Vietnam with nothing but weapons would turn us into these animalistic beings with only one instinct kill to survive. Do you know that if is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you This film is, in fact, all about losing ones mind, being brainwashed by the immoralities of society, to be converted into an emoti onless killer. Its about the delusion of what an evil man is in the normal persons eyes compared to what an evil man is in the brainwashed persons eyes.