Apocalypse Now: the dehumanization of American soldiers in the VietnamWar
A montage of shots of Willard drunk, dancing, crying and hitting things are shown over a monologue, ‘When I was home after my first tour it was
worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing.’ Coppola already offers some insight into the charac ters disjointed state of mind, a man well past his breaking point, haunted and yet famished by the horrors of war. Willard is an extremely isolated character, throughout the film he makes a noticeable effort to disassociate himself from his group, ostracizing himself, making no effort to improve the way others perceive him. This is even displayed through the cinematography, with Willard hardly ever sharing the frame with others, and always being shown in close-up, which gives the audience a sense of intensity and vulnerability. This man is clearly already dehumanized by war, desensitized to acts of horror and disconnected from humanity. This is how his character can make as far as the heart of darkness, where others couldn’t: he had already lost his mind.
Willard and his crew of men, named Chef, Lance, Clean and Chief, spend most of their time cruising down the river, but their journey to Kurtz is interrupted by three main stops along the way, each giving insight into the
next level of insanity within the depths of Vietnam. The first is where Willard starts the journey and meets the infamous Colonel Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall), who was originally named Colonel Carnage but was changed to Kilgore as Coppola felt ‘carnage’ was ‘ too on the nose ’ . 1 Kilgore and his men represent the first stage of insanity along this river, the desensitization of men who love war. The juxtaposition between the massacres they commit on and off screen, such as his merciless napalm strike on the Vietnamese with the absu rdity of playing ‘ Ride of the Valkyries’ during an airborne attack and ordering men to surf the waves whilst artillery flies around their heads, represents the stage of insanity where war becomes sport. ‘ Do you smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time, we had a hill bombed for 12 hours. When it was all clear, I walked up. We didn't find one of them, not one stinking dink body. But the smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill . . . it smelled like . . . victory. Someday this war's
1 Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse ‧ Documentary ‧ 1991 ‧ Directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola.
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