Admiral Kurtz in Apocalypase Now
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Admiral Kurtz
Apocalypse Now is a film about madness. In this film, Willard, played by Charlie Sheen, is sent through madness, reminiscent of Dantes journey through hell. His mission is to kill Kurtz, whos gone insane according to military intelligence. Kurtz has gone on his own, starting his own society in Cambodia, where his troops and the local tribes worship him as a god. Kurtz has committed murder by waging his own ferocious, independent war against Vietnamese intelligence agents with his own native Montagnard army across the border in an ancient Cambodian temple deep in the jungle. General Corman explains the confused insanity of the war: “In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity.” The colonel has become a self-appointed, worshipped godlike leader/dictator of a renegade native tribe. General Corman describes Kurtzs temptation to be deified: “Because theres a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between the good and the evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Therein, man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane.” Kurtzs motivation behind his actions is his need to feel godlike, to act without judgment.
In Kurtz camp, a site of primitive evil, they are greeted by a crazed, hyperactive, fast-talking, spaced-out free lance photo-journalist played by Dennis Hoper. The babbling combat photographer, garlanded by his camera equipment, hopes for their sake, that they havent come to take away Colonel Kurtz. He describes the great awe all the natives have for their jungle lord: “Out here, were all his children.” The photojournalist appears to be a fanatical follower of Kurtz, worshipping the enigmatic, genius “poet-warrior” Kurtz as a personal god and expounding Kurtzs cause: “You dont talk to the Colonel, you listen to him. The mans enlarged my mind. Hes a poet-warrior in the classic senseIm a little man. Hes a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across floors of silent seas, I mean…He can be terrible. He can be mean. And he can be right. Hes fighting a war. Hes a great man.” He offers first-hand advice from his own experience: “Play it cool, laid back…You dont judge the Colonel.” Willard is impressed by Kurtzs power over the people. He notices Captain Richard Colby among the natives tribesmen.
The crew returns to the boat to wait until Willard can talk to Kurtz. Chef feels that the Colonel is “wacko, man. Hes worse than crazy. Hes evil…Its f–kin pagan idolatry. Look around you.” Willard leaves with Lance to scout around and try to find the Colonel, keeping Chef on the boat and instructing him to radio for help if necessary: “If I dont get back by 2200 hours, youll call in the air strike.” Willard sees hundreds of bodies – proving Kurtz insanity: “North Vietnamese, Vietcong, Cambodians.” He realizes Kurtzs power over life and death: “If I was still alive, it was because he wanted me that way.” Willard soon finds himself in awe of Kurtzs power over people. He is fascinated with him and his ways as a leader, and he begins to see Kurtz in the same way the tribesman do.
Willard feels ambivalent about his missions task, finding Kurtz brilliant but rambling and spiritually troubled – as the camera pans across mythic texts (The Holy Bible, From Ritual to Romance by Jesse L. Weston, and James Fraziers The Golden Bough) in Kurtzs headquarters. Kurtz speaks of the “horrors” that he has seen in the bloody conflict, and denies that Willard has any moral right to judge his actions or behavior. Kurtz also believes that “moral terror” and “horror” are necessary to preserve civilization as he philosophizes with further pronouncements. Kurtz believes the atrocities revealed for him the moral strength and commitment of men who loved their families and could still act so monstrously “without judgment” – with a primordial instinct to kill. According to him, those revelations have accentuated the moral ambiguity of war and justified his rampage in Cambodia – a mass-murder and mutilation of the enemy “without judgment,” to shorten the war. Kurtz wants primitive men, similar to agent Willard on his mission, who can kill without judgment “because its judgment that