Hello this is Seth Welling and welcome to
another AFI 100 Greatest American Films List
review.
Today I will be reviewing Apocalypse Now.
Apocalypse Now occupies the 28th position
on the 1998 list and the 30th position on
the 2007 list.
Basically, Apocalypse Now is a retelling of
the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
It was set in Africa.
This one’s set in Vietnam and it’s about
a descent into Hell.
Basically, that’s what you should expect.
It stars Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz.
He’s a decorated Colonel.
He’s a decorated warrior.
He’s one of the best soldiers we have had.
It stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard.
Martin Sheen was most famously in The West
Wing where he was President.
It stars a little bit of Harrison Ford as
Colonel Lucas, who’s the one who sends Captain
Willard into the jungle after Kurtz.
Basically, Captan Willard has been contracted
by the Army ad probably the CIA to kill Colonel
Kurtz because Kurtz has gone completely off
the reservation.
Other people are: Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore.
He’s a Calvary man.
He’s played by Robert Duvall.
On the boat, there’s a boat captain called
Clean played by a very young Lawrence Fishburne
who was in Boys in the Hood.
There’s also a little bit of Dennis Hopper.
When you get to Kurtz’s camp.
He’s a Kurtz Convert.
He’s a photojournalist.
When Colonel Lucas is asking Captain Willard
to go after Kurtz, he wanted Kurtz exterminated
because Kurtz has gone off the reservation
in that he has made himself his own little
kingdom.
And he’s going aloud there just being barbaric.
He’s devolved into some kind of an animal
and the military doesn’t look fondly upon
one of their most decorated officers becoming
a native.
They like their decorated officers to be the
face of the military, not be an embarrassment.
So it’s basically a suicide mission for
Captain Willard because he’s already dealing
with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
He’s thinking about how this is going to
be his last mission.
Or whatever this is, he’s either going to
die or be Court Martialed.
And it follows the story of just going up
the river and it’s like a river where the
further you go up, the closer to death you
will become, If you’re talking about what
this film means to society in 1979, it was
made four years after we got out of Vietnam
War in 1975.
And unlike past wars: World War One, World
War Two and The Korean War, Vietnam is currently
seen as an embarrassment.
We do not even acknowledge the soldiers who
fought in Vietnam as being the same as people
of World War Two, where they were called The
Greatest Generation because they won World
War Two.
And they won The Korean War.
Vietnam, we don’t even mention it.
We call those people The Baby Boomers- Baby
Boomers meaning they were born during or after
World War Two.
So we’re even giving credit to World War
Two for these people’s existence.
We’re not calling them “Vietnam Heroes”.
We’re not calling them with the same esteem
as we’re hoisting upon World War Two.
And it’s really unfair.
We really need to fix this because it wasn’t
their fault or anyone’s fault that the war
went the way it did.
It was actually our Government’s fault that
the war went the way it did because we as
the American Government thought this would
be another Korean War where we would stop
Communism from advancing down another peninsula
and we didn’t understand what Vietnam was,
how it was different from Korea, how it was
different from any other war we’ve ever
been in and therefore, We lost.
We shouldn’t have been in Vietnam because
we got into it by a Treaty Trap like everyone
in World War One.
We had a treaty with France because they were
our first ally that helped us or Won the Revolutionary
War for us.
And we’ve always been close with France
and when France got in trouble in Vietnam,
we stepped right in without knowing what this
war would mean, what the odds we were facing
and the whole blame, I think has fallen on
the soldiers who fought there who didn’t
want to be there in the first place.
They wanted to go to college, They wanted
to learn.
They wanted to live life the way everyone
else was living but we forced them into a
war and we scapegoated the blame onto them.
And Kurtz is basically Kurtz is like Vietnam
in this film where he’s an embarrassment.
He’s an embarrassment because he’s not
behaving the way we want a soldier to behave.
So we gotta kill him and bury him so no one
will know about his existence.
And that’s really the way we view Vietnam.
Because when Nixon ended the war, the war
was not over.
We were just losing badly.
We just pulled out.
And he declared victory.
We pulled out.
We left all the South Vietnamese to bear the
consequences that we helped create and it
was terrible all around.
By 1979, no one wanted to think about Vietnam.
No one wanted to acknowledge that we lost
a war and we juts wanted to sweep it under
the rug and go on with our lives and become
Yuppies.
And it was the dawn of the 1980’s.
And Ronald Regan was going to win the nomination
and the Presidency.
And we’d rather look forwards than look
backwards on a disappointing war.
And it’s really sad.
What Kurtz was actually doing was he was so
into warrior mode that he abandoned civilization.
Because the only way to truly be alive was
to be The King of the Jungle and knowing you
were on the precipice of failure because you
were on top of everyone ruling like a king,
but at any moment, someone could take you
out.
Someone could just kill you and you would
be gone.
And that’s as anti-society/anti-civilization
as you could get.
Basically, this film is about the triumph
of society over wildness.
And Kurtz represented Wildness and Vietnam.
And this was Us conquering the whole Vietnam
question and stifling it and not dealing with
it.
And I don’t think we’ve dealt with it
very well since.
But the thing you should take away from this
and the thing that I take away from this is
It’s Society Versus Anarchy like Lord of
the Flies.
But in that we also need to acknowledge is
dealing with the loss and not letting people
fall behind.
Just because they fought in an unpopular war,
through no fault of their own just wrong place,
wrong time, It’s an amazing film.
It’s almost in places like a music video
but it’s very violent, it’s very primal.
If you’re a kid, you probably shouldn’t
see it because it’s very very dark.
It goes to the most primal evil human emotions
and in places almost like a horror film.
That’s why I’m filming it for October
because I want to do a whole thing where we
do Horror and Suspense films for October because
that’s basically the Halloween month.
So if you like this film, please like and
subscribe and hang around so you can watch
more from me.
Watch this film.
It’s one of the greatest films by Francis
Ford Coppola.
And Have a Good Day!
