Apocalypse Now is director Francis Ford Coppola's film based on Heart of Darkness but set in the jungles of Vietnam. While some critics found the film belabored and muddled, most agreed that it was a powerful and important examination not only of America's military involvement in Vietnam, but like Conrad's novel, a disturbing treatment of the darkness potentially inherent in all human hearts. "Apocalypse" means the end of the world, as when the earth is destroyed by fire in the Bible. As the film's title suggests, Coppola explores the ways in which the metaphorical "darkness" of Vietnam causes an apocalypse in the hearts of those sent there to fight.
Coppola retained the basic structure of Conrad's novel for his film. As Heart of Darkness follows Marlow's journey through the different Company stations and eventually upriver to Kurtz, Coppola's film moves in an analogous way. The protagonist is an Army Captain (Willard) who receives his orders, gathers his crew, and creeps up the Nung River until he meets and assassinates a renegade soldier (Col. Walter Kurtz). Both the Company and the Army want their "Kurtzes" dead, because both Kurtzes detest and expose their superiors' motives and methods. Their willingness to go all the way terrifies their superiors, who do not want to be so blatantly reminded of their real goals (ivory in the Heart of Darkness and power in Apocalypse Now) and methods of attaining them.
Like Conrad's Company, Coppola's Army is a disorganized band of men whose hypocrisy is questioned by the central characters. As the Company masquerades as a philanthropic and humane institution bringing "light" to Africa (recall Kurtz's painting), the Army (as embodied by General Corman and Colonel Lucas, the men who give Willard his mission) pretends to be greatly disturbed by the fact that Col. Kurtz has broken from their command and begun fighting the war in his own way. The Army has charged Col. Kurtz with the murder of four Vietnamese double agents, which is the ostensible reason why they want to "terminate" his command. Willard, however, sees through their façade and remarks to himself, "Charging someone for murder out here was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." As the Manager feigns great concern over Kurtz's health in The Heart of Darkness, General Corman acts pained and upset when he tells Willard, "Every man has a breaking point. Walter Kurtz has obviously reached his."
More striking than the parallels in plot, however, are those of character. As Marlow's jaunt to Africa becomes much more to him than an adventure, so does Willard's mission to kill Col. Kurtz become more than an order: "When it was done," he explains, "I'd never want another." Both become wiser yet more shaken as a result of their journeys, and both tell their stories (Marlow on the Nellie, Willard in his voice-overs) to teach their listeners about their discoveries concerning the "hearts of darkness" into which they traveled.
Willard, like Marlow, becomes more perceptive to the moral darkness around him as the film proceeds. An important difference between these characters, however, is that Willard begins the film as a man already accustomed to the "horror" around him. The opening shots of the film reveal Willard in a Saigon hotel; on his nightstand is a gun (he has already considered suicide) and he explains, in a voice-over, that he was unable to adjust to life in the United States after his first tour of duty. Coppola then presents the viewer with a montage of Willard screaming, crying, and smashing a mirror to show how desperately Willard needs a mission to give his life some purpose. Another difference is that Marlow wanted to explore "the blank places" on a map to satisfy his thirst for adventure, but Willard needs a mission so that he doesn't become (as he fears) "weaker."
The problem Col. Kurtz poses to the Army deserves further investigation. Like Conrad's Kurtz, he was a "prodigy": a Green Beret, paratrooper, and candidate for a position with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Willard also learns that Kurtz organized a covert operation ("Archangel") without the permission of his superiors — an operation which might have brought him court-martial, but instead earned him a promotion to Colonel once the news of it was made public. As the war continued, Kurtz kept winning battles and becoming stronger — and it was this strength that made him threatening to the Army, just as Conrad's Kurtz (who brings in more ivory than all other stations combined) unnerves the Manager. Just as "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz" in that he embodied many of the Europeans' values about the White man's power over the natives, so has "all America" contributed to the making of Col. Kurtz — a man who once personified the traditional American values of strength and valor, but who became — once he glimpsed the darkness of war — someone who could not uphold the hypocrisy of which he was once a major part.
Willard reads a letter from Col. Kurtz to his son that reveals his hatred of the system that once extolled him. Col. Kurtz explains that while the Army has accused him of murdering the four Vietnamese double agents, the charges are, "in the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane." He continues:
"In a war, there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action. What is often called "ruthless" . . . may, in many circumstances, be only clarity: Seeing clearly what there is to be done and dong it — directly, quickly, looking at it."
Col. Kurtz feels that in murdering the double agents, he was simply exhibiting a soldier's "clarity": The agents were captured, they were enemies, and were therefore killed. What Kurtz detests is the Army's purposeful lack of "clarity": He knows that they cannot (in this war) afford to appear "ruthless" and are therefore attempting to smear his name and color his actions as insane. Col. Kurtz ends his letter with an expression of his hatred of lies: "As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned; I am above their timid, lying morality and so I am beyond caring." Later, Col. Kurtz remarks, "We train young men to drop fire on people but will not allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes, because it's 'obscene.'" This hypocrisy enrages Kurtz to the point where he can no longer abide by the "timid" moral guidelines of the Army, just as Conrad's Kurtz can no longer abide by the "methods" suggested to him by the Company. Both men detest the lies of their superiors: Recall Kurtz's remark to the Manager when he arrives at the Inner Station to "rescue" him: "Save me! — save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save me!" His subsequent remark to the Manager about his health ("Not so sick as you'd like to believe") is the equivalent of Col. Kurtz's letter: Both the Company and Army want to pretend that their "Kurtzes" are insane rather than admit the truth, which is that both men see their respective organizations for what they truly are.
When Willard meets Kurtz in the last part of the film, Coppola stresses Kurtz's power — but also the weariness that this power has created in Kurtz. Willard is taken prisoner and kept in a cage; on a rainy night, Willard is awakened by Kurtz, who drops the head of one of Willard's crew in his lap, as if to say, "This is what I am capable of doing on a whim." After this show of force, however, Kurtz begins nursing Willard back to health, and Coppola eventually makes clear the idea that Kurtz knows Willard's mission and — more importantly — wants him to carry it out. "If I was still alive it was only because he wanted it that way," Willard remarks. Like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, Col. Kurtz cannot sustain his life of exhausting emptiness. Both Kurtzes succumb to the temptation of "forgotten and brutal instincts" — and both find that their lives become "hollow" as a result. As he approaches Col. Kurtz with a machete, Willard's voice-over explains, "Everyone wanted me to do it," including the jungle, "Which is who he really took his orders from." Col. Kurtz wants to die, because after learning what he did about himself, he needs (as Willard explains), "Someone to take the pain away." When Willard kills him, Col. Kurtz offers little resistance; Coppola intersperses the scene of Col. Kurtz's murder with the sacrifice of a bull to suggest that Col. Kurtz is "sacrificed" for the sins of the Army. Eventually, he speaks the same final words as his counterpart with the same ambiguous effect.
After Willard kills Col. Kurtz, he leaves the hut, machete in hand, and sees hundreds of Kurtz's followers bow to him as he walks to his boat. Before he begins his return, however, Willard hesitates, for he has the chance to become Kurtz's successor. After a moment, however, he returns to the boat and the small amount of safety it provides. Thus, in both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, both protagonists learn the same lesson: Even a man as "enlightened" and revered as Kurtz can succumb to his dark side if he is freed from the restraints of society. Both protagonists are also able to retreat from the fate that awaited Kurtz — but both of them also come face-to-face with "an impenetrable darkness" that challenges their most basic moral beliefs. Without having met their respective Kurtzes, both men would have found the world less dark than they do at the time of their narrations. But as both Conrad and Coppola suggest, one cannot "unsee" what he has already glimpsed — Marlow and Willard can pull back their feet, but will never forget what lay over the edge.
