This film is one of the most influential American films in the 1970s and one of the most representative "Vietnam War films" in the United States. It has attracted widespread attention from film critics in various countries.
Coppola explained his views on the war of aggression with expressive film language. This film can be said to be a rare idea film in the United States. It uses the protagonist Willard to trace the experience of Koz, who was driven mad by the war, through the protagonist Willard. The philosophical problem of the decline of human morality. The Vietnam War is a war of aggression based on lies. Anyone with a conscience involved in it will experience an upside-down "war" in his heart. The three main characters in the film represent the three types of American soldiers involved in the Vietnam War. Koz is the central character of the film, but he never appeared in the first three-quarters of the film. Instead, he used the dialogue and narration of others to outline his image. Because of the in-depth psychological analysis, language means here are more expressive, concise and clearer than visual images. At the beginning of the film, Coppola confessed his current situation and expressed the military's view of him through the mouth of the general of the Intelligence Service, while his own recordings pointedly denounced the military as the real murderer, which leads to A suspense: Is he really crazy? Then Willard read Koz's files from time to time during the voyage, and through his inner monologue, we can further understand Koz's past and his mental journey towards "insanity". Koz was born in a military family, and he was a model soldier who was upright and brave, did not seek official careers, and fought only for his ideals. No wonder Willard respected him. However, once he came to the battlefield in Vietnam, his ideals were shattered by reality. There is no justice at all, and “protection of human rights” is also a complete lie. Life is worthless here. Everyone here is killing people like crazy. The generals are the masters behind the killings. He saw through their hypocrisy, so he went on his own and disobeyed orders, which angered the generals. He was forced to retreat to the jungle and completely broke with the generals, so the generals decided to put him to death. For the generals, his madness lies not in killing, but in disobedience. Koz's brutal killing provided them with an excuse to purge him. But why does he want to murder brutally? Willard further solved the mystery after finding Koz. Here, Coppola is still borrowing another person's (photographer) to introduce Koz's current situation from the side, strengthening his mystery, and then let him appear, and finally solve the mystery he set. When the mysterious smoke that enveloped Koz finally dissipated, the audience saw him not a yelling, delirium lunatic, on the contrary, he was very calm, and the English poet Eliot's "Empty Man" was mixed in his speech from time to time. And the epigrams in Conrad's novel "Dark Mind". He has a clear mind, His speech is philosophical, but his behavior is grotesque and sometimes cruel. After spending several days with him and talking many times, Willard finally realized that his heart was very painful and contradictory. After understanding him, he did not blink because his ideals were shattered and he was desperate for life. Why are ideals and reality so opposed? What is the value of life? He thought hard and read a lot of books, but he couldn't understand the internal and external search, so he vented his disillusionment and resentment with murder. His thoughts are in a desperate situation and he can't get rid of it. He needs someone who truly understands him to help him escape the pain and explain all this to his beloved son correctly. When he realized that Willard was such an ideal candidate, he waited and even hinted that the latter would take action.
Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore is another character Coppola deliberately portrayed, and he is the kind of person Koz hates. Kilgore is a professional soldier who sees war as a game, and Coppola portrays him as a traditional American soldier. Wearing a cowboy hat and a yellow scarf around his neck, he looks like a cavalry in the Western United States during the pioneering period. His troops were indeed cavalry, but later replaced the horses with helicopters. He killed the Vietnamese just like the American troops killed the Indians. The front of his black cowboy hat is embroidered with two crossed guns with white thread. Under the strong contrast of black and white, it looks like a skeleton symbolizing death at first glance. He fights wars like cards, and attacks peaceful villages at will. He didn't want to go to the mouth of the Nong River, but in order to enjoy surfing addiction, he decided to attack on a large scale. While directing the helicopter group to attack schools and residential buildings, he also used a loudspeaker to play Wagner's Acura War music "The Horse of God of War". The bombers he had brought blasted the jungle into the sky, but he happily said, "Napalm, it smells better than anything."
Willard, as the protagonist, is actually Koz's "other and me" (two aspects of a person), and to some extent he is Coppola's spokesperson. His role is to interpret Koz's thoughts and actions, and to guide the audience to understand the great destructiveness of the Vietnam War. He has something in common with Koz, but he has always been more calm and sensible than Koz. The film often looks at everything happening around him through his perspective, and he is often in the position of a bystander throughout the voyage to observe and think about what he sees and hears. Coppola always took close-up shots of his eyes and facial expressions, and used his inner monologue to analyze Koz and the Vietnam War. He is often opposed to the unreasonable incidents before him, but he is unable to stop them. Through what he saw and heard during the voyage, he became more and more able to understand why Koz was killing people like crazy. Later, he himself fell into a semi-crazy state: When he found a woman on the fishing boat that she hadn't died, Willard shot her to death. Afterwards, he defended himself: "We are here like this, hit them. Half-dead, and then bandage them, this is hypocrisy. The more I see this kind of thing, the more I hate it. I seem to know more about Koz, who is not mentioned in the file.” Later, Willard and Koz got along for a period of time. With a deeper understanding of him, it seems that he has also gone through the course of Koz. He is more sympathetic to him and hates the people who started this war even more. In the end, it seemed that there was a kind of transcendental telepathy that merged them together. He felt that he was calling him to relieve his pain. He couldn't resist the call of the soul, and finally raised the knife. Coppola's handling of the Koz-Willard complex caused confusion and dissatisfaction among many film critics. In fact, it embodies Coppola's own philosophy and religious thoughts. "The New York Times" published an article titled "The Literary Sources of "Apocalypse Now"", which gave a clear answer to the end of the film: "The last part of the film shows that there are several books scattered on Kotz's bedside table. One is "Golden Branch". The appearance of this scene is by no means accidental, and its meaning is profound."
The basic plot and character prototype of the film comes from Conrad's novel "Dark Mind" ("Koz" is Conrad's nickname), but its thought comes from Fraser's "Golden Branch". The subtitle of "Golden Branch" "Research on Magic and Religion" best illustrates the idea of the book. The book talks about the murder of sacred God-like figures, which can be the best footnote at the end of the film. Fraser said: "Modern people with primitive ideas think that their safety is tied to the survival of a god-like figure, but he must age until death according to the laws of nature. If he is allowed to die naturally, as he ages and deteriorates, The ability is also weakening, so that disasters may happen at any time. The only way to avoid this danger is to kill him as soon as possible when he has manifested disease-ridden symptoms, so that his ruling spirit can be transmitted to another powerful Heirs... Cambodian water gods and fire gods do not allow them to die naturally. Once they become seriously ill, they must be killed with a knife." Coppola chose Cambodia and let Koz be hacked to death by the knife. Obviously All are affected by the book. He cross-edited the scenes of the hacking of Koz and the killing of cattle with knives by the aboriginals during the sacrificial ceremony, undoubtedly to express this meaning. Coppola also admitted that his film is ideologically related to the book, and when he made the film, he read the book he had read in his youth. He said he wrote that after Willard killed Koz, not only was he not resisted by the tribesmen, but he was bowed down. Because Koz was mentally ill, he was Koz's ideal successor. Coppola also said: "The reason why I let Koz die and make him a victim of the invasion is that the United States can see its own image in this terrifying image. Only in this way can the United States move towards a new era."
In addition to meticulously portraying the three main characters mentioned above, Coppola also slightly described the four soldiers on the boat. They are actually the epitome of the entire US soldier. Except for Philip, who faithfully executes orders and is like a robot, the other three are all flesh and blood American youths. They all had their own life pursuits before joining the army. But the conveyor chain of the war mercilessly brought them to Vietnam, allowing them to kill in this slaughterhouse and be killed at the same time. These youths who "stepped into the grave with one foot" have gradually moved from fear to madness during this voyage of driving humanity to animality. This madness is most fully revealed in the scene of unprovoked shooting of fishermen. The last two blacks died, and the two whites became insane. The scene makes a trance).
Coppola made three different endings when he made the film. This article describes the ending of the film when it was officially released. There are two explanations for this: ① Willard really, as Koz said, wants to tell the truth about the Vietnam War to his son and all Americans. ② Although he was dissatisfied with the Vietnam War, he would still return to the army. Before he left, he took Lance away, and Coppola said: "We have driven our children crazy, we should take them back and cure them." As for the bombing of the jungle by American planes, it is understandable. The resolute measures taken for the headquarters to fail to contact Willard (the film describes two times he heard the headquarters call and ignored it, the last time was when he was driving out of the jungle by boat). Coppola was not satisfied with this ending. The ending of his exhibition to the Cannes Film Festival was: After Willard hacked Koz to death, he staggered out of the temple, looking at the thousands of tribesmen thinking...this ending It leaves more room for imagination for the audience, and the most likely one is that he has become another Koz, which is the most in line with Fraser's thinking, and Coppola also thinks this is the most real. However, this ending is difficult for the audience to accept, so the aforementioned ending was used when the film was released. The third ending of the film is that Willard did not hack Koz, but killed him when the US plane bombed him. This ending was finally abandoned.
As a mental film, this film is not a realist work. Coppola said that making a realistic film about the Vietnam War would make people feel uncomfortable, so he adopted surrealist techniques to gain greater creative freedom and deepen the theme. The surrealism of the film is mainly manifested in the last part, that is, after the patrol boat enters Cambodia. The use of colors, sound configuration, atmosphere creation, and scene scheduling in this part all give people a weird and mysterious feeling. For example, the jungle should highlight green, but the main color of this part is orange-red. The orange smoke, the flesh-colored human body, the blood-red sun, and the orange firelight. Coppola deliberately made the picture reddish and yellow during production. In addition, he flashed a dazzling strong backlight slowly from time to time. This treatment of color often gives people a sense of mystery, barbarism, heat, and bloodthirsty. In this part of the picture, there are corpses everywhere, with bodies without heads, with heads without bodies, hanging from branches, tied to tree trunks, and accompanied by crippling music. The atmosphere is extremely terrifying, just like living hell. This surreal atmosphere made the audience and the audience's identification object-Willard deeply tremble, and it played a very good role in helping Willard finally relieve Koz's pain in an extraordinary way.
Coppola's use of photography techniques to express the plot in this film is also highly praised. For example, at the beginning of the film, a group of helicopters bombarded the jungle, and then Willard’s lying face was superimposed on the screen, and the rotation of the ceiling fan blades in the hotel room was transformed into the rotation of the helicopter propeller in the constant sound of the motor. Together with Willard’s inner monologue, the group shots not only play the role of opening the plot, but also vividly express Willard’s mental state while waiting for the task. This is a kind of psychological editing. The basis of the editing is not the plot but the emotion. Willard embarked on his voyage with this kind of pain, depression, contradiction, and confusion. The images of the three main characters in this film can be said to be shaped by light to some extent. Kilgore's use of light is always single and bright, with few shadows. Because his mental state is single: only war, only game. For Koz, low-key photography was used with side lighting, resulting in the effect of half of the face being bright and half dark. His head is like a half moon. The whole shape gives a sense of depression and mystery, which shows that he is right. In extreme pain and despair, he has become a person alienated by war. As for Willard, the grid-like shadow of blinds on his face at the beginning of the film shows that he is always in a kind of inner contradiction in the film. Later, when he talked with Koz, his exhaustion was similar to Koz, indicating that he was influenced by Koz. There are many details like this, and it is through these carefully designed shots and paragraphs that Coppola expresses his creative intentions brilliantly.
A review article published in the US "Newsweek" can be said to be the best portrayal of the film: "This is Coppola's epic war epic. It is a thorough and in-depth exploration of the moral issues of the Vietnam War. More than that, in some respects it surpasses the realm that philosophy and literature can achieve, so that only true film art can be most effectively expressed. Violence, horror, madness, irony, humor, joy, anger, despair and hope It makes the film full of passion, and this passion is well controlled in the hands of the masters of film art."
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