Apocalypse Forever

Friday, November 1, 2024

I have seen Apocalypse Now three times, two in the movie theater and once on my TV screen last night. As a senior citizen white male, I have always been drawn into narrations about a figure from the West who confronts or journeys into a foreign world. I’m the type of person who goes into a foreign landscape, looks at the people, and thinks Interesting. Keep in mind this could take place in a sports bar in Bakersfield as well as in an Asian country; my behavior is like that of a bored person studying human beings in their natural habitat. I usually don’t read non-fiction books about other cultures, but I do see films or read novels about such people and their places. Andre Breton’s novel Nadja is about a figure who goes into the unknown in his home city, Paris, or even a book like A Journey Around My Room (Voyage autour de ma chamber) by the French author Xavier de Maistre, and his time as a prisoner in his room, where he notes everything in it with great detail, knowledge, and curiosity. In his manner, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) goes up the Nung River to obtain awareness as well as being a hitman for the military during the horrors of the Vietnam War. Interestingly enough, the Nung River does not exist, only in this Francis Ford Coppola film.

Based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the Coppola film takes the viewer (the audience) on a trip that will end. One would think it was a one-way entrance with no exit, as in Death. The Westerner is an expert on one thing: how they are the center of the world. The French in Vietnam learned the hard way from their time spent as colonialists, and trying to lecture Captain Willard and watching the same mistake done again is very much the life of the 20th and now, the 21st century.

The Trump/Harris race is very much a journey into darkness. For whatever reason, there seems to be a need to touch Satan to see if it's real or exists, and whatever or however one fantoms such a being, it clearly exists. The temptation to keep opening the lid of Pandora’s Box is not one out of curiosity but more to see or feel the pain of such existence. It was clear to America (and France) that it would not end well in Vietnam, and one can say the same with regard to how Israel treats Gaza. We all know the results, yet we still provoke the beast to explore the pain and endurance of such restricted locations. As a child, I remember being told not to touch the flame on the stove, but that information led me to an obsession of wanting to know what a burn would feel like, and right now, America is going through that process of feeling that flame. So, it is beyond Trump vs. Harris; it is more about what this journey/narrative will entail after November 5. We all know it will not be a smooth ride, and there will be more likely chaos thrown into the mix. So, of course, there is anxiety about that and how everything will turn out in the end if there is an end.

Apocalypse Now (Redux version) is a masterful film. I can’t find any fault with it concerning the performances, the setting, the narration, and the direction. Coppola makes films about ideas; in that manner, he is similar to a fellow filmmaker interested in conversations—Jean-Luc Godard. Their film styles differ, but both see cinema as an open adventure that will never cease or die. The sound design for Apocalypse Now reminded me of Godard’s work with sound, specifically how Coppola mixed in the sound of the ceiling fan with the noise of the helicopters as they approached a target in the Jungle. It seems all journeys have hints of physical and psychological danger, as well as sexual desires that are unknown. Martin Scorsese’s After Hours is also a journey-related film where the main character, Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), goes to the gates of hell (Lower East Side/Soho New York) in 1985 for a woman who he met at his work and now wants to see her in Soho. Still, unlike Willard, he wants to return to the Upper Side of Manhattan, his home. Sexual desire takes him out of his comfort zone, but Willard has seen Hell, and he wants more of it.

People react differently to uncertain times. Many want to be back home safely in the constraints of our makings, but some deeply need to taste the poison. The river that Willard and his Crew go on to take him where he needs to go is a terrifying thought. I wouldn’t want to go on an old boat in hostile surroundings and not know exactly where one is going. On one level, it is a true adventure, but it is also a phobic situation where I would feel trapped and only depend on the river’s structure to take me somewhere that promises to be awful. The Crew, at times, have their doubts about taking Willard to the location because even they don’t know what lies ahead of them. Because it is a secret mission, Willard refuses to give them any information except to go in a particular direction.

The narrative has many layers, but the key part is a journey without a guarantee, or more likely, one will be destroyed. Death is visual and full of sensuality, designed mainly by the insane and rogue military leader Colonel Kurtz, who is now a God among the dispirited and local tribes. Willard’s secret mission is to kill him. One can think of Trump as a Kurtz, but he’s not as brilliant or well-read as Kurtz. But the nightmare is absolute—the invasion of January 6, 2021, of the U.S. Capital building resembles the ruins of Kurtz’s residence. And all of us right now are on that river heading toward November 5, 2024.