Apocalypse Now: From Commentary to the Tragedy of All Humanity
Texts: Francis Ford Coppola, dir., 'Apocalypse Now'; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
WARNING: Anyone who has not been blessed with seeing 'Apocalypse Now' should do so before reading this essay; it spoils the ending.


Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s film based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sets out with a purpose similar to that of the original novella: to create a harrowing vision of human nature, a social commentary on the state of humanity itself. The two works go about this in very different ways, however, with Coppola’s film using the Vietnam War as the story’s background, while Conrad’s book employs the controversial method of comparison to Africa. Their similarity is also threatened at the close of the movie, when Coppola drastically changes the initial story’s ending. These differences make Apocalypse Now something other than the commentary it is based on; the movie’s story becomes a tragedy, complete with a hero, flaw, and realisation, all of the tragic kind. This perhaps moved Coppola to retitle his film Apocalypse Now rather than sticking with Conrad’s title.

A social commentary can be loosely defined as a story whose purpose is not only to relay the narrative, but also make an underlying philosophical or political statement about the world in general. Apocalypse Now, in the original spirit of Heart of Darkness, successfully does just that. The methods employed are vastly different, but both work to the same ends. Coppola probably altered the setting for two important reasons: to make the commentary he was creating more accessible to a modern audience, and to abandon any ties to Joseph Conrad’s quite apparent and awkward racism. In Conrad’s novella, the commentary is a vision of human nature as inherently brutal and savage: “I tried to break the spell... that seemed to draw [Kurtz] to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions” (61). Conrad does this, however, by using Africans as the epitome of the dark savagery he is getting at. By bringing Kurtz down to the level of the natives of the Congo, Conrad believes he is debasing European society, and therefore humanity: “... that was the worst of it - this suspicion of [the Africans] not being inhuman... they howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly” (32). For this reason, many contemporary people - and indeed, many in the time Apocalypse Now was made - feel alienated by and uncomfortable with Conrad’s depiction of African people.

Coppola solves this problem by transporting his film across time and across the globe, to the Vietnam War. This not only feels more close to home for many people (as opposed to ivory trading in Africa at the start of the twentieth century), but shifts the focus of the commentary entirely. Instead of pinning the bane of humankind onto a race of people, Coppola uses the war - something ultimately easier to abhor. The movie takes almost a satirical approach at first, with the character of Colonel Kilgore exclaiming, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” while Captain Willard looks at Kilgore with a horrified expression. Later on in the film, the commentary comes closer to the foreground of the story’s objective, as when Willard and his boatmates come upon a military base with no commander. The place is in a state of chaos, and yet none of the soldiers notice; they simply keep shooting.

It is this use of the Vietnam War that allows Coppola’s film to move beyond the aim of Heart of Darkness and become a tragedy, lacking none of the classic tragic elements. These are generally identified as, in no particular order, a tragic hero, the hero’s tragic flaw that eventually causes his or her downfall, and the tragic realisation of this flaw. Apocalypse Now not only shows its tragic hero through the commentary, as Conrad’s novel does, but also provides a credible downfall as a result of a flaw, as well as an alternate ending that can be interpreted as the realisation. Apocalypse Now, therefore, is a tragedy in addition to the social commentary framework laid out by Heart of Darkness.

And so arises the question of the first element - who is the hero of the story? Some would say Captain Willard, who appears throughout the principle duration of the film and carries the reality of his mission, the horrible truth about humankind, at the film’s close. But if this were true, what flaw of Willard’s would be responsible for his downfall? In essence, he completes his mission successfully. Not much is developed about his character in the movie; almost more is known about Colonel Kurtz. Thus, perhaps Kurtz is the hero. But he doesn’t even appear until the final fifteen minutes of the movie, and his downfall is basically orchestrated by his own choices - there is no flaw, and as Willard says at the end of the film, Kurtz knew he would be killed, and wanted it. No, the unique quality of the story is the complete absence of heroism residing within any particular character. Rather, the human race itself is the tragic hero. Throughout the course of the film, humanity is laid bare as the cause of the suffering witnessed, and the darkness, the “horror” that Kurtz speaks of is shown principally through humanity’s tragic flaw, which is its heart of darkness.

This flaw’s outcome, as seen in the film, is war: the culmination of human nature’s iniquity. As stated earlier, Coppola’s switch of settings from Africa to wartime enables this flaw to show itself more clearly. Conrad’s novella does not work in the same way as a tragedy because of the focus on Africa itself - what does the dark nature of humans lead them to do? Associate with Africans? This makes little sense, since the flaw of the hero in a tragedy almost always results in some greater evil. In Apocalypse Now, this greater evil is evidently the violence that arises from war; in Heart of Darkness, the result is not shown.

The altered ending used in the movie clinches this fundamental difference between what is Apocalypse Now in contrast with the novella. In Heart of Darkness, the Willard character, Marlow, begins his journey back downriver with the ill Kurtz on board. Kurtz dies later from this disease, whispering “the horror, the horror,” as his final words (64). In Apocalypse Now, however, Captain Willard finally carries out his mission - that of killing Colonel Kurtz. The act of Kurtz’s murder in the film holds great significance as a motivator for humanity’s tragic realisation. Kurtz has almost realised this tragedy before Willard, humanity, or even the audience of the film, crying vehemently, “We train young men to drop fire on people... but their commanders won't allow them to write ‘fuck’ on their airplanes because it's obscene!” When Kurtz whispers the novel’s same words after being hacked to death by a machete, their ring holds a different tone than in the book, as the horror of Willard’s act is realised - by everyone. He steps outside and looks down upon the natives with their weapons, still holding the blood-dripping machete. It is not absurd to think that Willard may assume the place of Kurtz. And yet, then, he drops the sword. The silence of this scene, the absence of any background noise, allows the chinks to be heard clearly as the machete bounces down the steps. As Willard moves through the crowd of people, each group that he has passed drops their weapons in turn. In this pivotal scene, Willard and Kurtz’s worshippers represent the ultimate tragic realisation of what humanity has become. But as in all tragedies, the realisation comes too late. Humanity is corrupt. The war is taking place. Kurtz is dead. Almost all of the passengers on Willard’s boat are dead. Thousands more are dying.

In this way, what started out as the same commentary as Conrad’s novella becomes a new piece of art; it becomes an unorthodox, very unique, yet still classic tragedy. The end of a tragedy is the hero’s downfall, or humanity’s downfall - otherwise known as the apocalypse. Perhaps nothing else in the film demonstrates this more clearly than The Doors song, ‘The End,’ being played in the opening sequence as an echo of the apocalyptic theme. Likewise titled, Apocalypse Now is much more than an adaptation; it takes Conrad’s vision further, identifying human nature as savage and frightening, but also laying the claim that this nature is the cause of an ultimate downfall - not occurring in the future, but now.


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