An Errand into Darkness
Rating: 10 of 10 
Films almost generally are bigger than life. No film is truly a "realistic" portrayal of the "truth". Neither can any other piece of art or documentation achieve that. There is always "fiction" mixed with "fact". To say that a movie would have achieved a kind of realism is contradictory in itself. Movies - as any depiction of individual perceptions of reality - are always constructed, heavily constructed even. And still, behind all the masquerade and artificiality, sometimes something can shine through which, indeed, may feel so utterly real and devastating that the construction may seem less artificial than it really is. Such movies are "true" through their focus on individuality, on an individual "experience", on emotionality, on selective fragments of the whole. Such movies are also highly manipulative; and yet, still, that doesn't hinder them from making a greater impact.
The Viet Nam topos may seem prevalent in 'Apocalypse Now'. Maybe it is. But maybe, and I think that's even truer, Viet Nam just happens to be the scenery. The story could be taking place anywhere, anytime. Viet Nam just fits the time frame, and it surely is the inciting event for this movie. But the film makes statements which can be true for any war. That sort of helps approaching some one-sidedness in the ideology behind the plot; though some scenes reveal a kind of rare insight into a historically more balanced perspective. Though drawing heavily on disappointingly blind anti-war propaganda concerning Viet Nam, the film can still be justified as it tells its tale from the above mentioned subjective viewpoint. It is therefore less important to reveal the historical setting and background of the war, though it would help clear some ideological babbling. The longer version, Redux, even addresses some of these issues with the scenes at the French plantation, where some politically less correct arguments can be witnessed. But anyway, that's not the point of the film. It is not about Viet Nam, at least not in the not so humble opinion of this reviewer.
War, contrary to some politically correct propaganda, may sometimes have a reason. But even an entirely justified war could never be a clean event. War is dirty. War is killing. War is darkness. Waging war, even from an utmost honorable ethical ground, is always an errand into darkness. And if you are not prepared to accept this, you will become a victim of that darkness. War is a constant negotiation and re-negotiation of ethics and values. It is about relative values: Killing is never the right choice. But sometimes it can be a better choice than not killing, depending on the situation. The war against Hitler has been an honorable one. Such as the war against the Taliban. Or against the Viet Cong. Or the Cold War against the Evil Empire. But that's the bigger scheme, a scheme which is sort of irrelevant in the small scope. That's what this movie is about. In "real life", the borders are less clear. In the small scope, you see the blood, the confusion, the haze, the insanity; you see innocent people killed together with guilty ones; you see otherwise rational men going havoc, losing themselves - losing their judgement, their calm, their humanity; losing their hearts to the darkness. Herein the honor of the cause is deconstructed and rendered completely irrelevant, as the action of war itself has no honor, and corrupts those who are caught in it.
The film is a classical road, or rather, boat movie, linking several individual threads together via the perspective of a main character. It is episodal in nature, which could make it tedious at times. But for that to happen, the acting is too gripping, the composition too real, the atmosphere too dense. Through that, 'Apocalypse Now' succeeds in capturing the audience and luring them farther and farther into the depths of the human psyche. And suddenly, and utterly abhorrently, Kurtz makes sense. For indeed, why should it be obscene to write "fuck" on a helicopter destined to kill human beings? Where lies the real obscenity? Kurtz has to die. He has to die not because he's wrong, but because he has gone places civilization doesn't want us to go - and rightly so. But in a setting like Viet Nam, Kurtz makes sense. That's why he can only be overcome by someone who has become just like him: It needs a monster to fight monsters. And in the end, there's only horror. There can only be horror.
November 4th, 2001 / August 15th, 2002
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