The Two Ways of Watching Apocalypse Now

The other day, I read a youtube comment on a clip of Robert Duvall's performance of Lt. Col. Kilgore, a reply to another comment examining the absurdity of his apparent invulnerability to the dangers of war, that "weird light" he has around him which protects him from mortar fire and shrapnel as he commands his soldiers to surf a beach while mid-siege. The comment read something like this: George Washington really did have that light around him and thus the prospect isn't fantastical at all. For all I know, this was a bot of some kind, or a person exhibiting some form of corpse-like belief of the foundation myths of the american republic, and I simply could not believe that Apocalypse Now can be read like this by anyone. But the more I got to thinking about what that film shows, says, and means, I began to accept this way of approaching ones attitudes towards military history, national myths, and the truth, as not entirely unexpected.

Two days ago, as of recording this, Robert Duvall died peacefully at his home at the age of 95. He is remembered for his incredible versatility and authenticity in portraying some of the most famous characters in screenwriting, which would reinforce and birth many tropes and archetypes which have embedded themselves into the public awareness: What did Tom Hagen do for Vito Corleone?

One such archetype appears in many narratives about the nature of human conflict, and the structure of power, especially when they examine instances in history when these two concepts interact. You're sitting in a trench, or crouching in the dense foliage, listening for the enemy and its machines, and a network of acquaintances and authority relationships connects your trigger-finger to the nebulous, incomprehensible desires of the state in whose name you sit or crouch there: how can you know the people in that long chain of command, many of whom you will never know or meet, are providing you with sensible instructions? Owing to its place in history, the Vietnam war was a battleground not only literally, but also the trigger for completely novel questions into the implicit assumptions which predicate any one individual's participation in a war, which were now impossible to ignore due to the 1968 movements for various individual liberties, and the increasing integration of mind-altering substances into the lives of the majority. In Apocalypse Now, Duvall's character Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore offers one side of the manifold answer to these questions.

Apocalypse Now shows us a war painted purple, and takes the viewer, sober or not, along for the ride in what is, without question, the worst possible situation in which to attempt to exercise a structural critique of anything. We are shown a diorama in which no person, place, or thing can be said to make use of the so-called 'sound methods', a criterion for sanity posited by the supposedly sane, with-the-program generals. Particularly in remastered editions of the film, the picture clarity is unbelievable, but, owing to choices of camera, lighting, choreography, and colour work, we see the dense jungle through the eyes of one not quite believing what they are seeing, not quite accepting them as real and true. The inherent film grain, or the visual noise which remains as a normally unintentional artifact, symbolically corroborates this impression of disbelief and insanity, as it mimics the visual snow seen by a person with hallucinogen persisting perception syndrome, and is ever-present. 

This doubt does not constitute a fourth-wall break; it takes place within the mind of Cpt. Willard, a CIA operative and soldier tasked with assassinating the fanatical but magnetic Col. Kurtz. Willard cannot believe he is being asked to kill a man of the same allegiance, particularly one so exemplary, but accepts the mission because he desires absolution for the disintegration of his personal life. We often see him behaving as though he believes the chain of command will continue to provide him with assistance; when the patrol boat (callsign Streetgang) travels up the Nung river towards the heart of darkness, it traverses the Do Lung bridge near the Cambodian border, where the futile search for the CO, the commanding officer, is commenced by Willard. We see Willard search for Lt. Col. Kilgore in the early phase of his mission, who, despite having been contacted by Nha Trang air base about it, has no knowledge of his role in it until briefed by Willard. The uncertainty caused by Willard's increasing awareness of the limits of the command structure leads him naturally to his search for alternative recipients for his loyalty, a demand filled by his eventual sympathies for the man he was originally tasked to kill.

Returning our attention to the Do Lung bridge: As the boat draws near this scene of a bizarre, hellish perversion of some sort of fun-fair, Lance Johnson, the surfer, drops LSD, much to the implied dismay of Willard, who, despite his own alcoholism, has been dismissive of the substance use of the crew of Streetgang. If anything can be learned from the experiments at Edgewood arsenal, which would not be fully declassified until 2014, Lance made an incredibly poor choice here, which anyone with subjective experience of this substance could tell you for free. But it does beg the question: what thoughts would you arrive at, if you were to experience psychedelic peak in the heat of war, and how would this change your awareness of, and attitude towards, the structures of authority which brought you there, and lastly how would this be different from the 'sober' experience of war (if it even exists)? 

This question is deeply connected to the reasons why psychedelics are illegal in the west. Besides the unimaginable anguish you would face while tripping on acid with bullets flying by your head, you would, in practical terms, become incapable of being a soldier, while on acid. At Edgewood, a squad of soldiers was commanded to perform drills once off and once on LSD, and the effect on the coordination of the group was astounding: they were no longer able or willing to carry out orders. Whether this was due to simple inebriation or some kind of transient cosmic indifference, is up for debate, but it's at least anecdotally true that prolonged use of such substances reduces your ability and willingness to follow the instructions of a given arbiter, even once its effects subside. We, as consumers, live by such instructions every day, and the widespread use of substances like LSD in the populace would pose an existential threat to this economic and political model. After this scene, Lance Johnson applies the face-paint and fully splits from the program.

Kurtz embodies this threat. He is perhaps the perfect fighter in terms of competence, strategy, and ruthlessness, but he is deemed insane by the generals at Nha Trang because he is his own arbiter. He is a warrior, but not a soldier, because he elevates the significance of the conflict to a spiritual plane, rather than leaving it merely on a pragmatic, hierarchical one. He's a warrior-poet in the ancient sense, and he expects his men to fight with their hearts for a personally desired victory, rather than for an objective which was remotely determined. He despises the decadent insistence of the military on integrating mass-media and civilian consumerism into the lives of its soldiers, as he correctly believes that this weakens their resolve, and renders them incapable of annihilating the opposing forces. Because of this, the men under his command would arguably function just as well on LSD; a trip will only show them the power structure they already completely understand and accept.

We return now to Kilgore, whose analysis will reveal an additional caveat. He wanted to make the war just like home, only making all his soldiers miss it more. He's a surfer, as are the personnel who answer directly to him, so they are well acquainted with a scene in which drug use is common. But despite this, with his charisma and culturally familiar signposting, he can be as ridiculous and eccentric as he wants to, without losing the support of his men, and can lure them and their victims into the jaws of the machine of industrial war like lambs to the slaughter. Kilgore is therefore the wet dream of a military recruitment propagandist: the men will follow him no matter how ludicrous, incompetent, and irrational his decisions are, and if he isn't doubted for this by an average soldier of his division, neither is anyone upstream, like the department of defense or God.

So, was this commenter's unflinching belief in the Kilgore myth a result of, in crass terms, 'not taking enough acid'? Of course not. But it is a result of viewing warfare as some sort of consumer experience, not only by watching war films, but by consuming rhetoric designed to extract support for war waged for abstract reasons, not concrete ones. Its purpose is to support state-stability, and as such it impinges on an individual's ability to determine their own fate. It's an image of war for its own sake, and that of the choice of a soldier, if only a potential one, to accept the structure of command throughout history in just the way the rhetoric shows it, rather than searching for another way on their own terms. It's no wonder that this film becomes a parable of following orders no matter how strange, of overcoming adversity, of staring into the abyss and returning alive, if read through the lens of corpse-like obedience. The film's genius, and that of the contrast between Robert Duvall's and Marlon Brando's characters is that it shows you clearly where you stand on this matter.