Francis Ford Coppola
Apocalypse Now

I know well that "Apocalypse Now," a film made by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979, has been the subject of numerous analyses and reviews over these decades, all agreeing that it is an important and essential film in the history of late 20th-century cinema. One might wonder what new things can be added to what has already been written (a bit like trying to describe and analyze Michelangelo Buonarroti's Sistine Chapel in another artistic field, ending with an obvious praise for such a masterpiece). Therefore, I would like to, if anything, limit myself to offering a few side notes on the above-mentioned film without delving into the various plot stages, just to stimulate yet another viewing of the work (at least for those who have already seen it, while for those unaware of Coppola's film, the imperative invitation is to quickly fill this gap in cinematic culture).

First of all, what has always intrigued me about "Apocalypse Now" is the fact that Coppola originally intended to make a film about Yankee soldiers who, between one battle and another in Vietnam, rejuvenated themselves by practicing a bit of surfing in the waters off the coast of South Vietnam. From this bizarre idea (shared with George Lucas), Coppola developed a screenplay that freely intersects Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and expands from the temporal framework of the Vietnam conflict to represent the senselessness of war in general and the consequent ethical dilemmas that afflict the inherently complex human soul. Therefore, equating his film with all the films dedicated to that war (from "Platoon" onwards, well-crafted in themselves) is a considerable oversight.

Upon a careful viewing, the entire mission entrusted by the U.S. military authorities to Captain Willard (to end the command of the Yankee Colonel Kurtz guilty of applying "insane" methods in the war against the Vietcong) resembles a Dantesque descent into the inferno of horror and senselessness of war. And it is known that the latter is not conducted with gloves even by the so-called forces of good (it would be enough just to remember the famous massacre in those years in the Vietnamese village of My Lai by the American marines...). In short, any military conflict brutalizes those who carry it out and, a particular in the film that has always struck me, when Willard and the escort soldiers, after various vicissitudes, reach the infamous Colonel Kurtz (played by a legendary Marlon Brando), they find a heavyset and bald man. Seeing him like this, he gave me the impression of being a sort of resurrected Benito, appropriately captured and shot while fleeing abroad after the well-known events that afflicted Italy and the entire world during the Second World War. A deserved end for any dictator because, as Shakespeare already argued, if power corrupts a little, too much power corrupts too much (this is at least the meaning of what the Bard claimed, and I don't remember in which of his works). So, Kurtz is the personification of unhealthy and unlimited power (legibus solutus, as the Latins would say) that must nevertheless be cut down (even if the evil might reappear...).

But if one wants to find a particular cue to rewatch Coppola's work (of which a longer version lasting 202 minutes was edited in 2001), I would suggest what was reported, in 1966, in an interview published by an American newspaper (the name of which I do not remember). The journalist, interviewing an American soldier engaged on the Vietnam front, asked him for an opinion on the conflict and got the answer that "war is always shit." Well, earlier I evoked the parallel with the Dantesque descent into the inferno and most probably Dante himself, in describing the infernal circles lapped by the river Styx, did not imagine that the air was characterized by intoxicating scents of roses and violets, if anything, what was perceived by the nostrils was a triumph of miasmas and unbearable effluvia. Is this too strong an image for a daring parallel with the theater of war operations? Well, unforgettable in the flowing narrative of "Apocalypse Now" is the part where the patrol led by Willard is escorted for a stretch by the troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. Besides the hobby of surfing, he comes out with mind-boggling statements about the pleasure of smelling the strong scent, in the early morning, of napalm as he compares it to the smell of victory.

Which confirms to me even more that equating war to horror, as reiterated in Coppola's film, might even pass for an understatement. It is rather that American soldier interviewed in 1966 who was right, and watching such a tough war film, it would be helpful to try to immerse oneself completely in the story and try to imagine breathing in such an unpleasant smell pertinent to certain waste substances. I would then challenge anyone, after such an experience, to defend any would-be Dr. Strangelove.