...strips away man's veneer of outer respectability, tearing aside the psychoanalytic mediators, the ego and the superego, to penetrate the white-hot burning id of the inner soul. Or something.
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A pox on your lips, now! Blasphemous, I know. "The horror. The horror!" Francis Coppola's visionary epic is more than just another antiwar film. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," it is a tortured journey into the deepest recesses of the human heart. It strips away man's veneer of outer respectability, tearing aside the psychoanalytic mediators, the ego and the superego, to penetrate the white-hot burning id of the inner soul. Or something.
After a brilliant opening sequence in which a helicopter is heard circling completely around the listening area, its blades finally merging with those of a rotating ceiling fan, we meet Captain Willard, a burnt-out Special Operations officer and trained government assassin. Played by Martin Sheen, he is a man on the brink, a fellow about to plunge into nonexistence unless he is given something to do, some new challenge to meet. His deliverance comes in the form of a classified mission to the interior of Cambodia to kill a renegade American colonial during the height of the Vietnam War. Or, in military parlance, Willard is to "terminate" the man "with extreme prejudice."
The target of Willard's mission, Colonial Walter E. Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, has supposedly gone over the edge; he is said to be "unsound." He has taken his company of soldiers into Cambodia where he reigns like a god over his followers and destroys whatever he considers the enemy. Willard is told that Kurtz's "dark side has taken over what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature." Apparently, he has gone insane, and Willard must find and destroy him. The deeper Willard goes into the jungle, the closer he gets to hell.
Memorable scenes abound. A young sailor is water skiing behind a patrol boat in enemy-held territory. A television crew is filming an actual battle, its director (Coppola in a Hitchcock-like cameo) urging the participants to "just go through and don't look at the camera." A flamboyant, half-lunatic Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who seems to think he's General Custer, orders his helicopters to attack an enemy position with loudspeakers blaring Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," loves "the smell of napalm in the morning," and will go anywhere to surf! A USO show plays in the middle of nowhere, with rock impresario Bill Graham offering the troops a trio of Playboy bunnies. A nightmarish final outpost, with no one left in command and lit up like an amusement park, is Willard's last refuge before reaching Kurtz.
At the end of the river he finds his man, his kingdom, and his followers. Kurtz has become a ruler, a deity, cult leader, and, like so many cult leaders before and since, he induces fanatical loyalty in his people. He is at once horrid and repulsive and yet strangely hypnotic and sympathetic. His sycophantic supporters, a wacked-out civilian photographer (Dennis Hopper) among them, do his every bidding, including the most bizarre atrocities. Still, Willard finds it difficult to carry out his prime objective. There is something too familiar about Kurtz, too logical, too close to home. Kurtz is, of course, a part of us all, the inner beast. Willard comes face to face with himself. When the deed is finally done, has Willard rid himself of his demons or become a new Kurtz? While pondering that question, one can reflect on the rest of the cast; look for a young Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, and Larry (yes, Larry) Fishburne.
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