Another look...Apocalypse Now

When we watched this movie for the first time, I found it hard to distinguish many of the aspects of cinematography that we have learned about that make this movie a classic. Maybe it was due to my initial dislike of the film, but after our class discussion and watching certain clips again I found myself enlightened. Many of the scenes had more meaning the second time around, and I found that the usage of light and darkness throughout the film mirrored the struggle between good and evil that is ongoing during Willard's travels down the river, and illustrated in the final scene of the film.

Focusing specifically on the last scene of the movie, the ritual sacrifice and where Willard is seemingly comtemplating whether or not he is going to complete his mission, the use of light and darnkess depicts the internal struggles within both Willard and Kurtz. When Willard rises from the water, camo paint covering his face, you can see that half his face seemed to be covered in shadows and the darkness of the night while the other half of his face is illuminated by the light of Kurtz's "camp". I thought that this lighting decision by the cinematographer for this shot really reflects the struggle that Willard has within himself throughout the entire journey that leads him to Kurtz. When we first meet Willard in the beginning of the movie, he is a broken man who seems incapable of emotion after coming back from the war. He is a dark man, who we saw laying in a hotel bed drunk beyond comprehension, and so angry that he punched a mirror with his bare hand. It seems as though the war has brought his life back at home to a standstill, and that the only way he can function is if he is at war. He is an assassin, who just sees his assignment to find and kill Kurtz as a assignment-nothing else. He listens to the tape of Kurtz and just seems him as crazy like everyone else. But as he travels down the river, and starts studying Kurtz's history, he finds out who Kurtz really is and can't figure out why someone so accomplished would go insane. Knowing this, I could see the manipulation of the lighting to mirror this struggle after Willard arrives at Kurtz's camp. In this actual shot, I believe that the lighting represents the struggle of good and evil going on within Willard over whether or not he should go through with his mission to kill Kurtz. It seemed to me that Willard became more human throughout his journey down the river, and as he grew to know more about Kurtz he realized that he didn't want to become was Kurtz already was. It was almost like Kurtz served as a mirror for Willard, showing what he could be if he let the evils of war continue to engulf him. I believe that Willard killing Kurtz was his choice towards good, in that he killed the evil that Kurtz was and left the native people in peace instead of choosing to bomb them like Kurtz wanted him to.

This is another shot that is from the last scene of the film, during one of Kurtz's final monologues. This shot features the same lighting technique that was seen in the shot of Willard rising from the hazy water. This shot alone, with the lighting as the main focus, tells the viewer a lot about who Kurtz is and the struggles he faces between good and evil as well. I could tell that Kurtz was truly overcome by all that war represents, and let that evil nature penetrate his mentality and overcome his actions and thoughts. Some part of him, I believe, knew what he had become because he wanted Willard to kill him in the end. And I think that Kurtz, even more than Willard, was shown under the contrast of light and darkness during his presence on screen to illuminate the dark struggle that has taken over any rationality that he had in the past. It almost made me empathize with him in a way. Seeing this man, even more broken than Willard was in the beginning of the movie, shrouded in dark shadows but occasionally in light made me feel for him much like the way I felt for Jean-Do in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. What has happened to Kurtz truly illustrates the inherent evil associated with war, and I believe that Kurtz could have been a different man if it weren't for the circumstances he was in.

Although these two men aren't humane or good people by any means, I think that this film featured a very real, raw depction of human struggle and emotion. Although the surface impression I got of both Willard and Kurtz made me think that they were both sick animals, a deeper analysis lead me to conclude that they are both very real and feeling people who inherently battled with the definitions, and subsequent actions, of good and evil within the context of war.