Badlands

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Badlands (1973), directed by Terrence Malick, has an appropriate title, not only because of where the movie takes place, but because of the criminal action that it depicts. It is based on the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate and the deaths of ten people during a nine-day period. The movie focuses on how someone gains attention through infamy if the chance at legitimate fame is out of reach. The film explores the same area that Truman Capote addresses in his novel In Cold Blood, that is, the underbelly of the United States. As Michael Almereyda says in his essay “Misfits,” the two main characters symbolize “some lethal short circuit in the American psyche.” Badlands also touches on the American fascination and celebration of outlaws, revealing its citizens’ anti-authoritarian feelings.

Almereyda notes that Malick left out some of the more gruesome acts of Starkweather to construct an almost bloodless fairy tale, as Malick once described the film. Most of the story is told from the perspective of an innocent, the fifteen-year-old Holly (Sissy Spacek), which allows the audience to gradually perceive what is happening in her association with Kit (Martin Sheen). She moves from a place of teenage romance to shell-shocked detachment.

Her story, though, is not one of youthful protection from the effects of reality. She says that her mother died young and her relations with her father (Warren Oates), became strained after the death. He moved her to Fort Dupree, South Dakota, which added to the feeling of disconnection from the outside world and increased her feeling of being an outsider. Malick provides still shots (the emphasis on “still”) of an alley of trash cans and peopleless streets, which promote the feeling of isolation.

Kit arrives in the story working on a trash truck, which suggests that he not only works with garbage, he is also part of the refuse of the land. He basically collects stuff and discards them during the course of the film, which implies he is stuck in this job. (Almereyda says that Kit’s accumulating and discarding objects may reference “Malick’s skepticism about the ephemeral nature of human identity, possessions, and the encompassing material world”). He also is good at talking trash in an almost charismatic way. His weirdness is immediately illustrated when he offers his coworker a dollar if he’ll eat a dead dog on the road. But, his fellow trashman says he will not do it for a dollar. That suggests that things are so destitute here, that he might consider it for more cash.

Kit tries to make money selling some of the trash and analyzes the people from the refuse he finds, which shows he has a bit of insight into what makes people tick. He meets Holly as she practices baton twirling. It is a wholesome image which Mallick possibly wants to contrast with what happens to her, and which may be the reason for Kit’s initial interest, if opposites attract. One of the first things he says to her is that he’ll try anything once. Which shows that prohibitions are not what he cares about. That attitude can be exciting to a young, lonely girl like Holly.

To add to his alienation from society, Kit gets fired. When asked at the unemployment office, he says he can’t think of anything he’s qualified to do. His line stresses how detached from the mainstream he is. Holly narrates that she found Kit handsome and that he reminded her of James Dean. That is a telling remark. Dean epitomized the renegade, and his good looks made that lifestyle attractive. Kit holds that same fascination for Holly, but he is a sort of Hollywood knock-off.

Kit goes to Holly’s place again and says he quit (a lie) and that he’s going to be a cowboy (not true – he will be working at a cattle feedlot). He tries to make it seem that he is more independent and important than he is. He may feel that way about himself, since he earlier told her that he has things to say, and most people don’t. She ran away from him the first time, saying her dad wouldn’t approve of Kit. Now she says she has homework to do when he wants her to join him. She acts like she is clinging to her routine life, but she is only giving lip service to it, and this time she goes for a ride with him. He notes that someone threw a bag on the ground and observes how filthy everything would be if everyone did that. His work as a trash collector probably elicits this comment, but it also shows that he feels all people are transgressors, so why should he be judged?

Holly says the two fell in love, adding that she wasn’t popular at school because she “didn’t have a lot of personality.” The interest of a handsome young man raises her self-esteem, as she notes that he could have had any other girl. She keeps their relationship secret from her dad, since Kit is ten years older than she. She says that secrecy kept them “away from all the cares of the world.” She saw her bond with Kit as an emotional oasis in an empty personal desert.

She says he wanted to “die” with her, which is a kind of dark way of expressing feelings for another. She is now smoking, which shows the rule-breaking effect he has on her. Mallick gives us a shot of a catfish in a bowl. Is that an image of a bottom feeder who tries to get by on the leftovers of society? She admits to throwing her pet fish out before it died when it was sick. She felt guilty about this act but can confess it to Kit, who has no moral judgment.

After the first time they have sex, Holly questions why is it supposed to be such a big deal? It was not noteworthy for either, which may show a feeling of letdown of their hopeful dreams by reality. Kit says they should smash their hands to remember the day, noting pain will remind them of their consummation. What stands out for him is not something pleasant but hurtful, an indication of his dark outlook on life and how they can’t be remembered by anything positive in their lives. He puts a note about standing by her and other mementos in a balloon that flies away. Holly points out that he did this act because he must have known they would never be happy in the future. The balloon could indicate how Kit’s hopes were not felt to come true and just drift away like the way a dream disappears after waking to reality.

When Holly’s father discovers the relationship, he shoots Holly’s dog as a punishment. What a disturbing way of disciplining her. He recreates a loss of something she loved, like the death of her mother. It shows how disturbed he became due to the loss of his wife which led to the end of his dreams of happiness.

Her father rejects Kit’s desire to keep seeing Holly. So, Kit breaks into her house and packs Holly’s clothes so she can leave with him. When father and daughter return, Kit shoots and kills the father. His remorseless pathology is obvious now, showing no emotion about his act of violence. His action shows he will no longer let others stand in his way. She smacks his face at first but she quicky switches to coverup mode as she wonders if neighbors heard the shot. He leaves her fate up to her though, saying she can call the police.

Kit leaves a recording saying that he and Holly decided to kill themselves. He does this act to gain time, hoping the authorities would think they were dead. He ends the recording by perversely saying, “I can’t deny we’ve had fun, though,” summing up their relationship as pleasant, despite his committing murder. That statement alone shows his sociopathic mentality. He sets fire to Holly’s house, in essence destroying her attachment to the past. He says they will change their names and hide out up north. She goes along with him because she says, “it was better to live a week with someone who loved me for what I was, then years of loneliness.” Her statement shows how empty her life felt to her.

The music that plays in the background is a playful, almost childlike tune that is in counterpoint to their illegal actions. Kit sees their life like a childhood adventure, tinged with practicality. They build a treehouse and tunnels in the wilderness. They stole food, and Kit taught Holly survivalist techniques, including how to shoot. They dance at one point to “Love is Strange,” a fitting tune for this odd couple. She admitted they had their spats, and that she wished sometimes he would fall into the river and drown. Her admission reminds us of the fish she let die, but it also sounds like a remark a child may say about a young companion.

Kit insisted that she take her schoolbooks with her. It almost seems like he is in some way nurturing her growth as a child. It is interesting that she reads from Kon Tiki, a book that details a voyage on a raft, since its survivalist story away from society is something Kit and Holly would be interested in. She says she grew to love the forest because she felt like all the rest of humanity were dead. Again, we have this anti-grownup, outsider feeling.

She ruminates about her life, the actions of parents and meeting Kit that led to this very moment in her life. She then lived “in dread” about how short life is and how destiny comes down to a domino effect set in motion out of one’s control.

Somebody sees Kit trying to catch fish, using a gun. Kit views men approaching from up in a tree and he shoots and kills three men. Kit justifies his actions to Holly saying the men were willing to kill them for a bounty. But he is cold as ice about his actions, feeling no emotion about harming others. It’s almost like he views death like some kind of game.

Kit has a friend named Cato (Ramon Bieri), and they visit his remote home. Kit and Holly go out into the field and Kit sees Cato running back to his house and looking back at them. He doesn’t let on, but he probably felt that Cato was going to turn them in. Kit shoots Cato, and then perversely opens the door for him to get to his bed. When Holly asks, “Is he upset?” Kit says dispassionately, “He didn’t say nothing to me about it.” He even shoots two young people looking for Cato. Sheen’s tone of voice and lazy swagger paints a pitiless picture of Kit.

Kit’s violence seems to have put Holly into a state of numbness. She calls it feeling “blah,” but her description of feeling like all the water being drained out of a bathtub reflects her emotional emptiness. Now the police are on alert in several states, and citizens are armed and vigilant, not knowing where Kit might strike next. To avoid public places, Kit and Holly go to an upscale house and he tells the owner that he is sorry to disturb him as he reveals his handgun. His politeness is disarming, as he hides his violent nature under a calm surface.

(At one point an architect visits the upscale house. He says he talked to the owner the night before, but Kit, answering the door, says the man is sick. The visitor is Malick, and his role as an architect is appropriate for a man constructing the film we are watching).

Holly’s detachment increases as she says that the world now feels like a “faraway planet” that she could not return to. She wanders around the rich man’s estate, whose lavish beauty stresses how out of place she is. She may wish to escape into a fantasy world, a pleasant dream distant from the horrors of reality.

Kit uses a Dictaphone to record a message which is ironically funny given his actions. He sounds like an upright citizen when he says that one should listen to parents and teachers, consider the viewpoints of others, and accept the majority opinion once it prevails. He acts like he is just temporarily taking the car of the rich man (John Carter) and gives him a list of the things he has “borrowed.” His friendly attitude makes him seem like a nice fellow until he turns violent. The Cadillac he steals is the only way he can show what it would be like to be prosperous.

They leave South Dakota and go to Montana. Almereyda says at this point “the landscape drains like that tub, and we may glean that Badlands is a story of lost children at large in a moral vacuum.” There is a shot of Kit from the back as he holds a rifle over his shoulders with his raised hands. The view from that angle makes him look like a scarecrow. That figure is supposed to scare but not harm, but Kit is very scary in reality. She talks about traveling like Marco Polo, which points to her wish to be on a great adventure, when in fact they are living like fugitives where no place provides them with solace. Kit buries some of their things, saying they will revisit them to remind them of how they were. He acts as if they will overcome the miserable fate that awaits them due to his actions. He says the buried objects will be like a time capsule for future people to consider, which shows a grandiose idea of a legacy.

Holly narrates that although Kit needed her given his desperate situation, she says, “something had come between us. I’d stopped even paying attention to him.” She says she, “spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth where nobody could read them.” Her loneliness is palpable now as she seems to be in a no man’s land, disconnected from everyone, and only communicating with herself.

She privately vows never to run around with someone as wild as Kit again. She seems to lack any insight into what kind of trouble she is in, having attached herself to someone like Kit in the first place. Finally, she voices her concerns to Kit about how even if they somehow escaped to Canada, he couldn’t provide them with any income. He is so lacking in insight when he says, “I can get a job with the Mounties.” He stops the car to dance to a Nat King Cole song and talks about how he wished he could sing like that. He can be romantic as he realizes what a different life he would have if he had other talents. He can appreciate the beautiful look of the sun rising over the mountains. Instead of gaining notoriety through artistic talents he thinks about being remembered for his infamy.

As a helicopter chases them, Holly is no longer willing to go on with Kit’s crazy adventure. As Kit escapes he adds another policeman to his body count and drives away. After stopping at a gas station, he throws away all their stuff, as if freeing himself from the objects of the world that he is tethered to. He does hold onto Holly’s journal, the source of the narration we hear. Possibly he feels that it can be something that will let his story live on. After a high-speed chase Kit stops and builds a pile of rocks that marks where he was caught. It is a sort of monument to his notoriety. (At one point Malick shows a photograph of a native holding a rifle in front of the Great Sphinx. Could Kit be similarly, in a mock-epic manner, attempting to erect his personal object for prosperity?). And he has gained a renegade’s fame as one of the officers says, “We did it,” as if they will now receive recognition for capturing such a well-known criminal, who actually gave himself up. One of the policemen, after looking at Kit, says, “Hell, he ain’t no bigger than I am.” His remark shows how publicity exaggerates the aspects of an individual.

Kit continues to act so much like an average person that it shows how odd he is. He is conversational, talking about guns to the cops, and how he’ll attach his well-known status to them, calling them “heroes” for taking down such a famous outlaw. One of the policemen knocks the hat he stole from the rich man off Kit’s head, as if removing any perception on Kit’s part that he belonged to the upper class. Even the patrolman says Kit looks like James Dean, another left-handed association with fame. The cops feed his desire to be a well-known by talking about how they admire his clothes, receiving his lighter as a souvenir like it belonged to a celebrity, and asking who his favorite movie star is.

He seems considerate as he reunites with Holly while being taken into custody. He says he’ll make sure she’ll get off and find a good man to be with. But then he says that the rich man was lucky he didn’t kill him, too. She does get off on probation and marries the son of the lawyer who defended her. Kit is sentenced to die in the electric chair, but donates his body to science, which shows that Dr. Jekyll side which was offset by his Mr. Hyde killer. The last shot is of the air transport taking the captured duo away, and the camera shows the sun-laced sky, as if ironically showing that Kit felt he rose above the masses to achieve fame in the only way he knew how.

Wall Street

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Wall Street (1987), directed by Oliver Stone, whose father worked on that avenue of affluent dreams and financial nightmares, starts off with Frank Sinatra singing, “In Other Words.” It contains the lyrics, “Fly me to the moon/And let me play among the stars/Let me see what Spring is like/On Jupiter and Mars.” In the context of this film, it suggests there are those people who want to be so powerful that they don’t even see the sky as the limit. And that power comes from accumulating money, no matter what the cost is to others who the wealthy use as their stairway to the affluent heavens. The opening montage shows all levels of society in New York City, from laborers to those going to financial institutions as they crowd onto sidewalks and into elevators, trying to make a living.

The story takes place in 1985. Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) works at a Wall Street brokerage firm, trying to get ahead in the cutthroat business of selling stocks through cold calls. (Bud’s last name is Fox, but is he as sly as one? At the beginning of the movie it is an ironic name, but he lives up to it by the end). When someone cancels a deal, Bud must make up the loss the firm sustains. His pal, Marvin (John C. McGinley), says it could have been worse if it was “my money.” He is joking, and offers Bud some spending money, but his selfishness epitomizes the central work ethic of his profession.

Bud is desperate to rocket out of his current job, unlike coworker Lou Manheimm (Hal Holbrook), who believes in patience and sticking with the stock of a company that creates good products, no matter if it takes five years to fulfill its potential. He says, “Good things sometimes take time.” Marvin, in contrast, says on the phone he needs information immediately, because in a very short time, if he doesn’t get it, he’ll be a “dinosaur.” His point is that in the stock market world, sure and steady doesn’t win the race; if that is the practice, one becomes a financial evolutionary failure.

Director Stone said that he wanted to make a “movie about sharks, about feeding frenzies.” So, the camera keeps moving, in circular fashion many times, like a “predator.” There’s no letup until we get to Bud’s father “where the stationary camera gives you a sense of fixed immutable values.” In this way Stone uses motion to contrast the loose ethical ways of the Wall Street types with the steady, honest, hard-working members of society.

Bud continually calls Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, who won the Best Actor Oscar for this role), an unscrupulous giant in the stock and real estate investment area, to work with him. However, Bud is a nobody who never gets through to Gekko. (Gekko suggests a gecko. As IMDb notes there is a Golden Gecko, which sounds like Gordon Gekko, and which may point to Gekko’s lust for riches. We may think of the creature as a friendly lizard from insurance ads and forget that it is a carnivorous animal). Even the mercenary Marvin sees how Gekko is beyond the edge of acceptable moral behavior when he says that the man had “an ethical bypass at birth.”

Bud goes to a tavern to see his father, Carl (Charlie’s real dad, Martin Sheen). When Carl uses the word “spaghetti,” Bud says his dad should use the word “pasta,” since spaghetti is out of date. Carl says so is he. The film implies that Carl’s morality is becoming extinct. Carl notes he is taking blood pressure medication, and Bud wants him to stop smoking. These facts are a foreshadowing of what is to come. Bud needs to borrow more cash. The lifestyle which he maintains to be a player in his job cuts right through his earnings. He can’t even pay off his college loan. So far, he has been staying inside the ethical playing field, but his profession makes it difficult to stay there. Living a working man’s life is not good enough for Bud. He says, “There’s no nobility in poverty anymore.” So, when his father mentions that the airline he works for, Bluestar, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an accident (which Carl knows was due to lax standards on the part of the manufacturer, pointing to more unethical behavior due to stress on the bottom line), Bud has access to information that has not been made public yet. If used to purchase stock, it is insider trading, which is illegal.

Bud finally gets a meeting with Gekko when he shows up in person on Gekko’s birthday with Gekko’s favorite Cuban cigars. This contrasts with his dad’s pedestrian cigarettes, but both men are subject to the same threats to mortality. However, Gekko has the money for technology that monitors his heart in the office. He doesn’t even stop for a smoking break if a buck is to be had. As Bud says, for people on Wall Street, Fortune Magazine is the “bible,” which is substituted for religious values. Around him, Gekko has cutthroat businessmen who will do anything for a monetary killing. Gekko actually uses lines like “lock and load,” and being in the “kill zone,” which metaphorically illustrates the brutality of the big business mentality. On the phone, Gekko says, “Lunch is for wimps.” For him, taking time out to enjoy a midday meal shows weakness. Gekko does admire Bud’s persistence, but the only thing that gets some attention from Gekko is the information about Bluestar achieving a clean record form the FAA.

Bud thinks he struck out with Gekko, but the bigshot calls him and tells him to buy Bluestar stock for him. Bud is now ready to fly to the moon, as the song says, since he will make money off the purchase. The newspapers then announce that the airline was exonerated in the crash, and the stock price soars, just like a jet plane. Gekko meets Bud at a high-class restaurant, but Gekko doesn’t have the meal with him, following his own rule. He does give Bud a million dollars to invest and says he doesn’t like losses, so if Bud continues to do well, there will be lots of “perks” to reward him. He orders steak tartare for Bud, which is raw meat topped with an uncooked egg, which fits in with the predator theme of the film.

After taking a loss on an investment for Gekko, Bud meets with Gekko at a sports club where Gekko handily beats Bud at squash. The competition jives with how Gekko sees the world divided up between winners and losers. He sees himself as a self-made man. Those with “Ivy League” diplomas who he sees were given advantages that he had to earn now kiss up to Gekko. He says, “Give me guys that are poor, smart, and hungry, and no feelings.” For him, caring about others just gets in the way of accumulating wealth. Unlike most people, he says he doesn’t “throw darts at a board.” He only bets on “sure things.” To have that surety, he goes outside the law. For Gekko, all is fair in love (which he thinks is an emotional scam) and war, and he sees monetary acquisition as warfare. That is why he tells Bud he should read Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. He says that “every battle is won before it is fought.” He doesn’t gamble, but wants the game rigged in his favor.  

Gekko is a complicated person. He makes valid comments about how little invested in their own companies the executive officers are. Even though he is a self-made man he has disdain for those that just labor their whole lives without success, including his own father, who died of a heart attack at an early age. This fact is another foreshadowing, and the story suggests that he is linked to Bud through their fathers. Gekko sees things in binary ways. When he observes a beggar standing next to a well-dressed businessman, he says nobody can convince him that only luck was the factor between success and failure. He seems to think that being rich and being poor are the only choices. He doesn’t concede that those who work hard should be deserving of more than being poor. He tells Bud that the choices are either being rich enough to own an airplane, “or nothing.” Yet, he is also able to appreciate that the beauty of a sunrise is not something that can be measured in dollars and cents.

He wants Bud to follow a rival, Sir Larry Wildman (Terence Stamp. The character’s name suggests staid nobility and a rulebreaker at the same time). Sir Larry had a “mole” in Gekko’s organization and burned Gekko on a deal. Gekko wants “payback.” He has seduced Bud and will dump him if he doesn’t spy on Sir Larry in the U. S. and provide Gekko with insider information. After tailing Sir Larry, Bud and Gekko realize the Englishman is investing in Anacott Steel. Bud and Gekko start buying stock in the company which drives the price up and makes it expensive for Gekko’s nemesis, Sir Larry, to purchase the company. When Bud tells Lou about it, the latter dismisses the idea of a sure thing, and says a steady investor gets through the “bear” as well as the “bull” markets. Lou reminds Bud to keep his eye on the larger picture that goes beyond individual gain, stressing how the money invested wisely “creates science and research jobs.” In response to Bud saying a person must make it big before he or she can do good, Lou says, “You can’t get a little bit pregnant.” The point is once you cross the line that leads to corruption it means you’re all in.

Bud brings documents for Gekko to sign at his house where he is having a party. It is there that he meets Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah), an interior decorator, who is quite snobby in her attitude toward design. Gekko notices that Bud admires her beauty, and Gekko and Darien stroke each other’s hands, so we know that there was a sexual connection between the two. Darien says she’s a spender of other people’s money, so Bud uses that information to make a direct play for her, saying he will be moving up in the world after a couple of deals with Gekko. Acquiring people is the next step after obtaining things in this world of high finance.

Sir Larry arrives to confront Gekko about how he has driven up the cost of obtaining Anacott Steel. Sir Larry recognizes Bud, and probably realizes that he was following him. The references to war continue to make the connection to how big business is carried out. Gekko has a wall of firearm collectibles, including a German Luger, joining him metaphorically to Nazi war tactics. This time, Sir Larry wants to turn the company he is buying around. He’s in it for the “long haul,” harkening back to the beneficial principles that Lou espouses. Gekko gets him to buy his shares of the company at a high price, but his motives are revenge as well as profit. Bud now quotes Sun-Tzu, which impresses Gekko, since battle tactics to win the immediate confrontation are what he is teaching Bud, not long-term prosperity.

Gekko wants to be continually “surprised,” by new information that will get those sure things he can invest in. So, Bud visits a college buddy, Roger Barnes (James Spader), a lawyer at an upscale legal firm. He tries to bait the hook by offering lots of cash if Roger will provide information on a certain deal. Roger is wary about getting disbarred, but still seems interested. He notes that the records in his uncle’s office at the firm contain loads of great information about company transactions. So, Bud gets involved in the janitorial service that cleans the office building where Roger works so he can delve into the uncle’s files. It is interesting that he does his dirty business by pretending to be working in a business that involves dirt.

Bud’s fortunes are rising, so he now can afford to date Darien. He even adopts Gekko’s phrase, “I’ll talk at you,” showing Gekko’s influence. The words suggest giving dictation, as opposed to listening to the needs of others. He plays rich games, like riding dune buggies with Gekko and Darien on the beach. Their vehicles are filmed in front of fisherman with their nets who have no time for play as their survival exists from day to day. Bud is decent about paying his father back for all the money he borrowed from him. But the workers at the airport kid him about joining them in doing a “honest day’s work,” as opposed to the slick Wall Street manipulations he’s involved in. His father compares his recent big monetary gains to winnings at the racetrack, which is a gamble, and which one can lose soon after.

Gekko always protects himself first so his lawyer gives Bud a limited power of attorney that allows Bud to make trades and assume any possible liability, since Gekko can claim plausible deniability. They use offshore accounts such as in the Cayman Islands to hide money. As Bud gets richer, another worker who has been with the firm for a long time is fired, showing how loyalty in the investment business does not last based on past accomplishments. As Marvin says, they are only one stock trade away from “humility,” which shows how precarious their profession is.

Time passes and Bud moves to an expensive penthouse apartment with Darien, who is also his decorator. They enjoy the high life together way above the worker bees below them. But Bud hasn’t forgotten his roots. At one point, staring out at the view high up in the clouds where he now resides, he asks himself. “Who am I.” It is more like what has he become.

Gekko wants to take over Teldar Paper and goes to a stockholder meeting to give his famous “greed is good” speech. He says, “greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” He makes a valid point about how the drive of the individual to excel brings about changes moving forward. However, he leaves out that not all change is good, especially when it comes to technology. And, his sermon sounds like he is preaching Social Darwinism, where only the strongest can survive as they vanquish all others. He says according to him, “You either get it right, or you get eliminated.” Again, we have his extreme binary way of looking at things. But “getting it right” for Gekko only means making huge profits no matter the cost to others. He often breaks up companies he buys and sells them for their components that pay more than what the company were worth when combined, regardless of who loses their jobs and benefits. We again hear the lyrics, “Fly me to the moon,” which fits in with these men who have the hubris to think of themselves at gods on high, ruling the earth below.

The film nicely segues to Bud telling Darien that he is “shooting for the stars,” and, appropriately, he wants to run an airline. He tries to convince Gekko to help build Bluestar Airlines into a bigger and better company after he hears from his dad that layoffs are coming. Bud says he knows the people working at Bluestar, and they will trust him that they can turn the company around if there is a cut in wages. Trust is the branch that Bud is hanging onto here, and betrayal will be what breaks that trust.

Bud (whose hair is greased back now like Gekko's, reflecting their slick maneuvers) and Gekko meet with the airline union leaders, including Carl. What Gekko and Bud propose seems like a good plan to turn Bluestar around, but Carl knows Gekko’s love of greed and doesn’t believe he will follow through once he owns the airline. Bud may have some good general plans, but Carl points out that his son only worked at the airline for a short time and isn’t ready to be president of the company. Gekko calls Bluestar’s management “scum” who have ruined the company. Carl points out that the management of Bluestar built the company over thirty years from scratch when they started with one plane. Carl’s argument is that management is in it for the long haul, and he knows that Gekko is a short-term speculator who gets his money and then dumps what he buys.

Bud is of course embarrassed by his father’s lack of support, and they have an emotional confrontation after Carl walks out of the meeting. Carl says Gekko is using Bud, but Bud says, “What I see is a jealous old machinist who can’t stand the fact that his son has become more successful than he has!” It is an incredibly hurtful statement, and Carl feels that he has failed in raising his boy if that is what he believes. Carl marks an individual’s success by the morality of an individual, not by the “size of his wallet.” But, Carl does agree to let the union members vote on the proposal.

Bud’s lawyer friend Roger calls Bud into his office because he’s worried about the SEC looking into offshore purchasing of Teldar Paper that Roger is complicit in. Bud learns from Roger that Gekko is using the law firm to instigate plans for Bluestar. In a meeting, Bud finds out that his father was right, that Gekko is planning on breaking up Bluestar and selling its components, including the property for housing development and the planes, and plundering the overfunded pension for a substantial profit.

Bud confronts Gekko, who says he was reading his son the story of Winnie the Pooh, and how the bear became stuck in the honeypot, supposedly relating the tale to the Bluestar situation. Bud wittily says maybe Gekko should have read the story of “Pinocchio,” which talks about someone who lies, obviously referring to Gekko. Gekko gives a speech which some may feel is shockingly true to this day. He says how the richest one percent of the United States own most of the country’s wealth. He says that “I create nothing. I own.” The stock and real estate speculators just manipulate the capitalist system to profit from it, but not by creating anything or helping others. The amount of gain is not important to Gekko. He just sees things in that binary way, where there are only winners and losers. He says that we don’t live in a “democracy.” It’s the powerful wealthy who “make the rules.” As he says this speech, the camera includes a shot of a man washing the windows of Gekko’s high-rise office. The movie is saying with another visual example that the manipulative wealthy live in extreme comfort as others must labor for meager earnings.

Bud is feeling guilty about being played by Gekko. Darien is frightened by Gekko’s wrath if Bud fights him on the Bluestar deal, and says she will not stick around because she will lose all her clients through Gekko’s influence. She tells Bud that he should look in the mirror and should not act self-righteous concerning Darien’s plans to bail. After he throws her out, she looks at herself in the mirror in the hallway, and Darien, like Bud, is not happy with what she sees.

The foreshadowings are realized as Carl has a heart attack and he and Bud have a tearful bedside meeting where Bud says he will make things right and use Carl’s “words,” which come from an “honest” man, when he speaks to the union leaders. Bud wants the unions to confront Gekko when the stock begins to rise once he implements his plan. He also knows that Sir Larry wants to hurt Gekko over the Anacott Steel deal. Bud and the union leaders give the same deal to Sir Larry that they gave to Gekko so long as he agrees to make a contract not to break up Bluestar. Sir Larry is agreeable, since he seems to be willing to help companies, not exploit them at this point.

Bud then tells his fellow workers at the investment firm where he works to start buying Bluestar to drive up the price. Ironically, Bud uses Gekko’s connections against Gekko to create enthusiasm for Bluestar stock. The union people tell Gekko they know his plan and will disrupt the airline’s activities, causing the company to be worthless before he can break it up. Bud then gets everyone to sell stock and take gains, thus lowering the price so that Gekko takes big losses on the shares he bought as the price went up. Sir Larry buys the stock at a cheap price and he is the only person willing to buy Gekko’s shares, which amounts to a total defeat for Gekko.

However, Gekko lets the Federal authorities know that Bud was involved in insider trading violations, and they arrest Bud. Bud meets Gekko in Central Park. He smacks Bud around for how he caused Gekko to lose millions. However, Bud is wearing a wire and makes a deal with the authorities to get Gekko on illegal activity.

Bud will be going to jail, but he saved Bluestar, and Sir Larry has offered him a job at Bluestar once he gets out. As his parents drive him to the courthouse, Carl states the theme of the movie, telling Bud “Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others.” The camera pulls away, a bookend which compliments the opening shot, to take in the whole skyline of New York City, as if to suggest people should look beyond their own interests to the bigger picture that includes the welfare of others.

The next film is Manchester by the Sea.

Apocalypse Now

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

When does reality become so bizarre that it begins to feel like a surreal experience? Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now gives us a film that uses the Vietnam War to create that scenario. The movie goes beyond that theme by using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as its source, and dives into the abyss at the center of the human soul and portrays the mythic ritual of sacrifice and regeneration, not of man’s hope but of his bestiality. (I am using the 1979 original film, not the Redux version, because I find the one with added footage slows the narrative and thus impacts the power of the story). 

The film begins with a shot of the jungle, both natural in its beauty and deadly in its hidden dangers, as is the nature of humankind. Helicopters fly slowly like mechanistic dragons, in unreal movement, as bombs reign napalm over the foliage. The fires of hell are brought to mind. Given the title of the movie, the soundtrack appropriately plays “The End” by The Doors. The lyrics talk about how “all elaborate plans” are now useless, which fits with the way the war was waged, and how we are in a “desperate land,” running out of options as to how to go on. The propellers of helicopters are then replaced by the ceiling fan blades of the room occupied by Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen). We see his face superimposed over the jungle fires as the external destructive forces are becoming internalized in this character. The song’s line, “All the children are insane,” stresses the deranged state of war.

Willard is the narrator and he is disoriented, as is the effect of this war on those personally touched by it. He is in Saigon, but keeps thinking he’ll wake up in the jungle, because after being immersed in the uncivilized part of the world his mind can no longer adapt to society’s conventions. Like many veterans (as shown in The Hurt Locker, discussed on this site) Willard says how difficult it was to wake up when he returned home, unable to deal with the transition from the theater of war to peace at home. He shows how he is being torn when he says when he was in Vietnam he wanted to be home, but when back in the United States, “all I could think about was getting back into the jungle.” He is both repulsed and drawn to the horror (a word that will be stressed) of the place that symbolizes confusion and danger. He keeps waiting for a “mission” a purpose, and the waiting makes him “softer” and “weaker.” He is feeling like a pacified civilian, which undermines the animal ferociousness he needs to survive in the jungle, as the enemy in the “bush” gets “stronger.” He feels the walls of his hotel room are getting closer, caging the animal in him. He practices martial arts in the room, and at one point smashes a mirror with his fist, and bleeds. Mirrors, as was noted in other films, can signify the darker sides of oneself, and here the breaking of the looking glass demonstrates how the more sinister side can betray and harm a person. 

Willard says he wanted a mission, “and for my sins, they gave me one.” It is an enigmatic statement that can mean he was rewarded by getting what he desired. But, ironically, the orders he receives will also be a punishment, a penance for those “sins” he has already committed, almost like giving a junkie a fix. The foreshadowing of the terrible task becomes obvious when Willard’s voice-over says that when the operation was over, he “would never want another.” 

He says he didn’t realize it at that time but he was going to the worst place that existed, far away from any protected community, up a river “that snaked,” a demonic, ominous reference to Satan in the Garden of Eden, toward “Kurtz,” the object of the mission. When he arrives to receive his orders, Willard the narrator says, “It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’s memory.” Very early on in this long tale the film informs us of the almost mythical force of fate that will define Willard’s future role. He says that there is no way of telling Kurt’s story without telling his own, and Kurt’s “confession” (an announcement of sins but also an intimate revealing) is also his. The story implies that Willard and Kurtz are doubles, resembling each other’s characteristics and paths, one younger, one older, as their ages will eventually define what must play out.

Harrison Ford, following his Han Solo role, plays a small part here as Colonel Lucas, (a reference to George Lucas who was supposed to direct this movie) one of the commanders issuing Willard's orders. Lucas questions Willard about his work in counterintelligence which included assassinations. But because he is a covert operative, Willard is reluctant to discuss his past, and the fact that he will not acknowledge his secret exploits, which were performed outside the parameters of acceptable rules, may be a test to make sure he will not divulge any aspects of the current assignment. General R. Corman (G. D. Spradlin, whose character’s name invokes director Roger Corman) and a quiet man in civilian clothes only referred to as Jerry (Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director) are in attendance, and the General invites Willard to a nice lunch which contrasts with the distasteful mission. 

Lucas plays an intercepted audio transmission from Cambodia which is of Kurtz’s voice. Kurtz says that he has a “dream” which is also a “nightmare” of a snail crawling along the edge of a razor and surviving, suggesting what Kurtz will later call accepting the “horror” of life to be victorious. Kurtz also talks about killing and burning animals, villages, and armies, and then wonders how the “assassins” can “accuse the assassin” of wrongdoing. He is questioning the hypocrisy of those who do horrible things but cover them up with “lies” and pretenses of “mercy.” Corman says that Kurtz was a brilliant officer, a humanitarian, and a man of “wit.” But he, like Willard, joined the Special Forces, and his “method” and “ideas” became “unsound.” The suggestion here is that Kurtz became detached from being anchored to a superimposed ethical base, which he found phony. Since Willard’s military history is compared to that of Kurtz, the question is raised as to whether Willard is on the same track. 

Lucas says Kurtz has gone into Cambodia with a Montagnard army (Vietnamese mountain people) that follow him “like a god” and they do whatever he says. The implication is that without any restrictions, anything is permissible. Corman says that Kurtz is guilty of murder for killing Vietnamese intelligence assets he considered “double agents.” Willard is confused probably because he doesn’t see how murder can be a consideration in war where the point is to kill people. Corman admits in an understatement that in a war, things can get “confused out there.” Corman says there is a conflict in people “between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph.” He admits that sometimes the “dark side” wins (this statement must have sounded familiar to Ford after Star Wars). Corman says that everyone has a breaking point, and Kurtz reached his and has gone “insane.” But, there is the sound of a helicopter in the background reminding us of the irony of Corman delivering these insights because, the film may be arguing, that everyone involved in war is somehow complicit in insanity. Corman talks of Kurtz going beyond the bounds of decency at the same time he is ordering the murder of a military colonel.  Lucas then uses official language as he tells Willard that he must board a Navy patrol boat to find Kurtz, “infiltrate” his base and “terminate the colonel’s command.” Thus, Lucas is giving Willard unchecked authority to kill. Jerry, probably a CIA man, finally speaks to drive home the goal when he delivers one of the movie’s memorable lines, “Terminate with extreme prejudice.” It is euphemistic, but he is actually saying Willard is the executioner who must carry out the already decided sentence of death without a moment of hesitation. 

As he approaches the Navy boat (whose name is the Erebus which was the name of the Greek god of darkness, as IMDb states, and which fits with the title of the Conrad novella), Willard wonders how many people he has killed. Thus, he questions the validity of his orders when he says charging Kurtz with murder, “was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.” The film asks the question how can a country enter a situation that at its base involves killing and then state it’s against the rules to do so? Because Willard sees the hypocrisy of the mission, and the fact he has been ordered to murder an American officer makes him admit that he isn’t sure what he will do when he finds Kurtz. For Willard, the story eventually suggests, killing Kurtz would be like destroying himself.

One of the tragedies of war is that young people are put in a deadly situation, as Willard points out when he says some of the boat's crew were, “rock and rollers with one foot in the grave.” Willard observes that Jay “Chef” Hicks (Frederick Forrest) “was wrapped too tight” for Vietnam, suggesting that the man is jittery and can’t coolly deal with the pressure of the battle. Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms) is using a reflector to get an even tan, and Willard narrates that the young man was a Los Angeles surfer. He looks like he’s at home on a beach instead of on a boat to hell. (There are many examples in the movie of Americans trying to escape the terrible circumstances they are in by mentally recreating the comforts of their lives before becoming soldiers). Tyrone “Clean” Miller (a very young Laurence Fishburne) came from a Bronx ghetto, and Willard says the sharp contrast of the “light and the space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head,” implying the whiplash effect of such a switch in the man’s life was disorienting for him. Chief Phillips (Albert Hall), according to Willard, made sure everyone knew that he had jurisdiction over the boat and crew. (Good writing usually uses actions and words to show who the characters are. The film is long, and possibly Coppola wanted to save time here with these summations, but it is legitimate to question his decision).

The Chief warns that they will be going through dangerous waters controlled by the enemy. He says he brought a man who was on a special operation once before, saying that man was “regular Army, too,” thus comparing the soldier to Willard. The Chief follows by saying that fellow shot himself. He is providing a cautionary tale for his self-assured passenger. The radio is playing which mentions how the local government wants to keep Saigon looking clean so soldiers should not hang their laundry outside. It is a sort of distracting statement to place domestic activities as a priority so as to not face the daily deadly realities that exist. “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones plays on the radio, and these men are trying to get some of what the song laments about not having. Clean dances to the song as Lance water skis behind the boat as they try to hold onto a piece of their old lives. But Lance creates large waves that buffet the Vietnamese on the beach and in the river, showing how the out-of-place American presence overpowers the lives of the locals. 

In contrast to this diverting activity, Willard somberly reviews the information on Kurtz, as the soundtrack now matches his mood. The documents show that Kurtz graduated at the top of his class at West Point, following a family tradition of attendance there. He received a master’s degree in history from Harvard and wrote a thesis on foreign policy in Southeast Asia, interestingly on the Philippines Insurrection, which shows he knows about rebellion. He also received many decorations and it appeared he was being readied for a top spot in the military. But when he reported his observations about Vietnam, those in power apparently did not appreciate what he had to say. It is at this point that Kurtz started to become alienated. 

Along with the Conrad story, the raft ride on the river which turns out to be a journey of discovery brings Huckleberry Finn to mind here. But, this story is a demonic version of that tale as the characters’ revelations are of an earthly apocalypse of the human soul. They meet up with the Air Cav that is to be the boat’s escort to the “mouth of the Nung River.” As Willard and his men go on shore, Coppola himself plays the head of a TV team as he says, “Don’t look at the camera … Go on. Keep going.” Here is an example where reality and illusion join. There is an actual war going on and the TV man/Coppola tells the soldiers to pretend like they are not being filmed for TV audiences and urges them to look “like you’re fighting.” But that is exactly what a director would want for his actors to do, that is to simulate reality, since this is not a true war, and actually is a bit of fiction - a movie. In essence, the make-believe actions are reversed depending on how we approach what we are seeing. 

The military outfit is “mopping up,” adding the finishing touches to an attack. Willard meets the commanding officer here, Lt. Colonel Kilgore, an appropriate name for this war lover played by Robert Duvall. Kilgore throws playing cards onto dead enemy bodies to let the Viet Cong know who killed their men, making it seem like war is some sort of game. There is a young American soldier sitting on a wall who looks overwhelmed by the carnage. Kilgore’s incredibly inappropriate comment to the youth is, “Cheer up, son.” The bombing devastated the area, yet a voice over the loudspeaker contradictorily declares to the locals that the military is there to help them. Although Kilgore is fighting for the U. S., he would be passionate about waging battle whatever side he was on. He says of one of the enemy soldiers who is holding his guts in after being wounded that the man deserves to drink from Kilgore’s canteen. Kilgore admires the battle experience in general. Kilgore is thrilled to meet Lance because he is a famous surfer, and the commander already has two surfers under him. As he leads Lance away, prayers are uttered in the background by a chaplain conducting a church service, which seems like a strange place to be trying to provide sanctity. 

Kilgore airlifts in steaks and beer as he turns the base of operations into what Willard says is a “beach party.” Willard’s cynical tone increases as he progresses toward views held by Kurtz. Willard says, “the more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it.” But, this desire to transform this land also can be seen as an imperialistic drive to Americanize a foreign country. Willard says Kilgore had a “weird light around him. You just knew he wasn’t gonna get so much as a scratch.” Willard seems to be comparing Kilgore to some kind of war god that leads his soldiers into battle but is not really risking any harm to himself. Kilgore becomes convinced to take Willard’s boat to an enemy stronghold because one of his men says it’s the best spot for surfing. The interest in surfing goes along with trying to recreate the United States so far away. Kilgore wants to defy the odds against safety by drawing an odd superior distinction between the Americans and the enemy when he says, “Charlie don’t surf!” 

Kilgore wears a western cavalry hat that lives up to the Air Cav name, which is also stressed by having his bugler sound the Old West cavalry charge as his fleet of helicopters lift off. He also plays Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” loudly to scare the Viet Cong. The Valkyries are female entities from Norse mythology that fly and announce who will die. It is a fitting and chilling metaphor for these mechanistic death birds of prey who destroy the villages below. The front of the helicopter in which Kilgore is riding has “Death from above” written on it which fits in with the literal and supernatural connotations. Children on the ground coming out of school and peasants run for their lives along with armed enemy fighters who try to defend themselves. It is difficult in a guerrilla war such as this one (and in the conflict in The Hurt Locker) to distinguish who is the real threat. American soldiers are deployed from the helicopters, and some become casualties. As a helicopter tries to airlift out wounded Americans, a seemingly innocent woman hiding a grenade blows up the copter. Kilgore calls the enemy “savages,” but the film implies that savagery occurs on both sides of war to one degree or another. 

Bombs go off around Kilgore as he stands while the soldiers dive for cover. The image fits with Willard’s indestructible vision of the man. Instead of being empathetic about the loss of life and danger surrounding them, Kilgore is only interested in the way the waves break. He tells his surfing men that they either surf with bullets flying all around, or fight, giving them the frying pan or the fire choice. He calls in a huge napalm bomb strike that totally consumes the enemy area. It is here that Kilgore delivers the film’s memorable line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning... It smelled like victory.” He then says that someday the war will end, and he sounds disappointed. The burning fires of hell are again suggested here to mirror the opening shot of the movie, and one wonders if Kilgore is announcing the way the devil can claim “victory” over the world through man’s lust for killing.

Willard takes in all of these happenings with an outsider’s viewpoint now, a Kurtz outlook, and ponders the reason to want to take out Kurtz when there was already “insanity and murder” in abundance there. He says the men on his boat just want the war to end, unlike Kilgore, and wish to go home. Narrator Willard says he’s been back to the states, and realizes there isn’t a way home anymore, because a soldier takes the jungle with him. They resume their trip up the river's artery to that heart of darkness. 

While stopping along the shore, Chef wants to look for mangos and Willard goes with him for protection. As they walk through this alien land, Chef reveals his nickname comes from his training to be a saucier in New Orleans. However, the military dampened his desire to be a cook in the service by the way the Navy ruined food, showing how refined living was left behind when war is the priority. The conversation of a faraway civilized world contrasts with the current locale. The discrepancy is emphasized as the trees and other vegetation completely dwarf them, symbolizing the power of uncontrollable nature over human beings. The ferociousness of the jungle literally appears when a tiger emerges, which suggests that humans are part of nature and violence is a basic drive in all animals. After the two men escape, Chef shows how he is “wrapped too tight” as he freaks out, screaming he’s never leaving the boat (the way to navigate around the danger inside and outside everyone?). Narrator Willard echoes what Chef says about staying on the boat, “unless you were going all the way,” that is, to accept the truth about the horror behind existence. He says that Kurtz got off the boat, meaning he left war’s false morality behind. He began to decide to wage battles on his own and initiated attacks without authorization. He had great success with Operation Archangel, the name suggesting that Kurtz saw himself as an instrument of supernatural wrath. Willard says the “bullshit” piled up so high in Vietnam, one needed wings to stay above it (like a flying archangel?). It is telling about the progression of Willard’s mentality that as he continued to read about Kurtz the more he “admired” him.

Willard and his men dock at a site that is out of place in the jungle. It has bright spotlights and a stage. They need fuel, and when there is some bureaucratic hold up, Willard violently grabs the soldier handling supplies in a threatening way to get what he needs. Willard is already practicing Kurtz’s rejection of rules. There is a show that night featuring three Playboy Bunnies. We again have reality turning into escapist fantasy. It is noteworthy that the locals must watch behind an enclosed fence. Even though the South Vietnamese were American allies, here they are not really accepted by the occupiers, and the military fosters the impossible idea that the soldiers can separate themselves literally and mentally from their surroundings. The women dance suggestively, using guns as phallic symbols. The attempt to put on a peaceful show of titillation fails, as the instinctual sexual urges of the hundreds of men are unleashed and they start to overrun the stage, clawing at the scantily dressed women, who must be evacuated. Willard, the observer, comments that the enemy had no rest and recreation, implying there was no reason to dream of home because they were home and couldn’t escape that truth. For them, their R&R was rice and rat meat to eat. They had only two options, “Death or victory,” and the implication is that is what makes them very hard to defeat by conventional means. 

Along the way they encounter other American boats. They play diversionary games by sailing too close to each other and one member throws an ignited object onto the covering of Willard’s craft. Chef has to put out the fire. Just like the Playboy Bunnies incident, escapism veers very close to dangerous activity, as the less admirable elements of people come to the surface. Speaking of those uncivilized aspects, Willard continues to read Kurtz’s dossier. The independent Kurtz, waging his own war, assassinated Vietnamese individuals, two of which were in the South Vietnamese Army. Since enemy resistance dropped in his sector, Kurtz had identified South Vietnamese spies, showing again how the enemy can come from anywhere. Then Kurtz disappeared into the Cambodian jungle, a place that now suited him. Kurtz wrote home saying he has been accused of murder, but he says that being “ruthless” many times is an act of “clarity,” that shows one what needs to be done. He wrote, “I am beyond their timid, lying morality.” Kurtz had decided to answer to nobody but himself, an understandable reaction considering the handling of the war, but a dangerous stance that can lead to crossing that line that General Corman talked about, and the committing of atrocities. 

As Willard reads the letter, the boat passes by dead bodies in trees, and a burning helicopter that crashed into another tree (of course, fire is again present). It is like they are passing by a grotesque graveyard. The Chief tries to keep order amid chaos as Chef and Clean argue. They come across a Vietnamese boat. The Chief says he has to check it out to make sure it isn’t a Viet Cong vessel, since, as was noted, the enemy may be anyone, including, metaphorically, oneself. Willard tells him not to stop, but the Chief says he has his orders. He forces the reluctant Chef to board the other craft and he acts roughly and loudly with the people there. Tension rises and Clean goes dirty as he loses control and starts firing his machine gun, killing all but one of the Vietnamese. There is a woman who is alive and she was only heading for a hidden puppy, not a weapon. The Chief wants to take the wounded woman to get medical assistance. Willard kills her, knowing that rescuing her will only delay his mission. The brutality of hysterical irrationality meets up with dispassionate violence in this scene as war strips away civilized behavior.

Willard narrates that he realized that the American occupiers told themselves that they needed to put a positive spin on their deeds. But, for Willard, it was like treating the Vietnamese by “cutting them in half” and then giving them a “band-aid.” He sees this action as a “lie” and the more he becomes like Kurtz the more he hates the “lies” inherent in American policy. The boat approaches the last American outpost situated at a bridge. It is totally lit up with rockets going off like fireworks. Lance, who has painted himself green as camouflage, but which symbolizes becoming one with the jungle, says he took the hallucinogen LSD. He carries the puppy retrieved from the boat they shot up. The cute dog is a symbol of innocence, like many of these young men, caught in a whirlwind of destruction. Lance says the place looks beautiful, and it appears at a distance like a theme park at night until there is a closer look. (Lance receives a letter from home about going to Disneyland and says where he is now is better than that amusement resort, which stresses the upside-down world he is now in). This scene very much adds to the theme of life losing its grounding in reality as rationality becomes insanity. Soldiers swim toward the boat asking to go home, which is all the soldiers really want as noted earlier, but which Willard said they can’t really do mentally once being in the war zone. Willard is given a communication by a man on another boat who then says he now can gratefully leave because Willard has reached “the asshole of the world.” This excremental view of humankind mirrors that of satirist Jonathan Swift.

Willard and his men go ashore and the soundtrack sounds like harsh circus music played in hell. They come across a bunker ironically called “Beverly Hills” where rock music plays and the men smoke pot, still trying to escape the nightmare. To stress the chaos of the situation, Willard asks a man firing his weapon wildly who is his commanding officer. The soldier asks, “Ain’t you?” His confusion represents that of all those there. The Chief questions the point of going forward, noting the cyclical nature of the war as they keep rebuilding the bridge there and each time the enemy blows it up again. But Willard is determined to find Kurtz, because the mission has also become an inner quest to meet the man who now reflects parts of himself.

The information Willard received is that someone else was sent on a similar mission before Willard. The man’s name is Captain Richard Colby (Scott Glenn, with no dialogue in this version) and he has joined the Kurtz cult. He tried to send a letter to his wife telling her to sell the house, the car, and “the kids” because he was “never coming back.” Once sucked into the black hole of this heart of darkness, there is no getting out. Lance plays with a smoke bomb, adding to the hallucinogenic fun ride theme park the war has become for him. But the smoke of his diversion turns into trails of incoming fire from the enemy on shore, coming out of the hostile jungle. Clean is hit and killed while a tape that arrived from his mother plays, adding to the tragedy as she speaks of the young man coming home and eventually giving her grandchildren. 

The journey continues as the boat goes through a fog (the fog of war?) which shows the clouded morality of the conflict. Lance has his arms up behind him as he leans against the craft and screams. The image reminds one of Odysseus who asked to be bound so he could hear the seductive song of the Sirens who lured ships to their destruction. Willard, almost psychically linked to Kurtz now, says he feels that the man is close. He says it was like the river was paradoxically (irrationally?) being sucked back into the jungle, (which adds to the black hole metaphor). A spray of arrows flies toward them, but here again the danger is misleading, since they are toy weapons, just meant to scare. But the Chief and Chef fire at the natives on the shore. A real spear then penetrates the Chief, as weapons now become more primal, barbaric, from a place removed from modern influence. In his dying action the Chief tries to pierce Willard with the point of the spear coming out of his chest in his own attempt to stop the madness.

Willard tells Chef his mission, which boggles Chef’s mind since it involves killing someone on their side of the war. Willard is ready to go on land on his own, but possibly because there has been so much sacrifice for the mission already, and he needs to hold onto some purpose amid the craziness, Chef tells Willard they will get him to where he is going. Lance has one of the toy arrows looking like it is going through his head, something that the comedian Steve Martin used to do. The image adds to the theme that reality has become so strange it feels like an illusion.

To add to that feeling, a Halloweenish landscape appears as there are skeletal heads propped up on spikes in a hellish graveyard. Willard narrates that more than his fear was the desire to confront Kurtz (and to face that part of himself that is like Kurtz?). They finally sail into Kurtz’s jungle kingdom. There are many natives standing on boats looking at the strangers arriving. They part, allowing the boat to dock, as if they expected the visit. The natives appear to be covered in some kind of mud-like substance, as if they sprouted from the land as offshoots of the jungle, which adds to the surreal atmosphere. There are many more armed local inhabitants on the grounds of what looks like an ancient temple, which contributes to the mythological aspect of the conclusion of the story. The soundtrack has thumping bass sounds that remind one of a loud beating heart that director John Carpenter later puts to great effect in his version of The Thing.

We now get one of the craziest characters ever put on screen, a sort of court jester in the form of Dennis Hopper’s stoned hippie photojournalist. He acts friendly like a cruise tour director in this nightmarish theater of war. He tells Chef to blast the boat siren which disperses the natives, since modern sounds are frightening to these people from the jungle. The photojournalist warns of mines and biting monkeys in an upbeat voice which contrasts with the suspended naked dead men near the docking area. The photojournalist says that the people there are Kurtz’s children who are afraid Willard and his men are going to take Kurtz away. He is a disciple, trying to pave the way to meeting Kurtz. He calls Kurtz a “poet warrior” who has “enlarged” his mind, which may have swelled to madness with the dispensing of insight into humankind’s soulless state. He babbles, trying to quote Kurtz who said, “keep your head when all about are losing theirs and blaming you.” This statement sounds darkly humorous since Kurtz is literally beheading people. He says he is a little man and Kurtz is great, and then quotes from T. S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem that reflects Eliot’s themes of the decay of civilization, a view most likely held by Kurtz. Even this weird devotee admits that Kurtz “can be terrible, and he can be mean,” but he can be “right.” An unrestrained god is free to do good and terrible things. The photojournalist carries cameras and is recording what Kurtz does, but as he says later he does not see himself as the person who will present the gospel according to Kurtz. But he also says that Kurtz threatened to kill him for taking his picture. Perhaps a photograph would render Kurtz as something too concrete and trivial for what he sees as his exalted purpose.

The photojournalist escorts Willard past armed men, including Colby, the man sent before him. The American soldier stares intensely ahead with unblinking eyes, appearing as if he is under a spell. The photojournalist notes the heads of victims present. He is Kurtz’s apologist, saying sometimes Kurtz goes too far, and he even tries to show that Kurtz knows that he has committed atrocities when he says, “He’s the first to admit it.” But the man has drunk the Kool Aid and says, “No!” when Chef says Kurtz is crazy.

Kurtz is not there now as he has gone into the jungle, his true home now. Back at the boat Chef wails about Kurtz being insane and promises to help Willard with his mission. The camera pans over Kurtz’s people and the words, “Apocalypse Now” appear painted on a wall, stating Kurtz’s belief that the end of the so-called civilized life as we know it is happening. Willard says he will go with Lance to look around for Kurtz and tells Chef that if he isn’t back by 10 pm, he should call in an airstrike, with the code “Almighty.” It is an appropriate title for what Kurtz had become to those under his rule, but which can also affirm the established military’s superior strength. 

Willard narrates that the bodies of Vietnamese and Cambodians there convinced him that Kurtz was insane. He realizes that Kurtz wants him alive since his men do not harm him. They do drag him into the mud, an almost symbolic act to prepare him by being in touch with the primordial jungle before meeting their leader. Inside Kurtz’s hideaway is what Willard says is the “end of the river” which involves “slow death,” “malaria,” and “nightmares.” There is no pretense here of hope for the future. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is filmed in shadows which fits the mysteriousness of this person. He washes himself as he talks about freedom from the opinions of others, and even one’s programmed opinion of oneself, as he seems to be cleansing himself of those judgments. Kurtz already knows that Willard is there to, as Colonel Lucas euphemistically stated, “terminate his command.” Willard admits that his superiors said Kurtz was insane and his “methods were unsound.” When asked if that is so, Willard finds no “method” in Kurtz’s madness. When asked if he is an assassin, Willard says he is a soldier, which is his excuse for killing another. Kurtz’s response won’t give him the satisfaction of either title, saying Willard is a lowly, servile “errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill.” 

The photojournalist gives water to Willard who is now in a bamboo cell. He says that Kurtz is “clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.” Kurtz has seen the wrongdoings of man and the mental self-deceptions that followed, and that knowledge and trying to deal with those insights has brought on an insanity. The photojournalist says that Kurtz is dying and when he goes the response will not be to praise him because of his violations of accepted behavior. He tells Willard that Kurtz has a plan for Willard, implying the man who has come to kill Kurtz will carry the man’s message forward. 

Chef says he is asleep and dreaming on the boat, but he is actually awake, talking to himself, which again shows that blurring of illusion and reality. He tries to make the call that Willard ordered him to initiate. There is a quick shift to the bound Willard visited at night by the silent Kurtz, whose face is painted with that camouflage green that Lance used. Is he showing he has become one with the jungle or is he mocking the soldiers for pretending that they can artificially blend into their surroundings? As Kurtz walks away, one of his minions drops the head of Chef into the lap of the screaming Willard. The action reveals to Willard Kurtz’s mad soul in a personal way as he kills someone who Willard came to know. In a bizarre way he is mentoring Willard. 

Kurtz’s people now free Willard after his cleansing of civilized notions, and give him drink and food. Kurtz reads from Eliot’s “Hollow Men,” which deals with those who have lost their souls, are empty inside, and despite knowing that they are broken, seem powerless to act either for their condemnation or redemption. The last famous lines of the poem are, “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang, but a whimper.” It is this passivity, this abdication of will that Kurtz seems to despise. The photojournalist tries to interpret the poem for Willard in a roundabout way, saying nothing should be done part way. But, Kurtz throws a book at him, calling him, “Mutt!” since he sees the journalist as a type of lap dog, not as an alpha male. 

Willard narrates that he was not under guard but did not leave and stayed with Kurtz for days. He says that Kurtz knew he wasn’t going and was aware of what Willard would do more than he did himself. He says these words as the camera reveals books in Kurtz’s cave. One is The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer which is a study of ancient religions and fertility rites. This book recounts how religion mirrors the cycle of death and rebirth in nature through the seasons. A king or god is sacrificed only to be reborn again in many religious belief systems. A version of this ritual is what follows. 

Willard sees how Kurtz has been torn apart by what has happened around him and committed by him. Kurtz says he has seen “horrors” as has Willard, so they are likened by experience. He admits that Willard has the right to choose to kill him but not a right to call him a “murderer” or “judge” him, since he suggests that society’s rules are arbitrary. Kurtz says that “horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.” He tells a story of having gone into a village when he was in Special Forces to inoculate the children against polio. But, the inhabitants, not accepting any shielding from the ravages of the disease, cut off all of the vaccinated arms. His first response was to cry. Then, instead of seeing this action as superstitious ignorance, Kurtz says he realized these men had the will to do such an act. He says to win a war there must be those who can kill “without feeling, without passion, without judgment.” He seems to advocate that one must embrace the darkness or else be defeated by it, since it is overpowering and should be met with honesty and not denial. In very simplistic terms it’s like saying one must fight fire with fire. 

Kurtz tells Willard that he is afraid his son would not understand what he has done and he gives Willard a new mission which is to tell Kurtz’s boy why his father acted the way he has and to tell the youth of what Willard has seen. As the radio on the boat tries to communicate with him, Willard’s voice-over says he wasn’t even in their army anymore since what he does is not dictated by the orders given to him. Willard emerges headfirst from the river at night like some kind of phantom, as the natural and the supernatural blur. “The End” again plays which is appropriate because as the natives slice to death a water buffalo, Willard sacrifices Kurtz the same way, as the old god is killed and the new one comes to life. But it is a deity from the void that is born. Kurtz’s last words are “the horror,” which is what he teaches is either a friend or else an enemy. 

Willard walks out covered in the mud of the jungle into Kurtz's followers with his scythe, carrying Kurtz’s writings which have a note about killing everyone. Kurtz’s people let him pass, even bow down to him, and throw down their weapons as Willard and Lance leave on their boat. The last image is that of Willard’s face next to a superimposed statute of an ancient god, possibly one ushering in the apocalypse now.

The next film is The Killing.