Week 5: Apocalypse Now

Film #5: Apocalypse Now (1979), dir. Francis Ford Coppola

This American epic war film is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the American War in Vietnam. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. Though filmed on a catastrophic set in the Philippines, Francis Ford Coppola famously said about his film Apocalypse Now, "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam."

• Like Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now is said to have an anti-imperialist (in this case anti-war) message, though other critics claim that the film is pro-war. Focus on how the Vietnamese are portrayed in the film. Are they in primary or significant roles? What roles do they fulfill? How are they portrayed differently from the American characters? Despite the film perhaps being critical of the American War in Vietnam in some aspects, are the Vietnamese characters given nuanced portrayals?