Does Willard ultimately understand ..
.. what happened to Kurtz and what Kurtz wanted to happen?
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MovieChat Forums > Apocalypse Now (1979) Discussion > Does Willard ultimately understand ..
What do you mean?
and What do you think?
I'd argue that Willard did understand, although not completely until right before he killed Kurtz. At first it seemed like Willard was shocked by the brutality at Kurtz's compound despite the research he'd done on him, but by the time Willard dons his facepaint and approaches the compound his inner dialogue suggests that he finally understands how Kurtz came to his method of warfare, and why Kurtz wants Willard to kill him.
As Willard states, "I wasn't even in their f'ing army anymore." He wasn't killing him because he felt some loyalty to the generals in the beginning of the film, he was killing Kurtz because he understood the turmoil Kurtz was in and that Kurtz wanted to Willard to do it.
If you think about it, Willard came very close to ending up just like Kurtz or the other MIA American soldiers who joined Kurtz's group. Willard looked at Kurtz's file and saw his history (Willard even comments that he ran the same special forces course that Kurtz did), and found that not only was Kurtz an extremely capable soldier, but understood the war in a way few people can. Willard's experienced the war on previous tours and understands the BS that Kurtz rejects.
The only difference is that killing Kurtz becomes more personal for Willard, he understands Kurtz and why it needs to be done. Willard grabs Lance out of the crowd because neither of them belong in Kurtz's group. However, when the military on the boat's radio continues asking for airstrike coordinates, Willard shuts the radio off because he views the destruction of Kurtz's compound as unnecessary. The natives lowered their weapons and weren't a threat anymore, which is ironic because as much as Willard understood and sympathized with Kurtz, even Kurtz wrote in his diary "Drop the bomb, kill them all!" Willard was the only one who read it, and he chose to deviate from Kurtz's ideology and return from the insanity.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.
and he chose to deviate from Kurtz's ideology and return from the insanity.
Did he, though? It's been a while since I saw it, but I seem to remember that, at the end, he turns the launch upstream and moves off, which means he's moving deeper into the jungle. Could be that I've got my orientation wrong, but I remember thinking that he didn't intend to go back.
It's an extremely abstract ending so I think it's open to interpretation to some extent. I always thought that Kurtz's compound was located at the very end of the river, suggesting that the main characters on the boat had finally reached the peak of all the insanity. Sort of like Hell, if you will. I don't know if they specifically intended on Kurtz's compound looking like Hell, but all the barely-clothed natives, skulls and bodies hanging around gave me that impression.
Anyway, I figured on it being the end of the river to kind of emphasize that there was nowhere more insane or worse than Kurtz's compound. The fact that Willard can get in and out shows that he can return from the insanity. Plus if Willard was just going to keep going deeper down river, I don't get why he would pull Lance away given how at home he looked.
There was also a cut ending that I don't think was ever filmed where Willard goes to visit Kurtz's widow and son to explain to them what Kurtz had done, as Kurtz requested. It's probably the last sane thing Kurtz does or says (at least explicitly shown in the film), and showed Kurtz at least grasped how far down the river he'd gone psychologically.
Even though it's not in any of the final cuts of Apocalypse Now, I could still see it happening afterwards. Willard is shown to understand and perhaps respect Kurtz to a certain degree, and they both definitely agreed on the contradictions and BS that plagued the Vietnam War. Since that was Kurtz's final sane request, I can't imagine Willard not honoring it.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.