MovieChat Forums > Apocalypse Now (1979) Discussion > Significance of James George Frazer's bo...

Significance of James George Frazer's book "The Golden Bough"?

posted 4 years ago by christomacin (4660)
7 replies | jump to latest

Here's my take on the film. It's a bit long, and maybe a bit pretentious, but oh well. Kurtz couldn't handle that truth (the horror) he had found in Vietnam, about both the war and himself (and all of us). Kurtz understood intellectually in his mind what he believed had to be done to win in Vietnam, but his soul couldn't accept it morally, and so went mad. That's what the photographer (Dennis Hopper) meant when he said: "Kurtz's mind is sane but his soul is mad." Then, Coppola uses the book "The Golden Bough" by Sir James George Frazer to explore the difference between Kurtz and Willard. This book is on Kurtz's desk when he is killed by Willard. Frazer's thesis was that "old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king. Frazier proposed that mankind progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought". Coppola symbolizes the ritualistic death of the "king" (Kurtz) by inter-cutting with the ritualistic slaying of the calf, which echoes this idea by Frazer,

During the assassination, Willard arises from the water in the famous scene as if he is being metaphorically reborn from the primordial ooze, while The Doors "The End" plays on the soundtrack. The song makes reference to the myth of Oedipus (the son killing his father and sleeping with his mother), which has similarities to Frazer's myth of the sacrifice of the sacred king. Willard slays the mad "king" and metaphorically becomes the king himself. He drops his machete to the ground, and Kurtz's followers drop theirs, allowing him to leave the compound unharmed. This may echo the Biblical passage about beating swords into plowshares (if you want a somewhat more optimistic reading of the film), or, you could interpret it as Willard "winning the Heart of Darkness" and becoming the next Kurtz. Willard has faced the horror, survived, and stayed sane, unlike Kurtz who loses both his life and his reason, and unlike Lance, who survives but loses his reason.

On his way out of the compound on the PT boat, "Almighty" (the code word for Airforce HQ) asks him either for the coordinates of the compound or for confirmation to bomb the compound. I think this is left deliberately ambiguous in the film whether Chef had time to transmit the coordinates before being killed, if I recall correctly. In any case, instead of answering, Willard instead turns off the radio without responding. If you think of "Almighty" as God, then Willard is taking Kurtz's advice to kill but not to judge. He doesn't judge Kurtz or his followers, rather he leaves it up to "Almighty" to judge or to punish which is quite appropriate since the title of the film makes reference to the Apocalypse and Judgement Day. The song "The End" heard at the beginning and end also echoes the concept of the Apocalypse. In the original cut of the film (which I greatly prefer), we see the destruction of the compound over the credits. It is ambiguous whether this is the compound actually being bombed, or if it is meant to be symbolic of the concept of Apocalypse and Judgement, something happen "outside the time" of the film, just as the Apocalypse is referred to as the "End of Time". The question of whether such a God capable of (or willing to) judge or create order actually exists ("Who's the CO here?") is also left open to the viewer. When Willard asks the black soldier at the Nung River bridge the question of who is in charge, he merely gets an ambiguous answer: "Yeah."

As Willard leaves the compound in the PT boat, the stone head of the Khmer king from the ruined temple is superimposed next to his face on the screen. In the beginning of the film, we also see the stone head, but Willard's head is upside down. At the end his face and the King's face are both right-side up. Willard has faced and survived the horror and the darkness inside himself, maintained his sanity, and attains a higher level of understanding. So, Willard isn't a good man at the beginning of the film, and still isn't a good man at the end of the film, either. In the course of completing his mission many people are killed to get him to Kurtz. Willard himself kills the Vietnamese girl in the sampan because he doesn't want to lose time by taking her to a medic. The camouflage on Willard's face when he kills Kurtz makes him very like Kurtz in outward appearance, but is there an inner difference? I don't know. We can say for certain that Willard doesn't take Kurtz's place as the leader of the cult, so that's certainly a mark in his favor.

(CONTINUED...)

[–] christomacin (4660) 4 years ago

So although we have be careful about calling Willard a "hero" (he's the protagonist, certainly), it's clear he does eventually go back home to "the World", and that maybe, just maybe, after this ordeal he at least has a chance of reaching the next level of enlightenment. Actually, this is a much more optimistic ending than the one in Conrad's book "The Heart of Darkness", where Marlow (Willard) goes to Kurtz's widow and lies to her about the nature of her husbands last words. Instead of "the horror", Marlow tells her Kurtz was saying how much he loved her as his last words, so in a way he fails as well. In the film, Kurtz tells Willard how much he detests hypocrisy and lies, instructing Willard to tell his son the truth (the horror) about his father. However, we are not shown this in the film, so we don't know whether Willard tells the truth to the son or not. My guess is that Willard, unlike Marlow from the book, is more likely to tell Kurtz's son the truth, but there's no way to be sure.

[–] Redsfan001 (6158) 4 years ago

Interesting in-depth analysis, thanks for posting.

Your last question of will Willard tell the son the truth is somewhat unanswerable because the films premise is based in fantasy.

When this film was being made, US army was asked to help with some technical aspects of the film. They Army had some serious objections to the main plot of the script, so they refused.

The fact that the plot revolves around the US army assassinating a full bird US Colonel is just something that the USA has never done in it's history.

[–] christomacin (4660) 4 years ago

Of course the film is a fantasy, but in the context of the film (compared to the book), what do you think Willard might do in the hypothetical meeting with the son of Kurtz?

[–] Redsfan001 (6158) 4 years ago

I am too steeped in history to even guess on this hypothetical.

The ramifications for the US government sanctioning a assassination of a rogue US Colonel would go against everything the USA stands for, rule of law and a trial.

If such a fantastic operation were to be outed, careers would be blown up, prison time given.

Willard would have to tell Kurtzs son that he was ORDERED by the US government to do this.

The son would ask simply, "Why couldn't they have just captured him?"

Willard would reply "Because this is a movie kid, not reality."

[–] christomacin (4660) 4 years ago

My question about what Willard might tell Kurtz's son has nothing to do with the assassination (which of course Willard would lie about), but of Kurtz's state of mind at the time and his moral philosophy at the end. In the book, Marlow (Willard in AN) lies and says Kurtz's love for his wife was on his mind at the end. Marlow doesn't tell her that her husband's last words were "the horror, the horror". Yes, Willard would have to lie up to a point about his mission, or how Kurtz actually died (he could have claimed Kurtz killed himself, for instance), but I meant telling the truth about what happened to Kurtz spiritually. Would Willard have been honest about that part?.

Besides, if the army participated in a mission like this, it would be on the orders of someone much higher up, like the CIA. The "extreme prejudice" scene early in the film makes a point of having a civilian actually make the request of Willard, not the military. Who does he work for? And maybe the secret DID come out in this fictional alternate universe later, as the My Lai massacre did. How do you know it didn't? We also know that each branch of the armed services has their own intelligence service, and surely they have worked in tandem with the CIA or other agencies from time to time. For the purposes of the narrative, I don't have any problem rolling with it. I also think this points up where Coppola was in error in his Redux revision of the film. The compound MUST be shown blowing up. We can take that as both literal (tying up loose ends) but also metaphorical (which I outlined above).

I think you could make the same criticism of Full Metal Jacket. Has any recruit as imbecilic and inept as Private Pyle not been washed out of basic training long before graduation day, and is there an actual precedent for the killing of a drill instructor after live rounds were smuggled into a barracks? Probably not. Why let that get in the way of enjoying the film though? Seems rather short-sighted and pedantic to me.

[–] Redsfan001 (6158) 4 years ago

Absolute truth can be a burden. For Willard to tell his wife and son the depths of Kurtz's madness in the end would be just cruel, something that a young man without any decorum or social skills would do.

Explaining Kurtz's all out war "philosophy" giving the enemy no quarter, killing women and children, would inflict emotional scars upon them that couldn't be removed.

BTW, The Pentagon can work in tandem with Langley, but is in no way subservient to it.

[–] christomacin (4660) 4 years ago

Well, Kurtz in the movie didn't instruct Willard to tell his wife, only his son. So Willard wouldn't be under any obligation to tell the wife. And we also don't know if the meeting ever even took place in Apocalypse Now. Just because it happened in the book we can't assume this. Obviously, this is an indication of Kurtz's mental instability that he thinks this is something his son would even want to hear. The thing is, Willard might actually agree with Kurtz to some degree. You raise some good points here. I don't know if Willard would actually tell that to the son, and maybe he shouldn't.

No, they wouldn't be subservient, but military intelligence did have it more to themselves before the end of World War II, when the O.S.S. was only a fledgling and fairly small intelligence agency, not the much larger and more powerful C.I.A. of the Cold War period. For instance, the Office of Naval Intelligence took the lead in counter-intelligence and intelligence during World War II, in such operations as Operation Underworld and Operation Husky, which the O.S.S. (future C.I.A.) took a minor role in, if any. Operation Underworld enlisted the aid of Lucky Luciano in getting the mob-controlled longshoreman's unions to get intelligence about the New York waterfront to prevent Axis sabotage. Operation Husky used the connections between the New York and Sicilian Mafias to gather intelligence for the invasion of Sicily. During the Cold War, the C.I.A. was more powerful. They had to tread carefully as not step on the Army's toes, but I don't find it impossible that they both could have had a shared interest in silencing Kurtz. It's also possible that Willard wasn't told everything. Maybe Kurtz could have been involved in heroin smuggling or something along those lines to help finance his operations. Involvement of U.S. military personnel in Golden Triangle was not unknown during the Vietnam War, and intelligence agencies could certainly have been involved somehow.