The Breaking Point

Every person has their own personal breaking point. Reaching it can be a painful reminder of trauma experienced when least expected. One thing I have never been through (as far as trauma goes) is war. Last week I rewatched Apocalypse Now for the first time in years, this time with a new perspective about what changes in an individual to make them go insane.

As the film opens we hear the voice of Jim Morrison from The Doors singing their famous “The End.” All of this while Captain Willard is thinking about the life he once knew and how returning to it would be impossible. On the other hand, what he wants to go back to in Saigon has no return guarantee. Jim Morrison died eight years before Apocalypse Now premiered. There was no way of him knowing how perfectly this song fit in both the beginning and the end of the film.

As we travel with Willard through Vietnam and Cambodia, more pieces of how Colonel Kurtz became a monster are revealed. Willard could not picture a path back to America. Kurtz had a chance to go back, but only knew of the war.

In the third act, we see what is left of Willard and his crew. An American photojournalist is on Kurtz’s compound, played by the late, great Dennis Hopper. When we see him, it is almost like a spell has been cast on him as he praises who Kurtz has become. This shows the effect Kurtz had on his followers, and as the photojournalist demonstrates, his influence was not limited to the people of Vietnam.

The climax of the film comes when Kurtz tells Willard about “the horror.” Describing what he has seen is beyond anything a person who has never been to war could comprehend. Willard is in the army and he appears to have a difficult time understanding how Kurtz became the man he is until it is evident that Kurtz respects the Viet Cong and what they are capable of.

“The End” comes back in perfect timing as Willard carries out his mission. The horror is then left with us in a different way than any war film I have ever seen. What stayed with me after the film was over on the rewatch was not what was done to Kurtz. Rather, what was done to him before everybody else and how they didn’t become the man Kurtz did. Willard could have easily become Kurtz, but why he didn’t is left for us to determine.

Perhaps the horror he witnessed to that point wasn’t as bad as what Kurtz had seen. Also, Willard had a mission to carry out and never seemed to lose track of the objective. This leads me to believe that Willard had a mindset that allowed him to retain a boundary that Kurtz had crossed. However, the only way to determine this is to live through what Kurtz did. Even though Kurtz tells us about this, the only way we could understand it is by experiencing it ourselves. Kurtz became a madman from experiencing horror. Willard had the potential for the same, but decided in the end Kurtz’s madness needed to be stopped.