Apocalypse Now... and Forever.
Why the French Plantation Scene is the Best in Coppola’s Masterpiece.
For many of you reading, the movie Apocalypse Now will need no introduction, but for those few deprived of the sheer pleasure of Richard Wagner at sunrise, or the smell of napalm in the morning, I shall fill you in. Staring Martin Sheen and written by Francis Coppola and John Milius (directed by the former), this epic movie set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war see’s one Capt. Willard travel up the fictitious Nung river into Cambodia where he is tasked with the assassination of the rogue Col. E. Kurtz, a brilliant soldier with an appreciation for the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and severing arms, and one who is to be disposed of with ‘extreme prejudice’ for the crime of taking the American conquest of the Vietnamese into his own hands.
Based on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness this is a truly stupendous piece of cinema, not historically accurate mind you, but rather a journey into madness itself, the men aboard the little boat with Willard traveling beyond all human decency and civilization until they no longer know themselves, nor the world around, ahead of, or behind them. It’s a film brimming with memorable scenes small and big; Like ‘This is the End’ by The Doors playing over visions of jungle destruction, the blades of the chopper giving way to the ceiling fan and a sweat beaded Willard peering through the blinds of his room and uttering those faithful words which usher us into the movie, ‘Saigon… shit’. Or of course there is the rodeo with the ever memorable Capt. Kilgore who’s squadron of helicopters appear out of the sunrise to the score of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and blow the rice out of a Vietcong stronghold to secure the mouth of the Nung for Willard, as well as some good surfing waters for themselves.
I could go on. In fact, from beginning to end each scene is a work of art, and most who’ve seen the movie agree, it’s a masterpiece which some have described as perfect (though I’d refrain from ever using that word myself). Apocalypse Now is not without it’s controversies though. Actually, there are elements of the film which I have found not to be well liked by fans or critics at all, specifically from the Redux Edition, and most notably, the infamous French plantation scene which was not in the original cut and which many have described as a derailment of an otherwise impeccable story.
It is here where I must disagree. Not only do I appreciate the French plantation scene myself, finding it to fit nicely in the overall story and theme, I might even go so far as to say that it is among my favourite destinations on Captain Willard’s travels into the heart of darkness. While I have only ever watched the extended edition (which may lend some bias to my position), I am in no rush to view the original cut. That is how much I value this portion of the movie. So let me explain.
Apocalypse now, as with the story which inspired it, can be viewed as many things, though usually it is seen as an analogy for man’s journey into madness brought about by war, represented visually by Willard and the crew with whom he travels journeying every deeper into the jungle and further from civilization while the Vietnam war rages around them. I agree with this take, and it is from this perspective from which I shall make the case for the French scenes vital inclusion in the tale.
The scene takes place immediately after the death of a crew member aboard the little boat, Tyrone ‘Clean’ Miller. It is with the intention of burying his body that the remaining crew take to land by the shores of the Nung in the thickness of the jungle. This is the beginning of the wrongfully hated (and misunderstood), scene.
Before the Frenchmen are revealed to us in the flesh we see mist, and hear shouting from beyond. Chef, a crew member who is fluent in their language, recognises the tongue as French. He calls back, and out of the mist step the Frenchmen, dressed in dated military apparel and joined by several loyal Vietnamese, the last of the French empire remaining in a Vietnam now locked in conflict with a new conqueror of European birth.
The French hold a funeral for Miller, out in the jungle where the eerie fog persists and lends a mood of melancholy to the scene which sticks to the very end. After the funeral the Americans are taken to the French plantation house, nestled in the dense foliage which seeks to consume it and built in the French colonial style. It is here where the remainder of the scene takes place. A feast is prepared for Willard and his men, the French changing from their military garb into clean, elegant clothes: dresses and bespoke white linen suits. There are several courses, cigars and brandy on offer, and all the while the audience is left wondering just how such a home could exist so far north into enemy territory, and far from civilization as it seems to be.
Conversation naturally turns to war, the men quibbling over their fine meal about what went wrong with the French campaign and solving nothing while they gorge (the significance of the scene hopefully not being lost on those of a nationalist mentality). The main French influence at the table, a man by the name of Hubert, explains to Willard and his men the history of the French people in Vietnam. It is a history of nation building, as he explains, and an accurate one at that. The French did indeed invest a great deal into the country. One need only look at the city of Dalat in the south, also known as the City of Eternal Spring, a place conceived of by the French, and built where nothing had stood before, remaining today as a testament to the coloniser’s will, ability and brilliance. This, Hubert explains, is why he and his family refuse to leave Vietnam. This is their home he says. They built it.
What Hubert is describing is the advanced stages of nationhood, empire building which sees a successful people explode and expand their influence upon the globe with a furnace of will the likes of which meeker men can seldom conceive. It was a common tale for Europeans once upon a time, a race of men who, when their time came, expanded into what we now call the West and far beyond, constructing empires of grand scale in every corner of the globe. But, sure as successful nations seek to expand, they are eventually crushed under the fruits of their own labour, destined to crumble in time, losing first their empires, and then their home nations.
Hubert and the other Frenchmen explain this to Willard. As they do so one can not help but think of the works of Glubb, Spengler and Evola, men who saw very obviously the cycles of civilization and their finite nature, the rise and fall coming as sure as the seasons. What we are presented with in the plantation scene, figuratively and literally I suspect, are the ghosts of one such dead empire, pleading with the Americans to heed their warnings and learn from the mistakes of those who came before them. It is a warning destined to fall upon deaf ears. Sure as death, or the coming of winter, the American empire will crumble, and then the nation itself, the warnings and lessons of history ignored.
Now, I consider that a powerful message in and of itself because it shows that the writers had not fallen into the common trap of viewing our civilization through a lens of permanence. Once upon a time the Romans would have found it inconceivable that the world they’d build could fall, the Chinese too, and the Islamic world as well. Now they’re gone. The French went the same way, and so will the Americans.
In keeping with the movie’s theme of madness one is drawn to that old Einstein quote, ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’. Well, in the French plantation scene we are shown this on a societal scale, Hubert even referencing the incompetence of the bureaucratic leadership who drove the French army to failure, and the liberated women back home who actively sabotaged their own nations war effort, the union of French becoming the union of French women against French men, as he explains. It is the rot of decadence on full display, one which persists throughout the rest of the scene and which those dwelling in former empires should recognise all too well.
Feminism always seem to signal the end for civilizations, and as though to drive this point home, after dinner, Captain Willard is invited up to the room of a French soldier’s Widow, a ghost like the rest, but also a siren who those more cynical of the fairer sex might say represented the poisoning effect the feminine beauty can have upon a man in some circumstances.
The widow embodies vice, comfort, weakness and hedonism,while demonstrating the dangers of the feminine proclivities which are at once so vital, and yet so destructive when left unchecked. She is late stage civilization offering Cognac and opium. As Willard lies upon the bed taking gentle hits from the pipe she talks softly of the duality of man, saying several times that there are two men in him ‘one who loves, and one who kills’. Compare this with the Vietcong, each of them one man, one man who kills because he loves, and who’s idea of ‘great R&R’ is ‘cold rice and a little rat meat'. As Hubert explains to Willard over dinner, he is fighting for the biggest nothing in history, while the Vietcong have only two ways out: ‘death, or victory’. Here we see madness again. The Americans can not win.
The final scene at the plantation sees Willard succumbing to the opium, the Widow slipping from her dress and walking naked around the bed as she draws the net curtains hanging from the four posts. Her face shrouded in Darkness she repeats the line ‘one who loves, and one who kills’, the coming apart of man so that he is not hole, not a man at all, and unable to fulfil his duty. Willard and the entire American empire are destined to be haunted by these ghosts before finally joining them, as are all future empires, destined to make the same mistakes and succumb to the same complacent weakness, repeating history again and again like men gone mad, and arguing over the dinner table about what went wrong for the rest of time while the world moves on around them and forgets. The folly of empire, and of men who never learn.
Jack.
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