The Vietnam War and the Agony of being a Killer

Question for Discussion: What is the larger truth
about the Vietnam War that the film Platoon tries to convey?

Reading: Hagen, "Apocalypse Now: Joseph Conrad
and the Televsion War"; Ebert, "Review of Platoon, ";
Kempley, "Review of Platoon"

Video: Platoon ( 1986 )

Platoon (1986)

Internet Movie Database: Platoon (1986)

Memorable Quotes from Platoon

Roger Ebert's Review of Platoon

Rita Kempley's Review of Platoon

James Berardinelli's Review of Platoon

Tim Dirks Review of Kubrick's Paths to Glory (1957)

Tim Dirks' Review of Apocalypse Now

Vietnam War movies

Heart of Darkness Page

History of American Involvement in
Vietnam: 1945-1975

World Map (1997)

Map of Asia (1997)

Southeast Asia Map (1997)

The Vietnam War Map

Vietnam - A Country Study

The Vietnam War: Mississippi Historical
Text Archive

U.S. History: The Vietnam War

The Pentagon Papers (1971)

U.S. Vietnam War Documents: 1950-1975

Debating American Involvement in
Vietnam

Remembering the Vietnam War: Conversation
with Neil Sheehan

The Debate over Robert McNamara's
In Retrospect

Converstions with Robert McNamara

Perspectives: McNamara's inner war

Revisiting Vietnam :Thoughts Engendered by
Robert McNamara's In Retrospect

`In Retrospect': Where's the Apology

Fighting the War in Vietnam

Ron Heller: Images of Vietnam--
A Soldier's Account

Vietnam Memories: Images of the War

"CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam"

Social History of Vietnam War Archive

Vietnam Generation Journal: Learning from
the War

The Vietnam War at Home:
The Struggle over Hearts and Minds

President Johnson: "Peace Without Conquest"
(1965)

President Nixon on the Invasion of Cambodia
(1970)

"At the Cannes Film Festival, Coppola, speaking about his film said "This movie isn't about Vietnam -- it is Vietnam." The controversy surrounding the film at the time caused this statement to be disregarded as the ranting of an egotistical director. But after watching the film, I understood exactly what he meant. The confusion, the senselessness, the violence, the otherworldliness of the images Coppola created -- the horror of it all -- truly captures the reality of war."

Skyler Miller, "In Focus: "Apocalypse Now"

Two great books about the Vietnam war and American culture

The Things they Carried, by Tim O'Brien

Winners and Losers, by Gloria Emerson

from "The Hollow Men"

Mistah Kurtz - he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless

T.S. Elliott, The Hollow Man, 1925

"Everywhere in the world where
knowledge is being suppressed,
knowledge that, if it were made known,
would shatter our image of the world
and force us to question ourselves--
everywhere there, Heart of Darkness
is being enacted.
"You already know that. So do I.
What is missing is the courage to
understand what we know and draw
conclusions."

Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate the Brutes

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz:

I watched a snail crawl along the
edge of a straight razor. That's my
dream, it's my nightmare. Crawling,
slipping along the edge of a straight
razor and surviving....But we must kill
them, we must incinerate them, pig
after pig, cow after cow, village after
village, army after army, and they call
me an assassin. What do you call it
when the assassins accuse the
assassin? They lie. They lie and we
have to be merciful for those who lie,
for those nabobs. I hate them. I do
hate them.

Kurtz: "It's impossible for words to
describe what is necessary to those
who do not know what horror means.
Horror. Horror has a face, and you
must make a friend of horror. Horror
and moral terror are your friends. If
they are not, then they are enemies
to be feared. They are truly enemies."

Kurtz: "I've seen the horrors, horrors
that you've seen. But you have no
right to call me a murderer. You have
a right to kill me, you have a right to
do that, but you have no right to
judge me."

Kurtz: "Then I realized they were
stronger than we. They have the
strength, the strength to do that. If I
had 10 divisions of those men, then
our troubles here would be over very
quickly. You have to have men who
are moral and at the same time who
are able to utilize their primordial
instincts to kill without feeling, without
passion, without judgment."

Kurtz: "We must kill them. We must
incinerate them. Pig after pig. Cow
after cow. Village after village. Army
after army."

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: "The horror.
The horror."

"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet drills -- things I abominate, because I don't get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap -- unless I had the shakes too bad to stand.

"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: " 'The horror! The horror!'

Joseph Conrad, "The Heart of Darkness"

1. What does Kurtz mean when he says:
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream, it's my nightmare. Crawling, slipping along the edge of a straight razor and surviving....But we must kill them, we must incinerate them, pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army, and they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie, for those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them."
2. Who do you think is more insane Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) or Colonel Kurtz? Is Kurtz seen as more insane because he is not following the military's program in Vietnam?

3. Do you agree with Tim Dirks' that Kurtz needs to be killed, not because he is insane, but because he is a threat to the U.S. military's understanding of the war:"Kilgore, the 'respectable' side of the Vietnam experience, is ironically contrasted to the other side of the same coin - Kurtz, the 'barbaric' character who is the object of the mission. Willard questions what the real reason might be for the orders to assassinate Kurtz:

"If that's how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn't just insanity and murder. There was enough of that to go around for everyone."
4. Why does the military want Willard to assassinate Kurtz?Captain Benjamin L. Willard: "Terminate the Colonel.

General Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.

Civilian: Terminate with extreme prejudice."

5. What does Kurtz mean when he tells Willard this: .Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: "I've seen the horrors, horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me, you have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me."

6.. Why does Kurtz allow Willard to ritualistically kill him? The director seems to imply that Willard's killing of Kurtz is just like the tribesmen's ritual killing of the cow. What does this have to do with Kurtz's guilt or innocence?

7. What does Kurtz mean when he tells Willard that horror must be your friend:Colonel Kurtz: "It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."

8. What do you think Kurtz wants Willard to tell his son about why Kurtz died in Vietnam?

9.. Why do you think Kurtz and his tribesmen army are so vicious and bloodthirsty? Why do they strew heads, bodies, and torsos around their camp?

10. Why does Kurtz read T.S.Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" aloud? Are Kurtz and Willard and the rest of the American military "the hollow men"? T.S. Eliot's (1888-1965) Hollow Men .

11. Do you understand the necessity for Willard's long, slow trip up the river into Cambodia. Like in the Conrad short story, "The Heart of Darkness," Willard takes a trip up the river into the jungle and into the "heart of darkness." What lies at the heart of darkness?

12. What does Kurtz mean when he says that he realized they were stronger than we are:"Then I realized they were stronger than we...They have the strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment - without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

13. Why does Willard after killing Kurtz put down the machete and leave the tribesmen rather than becoming their new warrior leader by replacing Kurtz? Why are the tribesmen willing to let Willard be their new leader?

14. According to Tim Dirks, in the 70 mm version of the film (for its initial release), there were no credits for the film - printed credit booklets were issued to audiences. Two other test endings were shot for the film:

Willard kills Kurtz and remains in Cambodia in his place.

A large-scale airstrike raid is staged at Kurtz's retreat and the compound is bombed and napalmed as Willard and Lance start downriver.

Do you think the controversy over the three possible endings for the movie changes the larger meaning of the film?

15. Would ending the film with Willard calling in an airstrike and scenes of the village being enveloped in fire radically change the ending of Apocalypse Now?

16. How does the film's title, Apocalypse Now, help us understand the larger moral critique of America's role in Vietnam at the heart of this film?

17. Why does Kurtz write: "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them All"? Does he want Willard to destroy his people and everything in their compound? Is this the apocalypse the film is driving towards?

18. Can America really destroy Vietnam and its people in order to save them? By destroying the Vietnamese aren't we undermining our moral position in the war?