Kilgore and Kurtz

The horror. . .

Apocalypse Now is the existentialist war film. It is flawed, deep, and ambivalent. It reflects the nature of war and reality. It puts in our faces the absurdity of it all. We are left to draw our own conclusions and to find our own way.

I have watched this movie many times. There are many memorable scenes in this movie and interesting characters. The two most interesting characters to me are Kilgore and Kurtz. They are two men in the same situation, but they come to radically different ways of dealing with it all.

Kilgore is an Air Cav colonel. He is nutty as hell with a love for surfing. He does not care one whit for Capt. Willard's mission to go kill Kurtz. But Willard needs his boat put in upriver, and Kilgore is the man who has to take him. In order to do this, Kilgore and his men elect to take a point held by the Viet Cong for no greater reason than because it has an excellent surf break. His men caution Kilgore, but he rebuts these cautions with his famous line, "Charlie don't surf!"

Kilgore is crazy but in a good way. He is faced with the absurdity of war. He knows it is nuts, but he accepts it. Confronted with the madness, he makes his own agenda and pursues his own way. His robustness and individualism are admirable.

Kurtz is a different story. A Green Beret, Kurtz decides to win an unwinnable war, and he elects for the way he thinks wars are won which is through atrocity. The results are a lot of bodies and the occasional severed head. Unlike Kilgore, Kurtz has gone down a dark path. He has lost his humanity. He is not happy but utterly fucking insane.

Kilgore and Kurtz represent the two responses to the madness. Other people in the movie try and find their paths. But the only guy I see who has made any sense of it is Kilgore. He doesn't sign up to their agenda but chooses to make his own. In life, you have to do the same thing. This is the importance of individualism. Every person needs to set their own agenda, find their own path, and do their own thing. There are no transcendant sign posts. There is what you are and what you do. You are your choices.

Kurtz can't make his own choices. He is trying to make good on the choices given to him. He follows them to their logical conclusions. He becomes a monster. Over and over, you see Kurtz agonizing and trying to make sense and follow the logic. But it escapes him. He came to fight the darkness and instead has become the heart of darkness.

There is no darkness in Kilgore. He is lighthearted, happy, and humorous. Yes, he is a bit nutty, but he has compassion on a man holding his guts in with a pot lid. He can see humanity in his enemy. Kilgore is just in a situation he did not create. He just makes the most of it. Does he have a death wish? This is what makes people think Kilgore is nuts. He is fearless. He doesn't give a fuck. But that's the reality. You can eat it at any moment. Shit happens. Kilgore knows this in a way that no one else does. Willard says that Kilgore acted as if he knew he was going to come through this war without a scratch on him. I doubt this was the case. Kilgore strikes me as a guy who has seen it all and come to terms with mortality. Death is unavoidable and inevitable. What matters is living, and Kilgore lives life to the full. In a film full of crazy people, Kilgore strikes me as the most sane.

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