“I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...”
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Dionysus Don’t Surf
In Part I we explore themes from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, which will provide a framework for analyzing and interpreting Apocalypse Now.
Satyrs, Bullroarers, and Human Sacrifice
Decades after its 1979 release, Apocalypse Now still manages to thrill and seduce new audiences through its mythic imagery and haunting verse; no other war film has so tenaciously refused to fade away. Yet despite its enduring popularity, Coppola’s masterpiece remains largely unexamined and misunderstood. Similarly, fifty years have passed since the fall of Saigon, and we are no closer to understanding the Vietnam War and the deep scars it left on the American psyche than in 1975. Apocalypse Now may be the greatest war film ever made, but like Vietnam, somehow it continues to unsettle and confound us even today.
Critics have long mistaken Apocalypse Now for an anti-war film. From a safe distance, the fear, madness, and savagery only underscore the evils of modern warfare. It is a common error, and to be fair, what can you expect from a setting like the Vietnam War, which until our humiliation in Afghanistan, epitomized the moral catastrophe of foreign occupation? But it is a shallow interpretation.
Apocalypse Now is neither a paean to peace nor an unflinching examination of the “true costs of war.” Rather, it is something darker and far more subversive. Apocalypse Now not only glories in conflict and stirs our lust for violence, but it makes an exquisite mockery of illusions of order, progress, and even morality itself. But Apocalypse Now is not pessimistic. Instead, it transcends the nihilism of a world stripped of meaning. It opens an abyss of horror and despair, but through a protagonist’s heroic efforts, still affirms life and purpose.
Rich in metaphor and allusion, Apocalypse Now is a complex Greek tragedy. And in that tradition, it opens a portal to a world long-forgotten—one of satyrs, bullroarers, and human sacrifice. It is a rare glimpse into the Dionysian Mysteries, and in its rites we find a key—or perhaps a Grail—offering life after death and, possibly, redemption for a dying world. Apocalypse Now is a story about rebirth.
I am convinced that Apocalypse Now is consciously Nietzschean. And to fully appreciate the film’s genius, we need to become familiar with Nietzsche’s dramatic treatise, The Birth of Tragedy, which will serve as a framework by which we will analyze and interpret the film.