Imagine being an American
soldier sent to Vietnam to fight the militarized Marxist Communists there. The Vietnam
War provides many examples of such a plight. Now consider how much worse it
would be to be sent into a seemingly constantly rainy, hot and humid jungle deep
in Cambodia to assassinate an American colonel because he is a renegade Special
Forces military officer who has gone insane. Just in case this is not dire
enough, simply add in that he has the local village protecting their god with
weapons. Surely safer secret military missions exist than to assassinate an
insane former special-ops man with a small army of devotees. This is the central
plot of the 1979 film, Apocalypse
Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed The Godfather earlier that
decade. Behind the plot of Apocalypse Now is a dichotomy wherein human
nature itself is bifurcated into a dichotomy of good and bad. This is
interesting because some of the characters may fall in between, suggesting that
human nature has a gray zone in which most of us live.
The full essay is at "Apocalypse Now."
