A few weeks ago, I was flipping through the TV channels and came across Apocolypse Now Redux on HDNet Movies. I am not really interested in the movie, but it was visually and aurally stunning, so I stopped for a bit and let the thump of the helicopters fill my house.
Anyway, I’ve seen this scene twice and I just can’t seem to make any sense of it. I’m not really interested in the whole movie, though I understand that it is about soldiers who are sent on a top secret mission to kill a renegade and possibly insane colonel in the jungle.
Anyway, the scene takes place on a beach. The American soldiers are in a fight with the VC. Helicopters are depositing soldiers onto the beach and the enemy is firing from a vegitation line nearby. The beach is someone “U” shaped, so the Americans are taking fire from all sides. In the midst of the chaos, a very well-dressed officer calls in an airstrike. After the airstrike, he says the famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” line. Okay. What I don’t get is the surfing. Why is he sending guys out into the water to go surfing? Why are they going? They’re taking shells out in the water. Where did the surfboards come from? Then the officer (Lt. Col. Kilgore?) is frustrated because the heat from the napalm is causing the surf to blow out rather than in.
The surfing just seems so out of place. I’m sure that’s the point, but I just don’t get it. Without my having to watch the whole movie, can someone explain it to me? Thanks.
Earlier, Kilgore and Willard discuss bypassing the enemy village and dropping Capt Willard and his boat further up the river, but Lt. Col Kilgore is so excited to have Lance Johnson (a famous surfer back stateside) around, and so eager to show him Vietnam’s best waves, that he decides to take back the beach from the Vietnamese. All of the death and destruction in that scene – every American and Vietnamese death – is needless, and happens solely because Kilgore wants to see Lance go surfing.
The absurdity of the fact that they begin surfing during the assault is icing on the cake and highlights the foolishness and futility of it all. The fact that he resorts to napalm at the end (it’s a civilian village!) highlights the ham-handedness of America’s methods in that war.
An excerpt:
KILGORE
"What happened to your mission, captain ? Did Nha
Trang forget all about you ?"
WILLARD
"Sir, two places we can get into the river. Here and here. It's
pretty wide delta but these are the only two spots I'm really
sure of."
KILGORE
"That village your pointing at is kinda hairy, Willard."
WILLARD
"What do you mean hairy, sir ?"
KILGORE
"It's hairy. Got some pretty heavy ordnance there. I lost a few recon
ships there now and again. Is that goddamn village Vin Drin Dop
or Lop ? Damn gook names all sound the same.
Mike, do you know anything about that point at Vin Drin Dop ?"
MIKE
"That's a fantastic peak. "
KILGORE
"Peak ?"
MIKE
"About six feet. It got both the long right with left slide.
It's unbelieveable, it's just Tube City..."
KILGORE
" Well why the hell didn't you tell me that before ? There aren't any
good peaks in this whole, shitty country. It's all goddamn beach break."
MIKE
"It's really hairy in there,sir. That's where we lost McDonnel
- they shot the hell out of us. That's Charlie's point."
WILLARD
"Sir, we can go there tomorrow at dawn. There's always
a good off-shore breeze in the morning."
CHIEF
"We may not be able to get the boat in. The river may be too
shallow."
KILGORE
" We'll pick your boat up and put it down like a baby, right
where you want it. This is First of the Ninth, Air Cav,son- airmobile.
I can take that point and hold it as long as I like -- and you can
get anywhere you want up that river that suits you, young captain.
Hell, a six foot peak.
You take a gunship back to division -- Mike, take Lance with you -- let
him pick out a board, and bring me my Yater Spoon -- the eight six."
MIKE
"I don't know, sir -- it's -- it's --"
KILGORE
" What is it soldier?
MIKE
"It's pretty hairy in there - it's Charlie's point..."
KILGORE
"Charlie don't surf !"
Basically, the Colonel and at least a portion of his company are surfing nuts. Basically they just tear around Vietnam, attacking locations that have good breaks. Thats what they were doing in the scene you described. Instead of waiting to the beach was cleared, the Colonel ordered some of his men to go surfing while the tide was still right.
There’s a little bit more to it that someone get explain better, but you kind of have to see the whole movie to get the context.
The purpose of the scene is to add more insanity to the movie and make the viewer feel even more disoriented. It is also to show that the American conduct of the war and the men in command of it were completely insane.
Lt. Colonel Bill Killgore is a bigtime surfing fanatic from California. He is the commander of the 1/9th Air Cavalry unit that is airlifting Cpt. Willard and the boat to the mouth of the river. One of the men on the crew of the boat is Lance Johnson, a famous surfer from California. Colonel Killgore wants to impress Lance Johnson and also wants bragging rights that he surfed with Lance Johnson.
The surfboards and the trunks were supplied by Lt. Col Bill Killgore.
The stealing of the surfboards was the one piece that really helped the Redux verion of the film. I dodn’t think the rest of the added scenes really improved the story and I can see why they were cut out.
And on Edit, Jurph said it even better than I could have.
Thanks. So, basically, Coppola is pointing out the absurdity of the war and the American prosecution of it. The surfing is an example of misplaced priorities in a confusing and complicated war. Kilgore kills all those Vietnamese and loses his men just so he can catch some waves – which his heavyhandedness ruins anyway.
Renny Yater made a limited edition of 90 copies of the “Yater Spoon” board from Apocalypse Now in 2006. I was damn tempted to buy one as an investment, but $3000 was a bit pricey. The last one was put on Ebay in January 2007.
It’s a terrific movie and you might want to consider watching it all the way through.
I disagree vehemently. The stealing of the surfboards turns Kilgore from the character with perhaps the best parting line in the history of film (“Some day this war’s gonna end” - sharp exit stage right) into a whining, petulant child. It over laboured the point of his self centredness and his "cavalier"a ttitude to the war. It diminished him.
It’s best if you don’t think of it as a critique of the Vietnam War, because that sequence is way over the top, and beyond anything that actually went on during the war. It’s more of a an example of how civilization is deteriorating as they move upstream and reality is becoming increasingly absurd.
Agreed, it does change his character from a hero to a whiner. I think it broadened and deepened the character.
The scene also answered a question I’d had for 20 years:
Well, yes, and no. I see it more as a movie about collonialism and a mightier country raping a poorer country and the surf scene just adds to that - the invaders have no other goal than to enrich themselves as individuals and their official mission - the war - is just a pretext for doing so. In fact, I think a lot of movies, purportedly being about Vietnam, actually deals with other topics - they’re just set with the Vietnam war as a backdrop.
**Jurph ** - how did you do that cool coding?
Honestly? They cash in on it to a large extent, the same way they make fake GI Zippo lighters and dogtags. There’s an “Apocalypse Now” bar in Saigon (and a “Heart of Darkness” that I went to with micilin and yojimbo in 2005) and apparently one in Hanoi. That said, I’ve never seen the movie being shown in any bars there.
Only the Redux scene at the plantation is about colonialism and IMHO it is a distruption to the story. The story is essentially about war in general as a decent into madness. The politics are never really discussed.
There are several turning points in the (non-Redux) story. At each point, the mood darkens and gets a bit more crazy:
The Air Cav assualt on the village - Basically, we see war as a big game. Loud explosions, helicopters, music, surfing.
Chef gets chased by a tiger - “Never get out of the fucking boat”
The USO show with the Playboy bunnies - Our first hint at madness when the soldiers go crazy and storm the stage
The sampan massacre - We find out that Willard is hard-core
The last outpost at the Do Lung Bridge - The bridge is symbolic as a point of no-return. Once they pass that, they are really in the shit.
Clean’s death - The first loss that is personal to the crew
Chief’s death - The last voice of reason is gone from the boat
There was an episode of StarGate SG1 that had a basis pretty similar to that. “The First Commandmant”, I think the title was. SG team arrives on planet, greeted as gods by the natives (who have been trained over thousands of years by the manipulative Goa’Uld to believe those who use the Stargates are gods), and, in order to not cause tension, the team commander decides to go with it.
Anyhow, the guy turns out to be a bit of a megalomaniac, and when the junior members of his squad suggest that they should report back to StarGate Command on Earth, he has them declared heretics and it all goes downhill from there. SG-1 shows up shortly afterwards to figure out what happened to the first team, and the plot ensues. The ending is pretty amusing, if you compare/contrast it to a similar scene in the original movie.
One suggestion though (and it’s been a loooong time since I’ve seen the movie, but I wouldn’t rent the Redux version. As I recall it’s a bout 45 minutes longer (so that’s brings us to what 13 and half hours long), and the extra 45 minutes I personally didn’t really care for. Besides the ending is just a hair different and doesn’t make sense unless you’ve seen the first version. But that’s MHO
As I recall some of the ‘civilians’ where carrying weapons. For some reason I remember some of the women tricking the troops into thinking they where civies and then pulling out guns or gernades or something and killing them