"HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDER ANY REAL FREEDOMS?
FREEDOMS FROM THE OPINION OF OTHERS?
EVEN THE OPINIONS OF YOURSELF?"
-- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
Kurtz feels like he's beyond judgment, and that gives him the power to do what he wants. For most normal people, the judgment of others is what reins us in. That and our sense of right and wrong.
Kurtz has given into the primordial temptations of jungle life, killing at random and leaving dead bodies and severed heads as testament to his omnipotent mayhem. Kurtz has indulged himself and become a godlike figure, worshiped by many, answering to no one or nothing. Kurtz justifies his unconscionable behavior by declaring moral judgment a liability in wartime: “It’s judgment that defeats us.”
Such an extreme characterization of Kurtz’s appalling lifestyle implies that freedom from all societal constraints results in insanity. Kurtz’s last words are “the horror,” a phrase that conjures up the darkest parts of the human soul, where Kurtz has resided since he “got off the boat."
Upon meeting Kurtz at last, Willard realizes that Kurtz has experienced a break from reality and is indeed insane. When Willard confronts Kurtz, Kurtz asks him:
Kurtz: “What did they tell you?”
Willard: “They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.”
Kurtz: “Are my methods unsound?”
Willard: [pause, then flatly] “I don’t see [pause] any method [pause] at all, sir."
This last stiltedly delivered response is the film's strangest and most haunting line, echoing Conrad and reflecting Willard's shock and incomprehension at coming face to face with Kurtz, the representative of madness, his own dark side, and that of the Vietnam War and America itself. The already quiet Willard is rendered nearly dumb by the revelation of what is at the end of his quest, what is at the heart of darkness. This line is lent a further incidental piquancy by being delivered by one trainee in “the method” to its most famous exponent.
Despite Willard’s identification with Kurtz, he does not take up Kurtz’s throne. Willard leaves the compound, after helping Kurtz to commit suicide, rejecting that darkest part of himself and presumably heading back into the civilized world. While Apocalypse Now implies that war effectively displaces the self and the rights and wrongs of morality, its conclusion suggests that the soul is capable of rejecting such darkness.