Apocalypse now: final scenes

 The ending of Apocalypse Now concludes with Willard essentially leaving one hell for another; the hell of war for the hell of the tortured human psyche. Kurtz himself has come to terms with the fact that Willard is there to kill him, and he welcomes it. Willard therefore acts as the instrument of Kurtz's will, assisting him in arguably committing suicide. Kurtz's mental state which is revealed just before his death could be seen as a reflection of the Vietnam War - he is is visibly upset in his voice and gestures as he dictates: "They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene!" Kurtz has gone over the edge because he sees and cannot accept such moral blindness and hypocrisy in the fighting of the war and American intervention as a whole. He is ready to die as it is the only escape from his painful condition. 

The dramatic crosscutting between Willard killing Kurtz and the animal sacrifice highlights Coppola's depiction of the ethics and purpose of the Vietnam war. The scene creates a visual simile; the killing of Kurtz is like the ritual killing of the sacrificial animal and so the comparison of Kurtz to the sacrificial animal suggests that he is a tragic victim of the war. A great and good man of courage and moral clarity who was destroyed by the moral contradictions of an insane war and the emptiness of American values. Yet the Generals and those who ordered his death will only see him as an insane crazy killer who has succumbed to primitive bloodlust. This scene is also important in terms of resolving the themes of the nature of evil, power, sanity and insanity in that all of these thing become intertwined upon death - Kurtz came to some self-knowledge and realisation of all this and in turn was able to see the absurdities of the war yet was considered insane. 

In terms of the theme of Willard's journey and identity, Willard has completed his mission - he has killed Kurtz. But the meaning of his mission had been radically transformed by his experiences travelling up river and by his encounter with Kurtz as he had learned that the General was lying to him and they wanted Kurtz dead not because he had gone beyond all humane limits in his killing people, but because he has gone mad due to his realisation of the absolutely insane way the generals are running the war. Willard kills Kurtz, but also hints that he is to go home and tell the truth about Kurtz and the war. Coppola ends the film as he began it: inside Willard's mind, using the same technique of superimpositions to create Willard's consciousness that he used in the beginning - the shot of the Buddha side-by-side with Willard's face, representing duality. The superimpositions that simulate what he's thinking - the helicopters, the napalm on the jungle etc are combined with the aural memory of Kurtz's final judgement on the Vietnam war: "The horror! The horror!" All of this leads us to an understanding of Willard's mental state.

The possible alternative endings to the film could change the way the film resolves its themes and narrative in that any ending that didn't conclude with Willard returning home with the intention to spread the truth would not give the audience the clarity that he understood why Kurtz had gone mad, and was not just an army puppet blindly following orders. The ending we see is a perfect explanation for the mental state of Willard at the beginning as well as a sound analogy of the ethics and purpose of the war.