This is a tough one this week! I'm not sure I entirely understand the prompt, but I'm going to give it my best shot.
I know from my own research that it is widely believed and understood that Apocalypse Now was not necessarily and accurate depiction of the war in Vietnam, but moreso that it's mood captured what it was like for everyone during that time. A sort of madness is laced throughout the film, which seems to coincide with every story of any accuracy that has been told about that war. The duality that I noticed was in Captain Willard's opinion of Col Kurtz.
From the beginning scene, it seems as if Captain Willard might be going a little crazy himself. When he is taken to speak with the general about his mission to kill Col Kurtz, the audio recording of Col Kurtz sounds like it could have been audio of Captain Willard earlier that day. Throughout the film, and particularly during the times when Captain Willard is reading Col Kurtz file via narration, it is clear that Captain Willard gradually begins to admire Col Kurtz. He begins to see the humanity in him and the honor in his experiences. He starts to wonder if it is even possible that he will be able to kill him, but then realizes that he has also lost a little bit of his own humanity during his time in the jungle, making him the perfect man for the job.
The duality I see is that anyone can be made an enemy in war if you decide that what they are fighting for is directly against what you are fighting for. In the dynamic I just explained, Col Kurtz and the vietnamese people share a commonality as the target and Captain Willard and the United States share a commonality as the "seekers of justice" and the ones with the target in sight.
Most soldiers have to convince themselves at one point or another that what they are fighting for is just and that there is honor in killing for your country, and in this case, killing another soldier for your country.
I hope that makes sense. I am finding it difficult to articulate this one!
Yeah, the "mood" thing is apt. In using Conrad's Hear of Darkness as a template for a story set in the Vietnam War, Coppola seemed less interested in an accurate depiction of the experiences of soldiers in war than in the mapping of the mood that subtended this experience (whether this mood pertains to the US at large, or to other onlooking cultures or even the world at large).
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CS
What's interesting about Kurtz as target is that while it's true he's fighting in an unauthorized manner, he's nonetheless fighting the same enemy as the US military: the Vietnamese and/or Cambodian communists. He embodies a position surprisingly similar to Lawrence: Like Lawrence, Kurtz represents his military's own interests in a dimension they're not prepared to own.
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