Analyzing Evil: Colonel Kurtz

welcome to the very first episode of analyzing evil today we'll be discussing the character that gave me the inspiration to start this channel in the first place the character of Colonel Kurtz as portrayed by Marlon Brando in the film Apocalypse Now as a disclaimer many of the themes in Apocalypse Now are not for the faint of heart and this video may be a bit graphic to get a better understanding of our character we must first briefly explore the source of Francis Ford Coppola inspiration from making this film and for the character of Kurtz the heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad this novella has been analyzed and picked apart many times over the last hundred plus years and if you're looking to better identify yourself with the themes and contents of not just this video but the film Apocalypse Now I suggest you give it a read or watch one of the many videos and lectures about it you can find online giving a full breakdown of the book in the book Kurtz is not a military man rather he's an ivory trader during the Belgian rule of the Congo which was then known as the free state of Congo Kurtis talked about in the first chapter of the book as an amazing man one who will surely rise high in the company that the narrator Marlow is a part of as we read further into the book we discover that Kurtz has gone off the rails due to a suspected illness the narrator upon finding Kurtz discovers that he has set himself up as a sort of deity that is being worshiped by the natives kurz has gone mad from the illness but also from being isolated in the jungle for a long period of time the darkness referred to in the title of the book is the jungle and Kurtz has remained in the center of it for so long that he's become mad and begun using methods that the company considers unsound this is only a very brief description of the character of Kurtz from the heart of darkness as today the main focus of this video is the character of Kurtz and Apocalypse Now if you'd like an analysis of heart of darkness Kurtz let me know in the comments below and I may feature him in a future video now on to the main event in the beginning of the film the main character captain Willard is given a briefing on Colonel Kurtz he has played two recordings that are allegedly made by Kurtz in the first recording Kerch describes a dream or a nightmare he has been having in which a snail crawls along the edge of a straight razor it still survives the second recording is unplayed of him saying and I quote we must kill them we must incinerate them pig after pig cow after cow village after village and they call me an assassin what do you call it when the assassins accused the assassin they lie and they lie and we have to be merciful to those who lie I hate them I do hate them this is our first encounter with Kurtz so to speak and we can gleam a few key things initially about his state of mind from these recordings now the dream he describes in the first recording can and has been interpreted in many different ways these first lines of dialogue are meant to paint us a faint portrait of Kurtz in our minds early on and the dream is perhaps the most important of the two recordings in achieving this for the viewer in my opinion the most rational way to interpret the meaning of his dream is to first review the second recording in order to understand his dream in the second recording Kurtz is describing the methods he feels are necessary to bring the war to a swift end and vilifying those who call him a villain the US military a large part of the reason the United States was unsuccessful in Vietnam was due to their failure to adapt to the situation and instead attempting to fight the war as they had fought many wars in the past Kurtz realizes this and feels the best way to fight the war is a more personal and measured approach with the information we obtained from the second recording and one more key fact and that is that a snail is able to actually survive while crawling on the edge of a straight razor we can deduce that the snail is the United States military and the razor is Vietnam while the snail will survive it gains nothing by being in this situation neither losing nor winning anything it simply just is I feel this is an accurate way to describe the ultimate outcome of the Vietnam War for the United States while we lost a great number of lives the United States as a whole did not lose as much as other countries have during times of war like for example the Soviet Union during its time in Afghanistan to Kurtz this is unacceptable as later on we'll see that his career is very distinguished and his found victory in virtually every situation he has ever been in he's seeing the institution he's dedicated his life to fail fail to adapt to a new situation and thus ultimately failing in its main goal victory this the Kurtz is nothing short of heresy now as I said before there are many different interpretations of this particular quote and if you feel my T's inaccurate feel free to let me know in the comments below so at this point we've come to understand one thing about Kurtz that he's lost faith in the United States to conduct the war in a manner he deems proper later on in the film we find out from a dossier given to captain Willard that Colonel Kurtz was by all means an exceptional man he was third-generation West Point top of his class it's not said by Willard but if you pause the movie and read the dossier it also says he obtained a master's degree from Harvard his thesis the Philippines and Suresh in American foreign policy in Southeast Asia he was being groomed for a top position in the military a general chief of staff he could have been anything but in 1966 he chose to join the Special Forces and return to Vietnam it's not said in the film but from this action alone we can assume that Colonel Kurtz is a man of action rather than one who commands from the rear we later learned from a letter that he wrote to his son that this is exactly the case in the letter he writes that he has been accused of murdering four vietnamese whom he tracked for several months accumulating evidence and found them to be double agents rather than going through the proper channels and bringing them to trial he chose to act of his own accord and mete out justice as he saw fit he of course believes the charges to be unjustified there are a couple of interesting sentences in this letter that provide us more insight into the mind of Kurtz he writes in a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action and there are many moments for ruthless action what is often called ruthless what may in many circumstances be only clarity seeing clearly what there is to be done in doing it directly quickly awake looking at it from these sentences we can now confirm something that is undeniable Kurtz is a man of action from the recordings we heard we can also assume that he'll stop at nothing for victory our last stop before getting to Kurtz himself is the ravings of the photographer for the sake of time I'm going to tell you all of the important things the photographer has to say about Kurtz now even though all of this is not said immediately when we first meet him most of what the photographer says of Kurtz is blind adulation calling him a genius and above him in many ways but there are a few key things he says about him that are of significance the first is this quote sometimes you'll say hello to him and he'll walk right by you and he won't even notice you and then suddenly he'll grab you and throw you in a corner and he'll say do you know that if is the middle word in life if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you not only do the Colonel's actions show us he is a very temperamental and spontaneous man but his words here are meant to convey to us a piece of his core philosophy keeping yourself on the right path even while being judged and blamed this is what Kurtz does he acts keeping himself true to what he believes is the best course upon coming on severed heads that decorate the steps leading up to the temple the photographer tells Willard and his men the heads you're looking at the heads sometimes he goes too far and he's the first one to admit it this implies that in some ways Kurtz is not fully in control of the actions he takes whether due to madness a rage he sometimes takes actions that he later goes on to regret the last bit of important information we get from the photographer is said to Willard after he's been locked up in a cage the man is clear in his head but his soul is mad he's dying I think he hates all this he hates it it's this quote and what Willard later says about Kurtz that really sends a message I've never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart this is the final description of Kurtz in this film that I feel is of any worth it tells us something that the men higher up in the military could not possibly begin to understand for in their eyes all Kurtz is doing is mad unhinged unsound evil for Kurtz it's necessary it's right it's what must be done yet he is in torment his mind is not one that does this out of some want and cruelty rather he does what needs to be done no matter the cost whether that be for others or for himself the rest of this video will be focused on drawing conclusions about the character of Kurtz from the dialog he provides himself during Willard's first interaction with Kurtz the dialogue is mostly personal between Willard and Kurtz but one thing he says the Willard in this first meeting stands out in particular have you ever considered any real freedoms freedoms from the opinions of others even the opinions of yourself he's broken free Kurtz has been freed freed from even his own opinion of himself what you think of him does not matter what he thinks of himself does not matter not especially the voice that surely is in the back of his head meekly calling to him and judging his actions none of that matters to him anymore all that matters is victory victory at any cost later on after Kurtz has delivered the severed head of chef on to Willard's lap we come to him in the temple reading a very famous poem called The Hollow Men by TS Eliot we're only given a few lines of the poem by Kurtz but these lines hold great importance this poem through influence from the heart of darkness among other things this poem along with the heart of darkness were two of the biggest inspirations for the film itself the lines we hear in the film from Kurtz are the following We Are The Hollow Men we are the stuffed men leaning together headpiece filled with straw alas our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rat's feet over broken glass in our dry cellar shape without form shade without color paralyzed force gesture without motion these lines are meant to give the viewer an accurate depiction of the state Kurtz has devolved into he has become a shade a ghost living on the mortal plane an invisible being not fit to ever take form again in the world as we know it a man whose voice is lost among the throng of the voices of the many a man who despite his best efforts is doomed the penultimate moment we see Kurtz before his death is perhaps the most pivotal moment in the entire film when it comes to understanding his character here he makes a speech to captain Willard I've seen Horrors horrors that you've seen but you have no right to call me a murderer you have a right to kill me you have a right to do that but you have no right to judge me it's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means horror horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror horror and moral terror are your friends if they are not then they are enemies to be feared they are truly enemies I remember when I was with special forces seems a thousand centuries ago we went into a camp to inoculate some children we'd left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio and this old man came running after us and he was crying he couldn't say we went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm there they were in a pile a pile of little arms and I remember I cried I wept like some grandmother I wanted to tear my teeth out I didn't know what I wanted to do and I want to remember it I never want to forget it I never want to forget it and then I realized like I was shot like I was shot with a diamond bullet through my forehead and I thought my god the genius of that the genius the will to do that perfect genuine complete crystalline pure and then I realized they were stronger than we because they could stand it these were not monsters these were men trained cadres these men who fought with their hearts who have families who have children who are filled with love that they had the strength the strength to do that if I had 10 divisions of those men then our troubles here would be over very quickly you have to have men who were moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling without passion without judgment without judgment because it's judgment that defeats us here is where at last we receive the full picture of Colonel Kurtz a man who would use violence in terror for the sake of the moral greater good a man torn down to his very core because of the things he feels he must do for Kurtz is above all in his eyes a moral man yet morality has abandoned him his final line of dialogue before his death is a testament to this we train young men to drop fire on people but their commanders won't allow them to write obscenities on their airplanes because it's obscene this is a man who wants to see the success of the institution he gave his life for a man who has lived with the inefficiency the inadequacy and the hypocrisy of that very institution for so long who has finally become broken and unable to stand it any longer a man who is seen felt and lived horror and above all a man who has turned to the very thing he despises in order to fight it shattered by all this this great man who's fallen so far is left with only one thing in his final moments [Music] mara

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 271,457

Rating: 4.9416094 out of 5

Keywords: Evil, Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando, Francis Ford Coppola, Heart of Darkness, Vietnam, Vietnam War, Horror, Terror, Military, Army, Movies, Cinema, Film, Analysis, Educational

Id: I1PRe9-8LxA

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019