and subsequent release, director Francis Ford Coppola was experiencing a Pluto opposition to his natal Sun. (see chart) Similarly, the real life experiential material and original serialization of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the story that provided the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, also occurred under a once-in-a-lifetime Pluto opposition of the Sun (and in this case, fittingly, Pluto opposite Mercury as well). (see chart; solar only) Although not the first choice for their roles, Marlon Brando (see chart) and Martin Sheen (see chart), the two male leads for the movie, have not only their natal Sun, but natal Moon in aspect to Pluto. (Martin Sheen with a Moon-Sun-Pluto triple conjunction and Marlon Brando with both the Sun and Moon in square aspect to Pluto.)* And finally, Jim Morrison, the singer-songwriter of the movie's musical lamentation, "The End"—full of snakes, death, and oedipal fantasy—also enjoyed his Sun and Moon in aspect to Pluto. (see chart)
Like Dead Man, Apocalypse Now is a journey. Under the pretense of a hero's quest, US Army Captain Willard (Sheen) is called upon to exterminate one Colonel Kurtz (Brando), who, according to military high command, reached and subsequently broke through his own sanity to organize his own splinter army in Cambodia. True to form of Joseph Campbell's conceptualization of the hero's journey, Sheen's Willard is swallowed by the "Belly of the Whale." As Campbell writes, "The hero…is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died."(4)
Willard is uncontrollably consumed up by the chaos of the Viet Nam war. The vast majority of the movie is spent as a negotiation of the rational, orderly, and controlled—as represented by a small PT boat cruising the Nung River—in relationship with the taboo, frenzied, irrational, destructive, and rejuvenating elements of nature and mankind, represented by all elements outside of the boat: the hidden snipers, the playboy bunnies, war, the crazed airborne division, Kurtz's army, and the jungle itself. It is outside of the boat where the division between sane and insane, leader and follower, and destruction and replenishment is blurred and ambiguous. Even with the filming itself, the division between entertainment-making and unbridled, threatening chaos became blurred. Of the filming Coppola stated, " There were times when I thought I was going to die, literally, from the inability to move the problems I had. I would go to bed at four in the morning in a cold sweat. " (5)
If the jungle is to represent man's own unconscious, then in Apocalypse Now it is seen as the ultimate Mysterium Tremendum, a force so powerful and destructive that annihilation is seen as the only option available from the point of detached observation. And yet the pull and persuasion remains. Even if rationally-logically-going full into the unconscious is insane, there is a near-compulsive allure of this terrain. Speaking to the most destructive potentials of the human phenomenon-war- the film's screenwriter, John Milius writes, " War is unspeakably attractive. People enjoy intensity. The human animal seems to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame." (6)
Apocalypse Now is a draining, exhausting, intense and compelling viewing. The film is utterly original and unlike anything that Coppola attempted before or after. There are other war films that equal Apocalypse Now's masterful performances and riveting storyline, however, arguably no war film has been so evocative of the horrors, intensity, and madness of war. Coppola's look into war is unapologetic and without remorse; Apocalypse Now simply renders a horrorific, but very really part, of the human shadow.
* It is worth noting that the collaboration of Francis Ford Coppola and Marlon Brando on the films The Godfather and Apocalypse Now occurred under similar transits to points in their birth charts. Both possessing Aries Sun signs, Coppola and Brando underwent the stimulating awakening of a Uranus opposition to the Sun during their career pinnacle of The Godfather. With Apocalypse Now, Coppola and Brando incurred the arguably more problematic but richer and deeper energies of a Pluto opposition to the natal Sun.
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