Megalopolismade a big, divisive splash at Cannes this year, but that wasn’t the first time that visionary director Francis Ford Coppola brought a film there that sparked controversy. Thirty-five years ago, Coppola presented one of the greatest movies ever made from what was (and still is) one of the most troubled productions in filmmaking history: Apocalypse Now. The seminal war movie also happens to be one of the most quotable of all time, which Coppola largely attributes to screenwriter John Milius. As Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and his squad snake up a river towards Cambodia to kill Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), such iconic lines as “Charlie don’t surf!” not only serve as scathing indictments on America’s war in Vietnam but also dig to the core of humankind’s darkest and most inherently self-destructive recesses.
Aside from a handful of especially famous quotes, there are so many other tremendous lines that it’s difficult to name the best. Do these lines serve their purpose so clearly that someone who’s never seen the movie can probably understand them without context, or do they remain enigmatic even when watching them being delivered? Well, both can be equally effective. Essentially, when put into context, the best lines in Apocalypse Now convey the insanity, contradiction, needless destruction, and emotional toll that the Vietnam War created while suggesting the profound mental and emotional effect it had on whoever delivers it.
Apocalypse Now
Release Date August 15, 1979
Director Francis Ford Coppola
Runtime 153 minutes
Writers Joseph Conrad , John Milius , Francis Ford Coppola , Michael Herr
10 “But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.”
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen)
Image via United Artists
Throughout Apocalypse Now’s troubled narrative, Willard becomes so detached from himself that things like fear of death and anxiety towards the unknown, which come naturally to most people, shrink behind the shadow of apathy and curiosity. In the wake of Chief Phillips’s (Albert Hall) death, a voice-over starts describing Willard’s feelings as the boat passes a disturbing, ancient-looking ceremonial site of skulls and flames. Then, the camera shows Willard tearing up the photos and documents he’d been given about Kurtz.
At this point, it seems he’s learned everything he possibly could for someone who hasn’t met Kurtz in the flesh. So when he says that he feels “the desire to confront him” much more than fear, it seems that the connection between Willard and the mysterious colonel has grown to the point where he wants to understand him more than anything else. Perhaps he even thinks of him as a predecessor. Even though the voice-over is past tense, the viewer is more unsure than ever about whether the captain is going to carry out his orders, let the colonel go, or join him.
9 “The horror…the horror…”
Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando
Image via United Artists
These are Kurtz’s last words as he lies on his back on the floor, murdered by a man he could have easily murdered himself. This happens after parallel shots of Kurtz getting hacked to death and a cow sharing the same fate. Therefore, this strange aftermath carries a ritualistic intensity that depicts the idolatry and primordial instinct for violence that the film conveys. The audience is haunted by Kurtz’s profile as he stares up, whispering, “The horror…the horror,” which can refer to anything and everything.
This line appears again in the film’s final moments, as what’s left of the crew sails out of Kurtz’s territory. It’s night, raining, and the movie blends the image of an old statue, the image of Willard’s troubled expression in camouflage, and a helicopter from long before. Then, the movie fades to black as viewers listen to the rain and Kurtz, who comes across as an invisible, hellish force from the darkest corner of human nature. It just goes to show how two words can say more than two hundred.
8 “The tide doesn’t come in for six hours! You want to wait here for six hours?”
Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall)
Image via United Artists
Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) is dead-set on riding the waves with surfing aficionado Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), even in the middle of an obviously dangerous battle. He tries to tell Lance that the waves are breaking in a way that allows one surfer to break left while another one breaks right simultaneously. But Lance, clearly not as comfortable with all the explosions, thinks they need the tide to come up.
This heavily satirical conversation is hilarious as it is, but Kilgore’s reply is so funny that Coppola even has everyone but Duvall duck for cover so that Kilgore can stand alone in the frame as he says it. In further preparation for this line, the camera swerves to a low-angle shot that makes him look more powerful and removes everyone else from view, emphasizing his epic retort. His insistence on having fun at the worst possible time sums up his stunningly reckless approach to war. The great Robert Duvall has a ball with the line, further increasing its impact.
7 “There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.”
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen)
Image via Paramount Pictures
Told through voice-over as Captain Willard is about to receive the details of his new mission, the man’s reflection on this adventure that the audience doesn’t know the details of lets them understand that it’s a harrowing one. Calling this story a “confession” also makes the viewer wonder what kinds of crimes Willard is going to commit. At the same time it also allows viewers to somewhat sympathize with him ahead of time since he seems to understand all too well that he has done wrong.
More importantly, this line from the future introduces the idea that Willard and Colonel Kurtz are inextricably linked. As the movie continues, the viewer will find Willard both witnessing atrocities and reading about Kurtz reacting to apparently similar dysfunction in this controversial war. Willard, who already starts the movie with plenty of PTSD and detachment, becomes more detached and empathetic toward Kurtz. Each shares a profound disillusionment with the United States military, which raises the question: how much like Kurtz will he become?
6 “Charlie don’t surf!”
Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall)
image via United Artists
Willard needs help passing through an area, but it’s risky. Luckily, once one of Colonel Kilgore’s men starts talking about how great the waves are there, that’s all the colonel needs to hear. There’s a six-foot peak; it’s tube-city; it’s exactly what he’s been looking for. Suddenly, Kilgore is thrilled to escort Willard and his team. This scene is dark humor at its finest, showing how this man cares more about surfing than safety.
That one guy with the wimpy voice tries to remind the colonel that it’s “hairy” there at Charlie’s Point, and Kilgore’s impassioned reply is fantastic to this day. Two other things make this line so effective: the sound of the helicopters turning on during the end of this conversation, communicating that Kilgore’s already made up his mind to ride there tomorrow; and the fact that this is the scene’s final line. In the next shot, the soundtrack and setting are overwhelmed by helicopters blowing caution to the wind.
5 “I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream. That’s my nightmare.”
Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando)
Image via United Artists
Marlon Brando’s stellar delivery — the pauses, the inflections — proves incredibly convincing in this introduction to Colonel Kurtz. These words are how both Captain Willard and the audience indirectly meet the rogue colonel, whose voice hovers over the jungle odyssey to follow. What’s more jarring is that Willard and the men showing him this tape are eating around a table as they listen. Kurtz repeats his image of the snail with greater intensity during a closeup of dead shrimp: “Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor…and surviving.”
Coppola wisely puts a photo of a younger Kurtz in Willard’s hand as the recording plays. The captain and the viewer try (and inevitably fail) to reconcile this respectful image of a soldier with the mad rambling of a lunatic way off in Cambodia. The look on the general’s (G.D. Spradlin) face, straight at the camera, is one of dejection and mourning for a man he used to know. When he explains that Kurtz’s methods have become “unsound,” everyone believes him.
4 “Suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll—he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, ‘Do you know that if is the middle word in life’?”
The photojournalist (Dennis Hopper)
Image via United Artists
The photojournalist (a terrific Dennis Hopper), who merely introduces himself as an American, tells Willard that you “don’t speak to the colonel;” you listen to him instead. The photojournalist tries to describe what it’s like to be around Kurtz; you can say hello, and he’ll walk right past you, then randomly grab you and deliver a pearl of wisdom. Then, the photojournalist starts rambling almost too quickly for anyone to keep track of what he’s saying.
Not like it matters; it’s all nonsense. Even the photojournalist doesn’t get what it’s supposed to mean, but it sounds deep enough to capture his imagination and make him think there’s something to it: wisdom that a man smarter than himself can understand. Perhaps something about the ambiguity and fragility of the human condition. In any case, this guy serves merely as a conduit for his leader. Watching the photojournalist quote Kurtz with his own distinctly frantic energy (the opposite of Kurtz) is fascinating. Like the recording from earlier, it helps make us feel that Kurtz is there even when he’s not.
3 “And I thought, my god, the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that…”
Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando)
Image via United Artists
This monologue depicts the exact moment Kurtz reached his breaking point: when he and his battalion in Special Forces gave some children polio shots and then discovered the extreme lengths the Vietnamese would go to prevent what they perceived as some kind of harmful conspiracy. All the inoculated arms were chopped off. After crying “like some grandmother,” Kurtz says he felt “like I was shot with a diamond: a diamond bullet right through my forehead.”
He then describes the beauty in that pile of little arms as his face appears and disappears into the darkness of his room. Part of what makes Apocalypse Now one of the greatest war movies of all time is how it illustrates a war’s effects on those who bear witness to it. Especially insanity, which is never better described than through Marlon Brando’s very careful, deliberate articulation of every ad-libbed word he says. The viewer not only hears Kurtz’s admiration for those who do whatever is necessary; they feel it, too.
2 ‘You’re an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.”
Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando)
Image via United Artists
The entire film leads up to this first meeting between Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, during which Kurtz asks if his visitor is an assassin. Willard counters that he’s a soldier. Up until this point, Kurtz’s face has been either shrouded in darkness or looking down into a bowl of water as he washes his face. But now Kurtz picks up his visage and pokes his bald head out of the darkness, staring straight into not just Willard’s eyes but the audience’s, too. It’s unnerving.
Colonel Kurtz then delivers his poetic reply: “You’re neither.” He then calls him “an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill,” which seems to knock the importance of the mission down a few pegs. Basically, Kurtz is telling Willard that he’s just doing what he’s been told and that his actions bear little relevance in the grand scheme of things; in a way, he’s not far off. Though Brando was notoriously difficult and expensive to work with, this line alone proves he was worth it.
1 “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall)
Image via United Artists
Screenwriter John Milius thought this line would be cut for being over the top. Instead, it wound up becoming one of the most famous in cinema history. By taking a casual, mundane activity like drinking coffee and replacing it with a destructive weapon like napalm, Colonel Kilgore betrays his twisted satisfaction with bombing the enemy. Robert Duvall’s masterful delivery sounds neither angry nor vengeful; his enthusiasm is just the same as if he were talking about coffee. Or, as the colonel says: “It smells like…victory.” This approach is key to making such crazy, self-incriminating dialogue work so well.
The choreography of this scene is significant, too. As the napalm smoke surrounds everyone, Kilgore stands mighty and confident at the center of the frame: fearless, shirtless, invincible, eventually kneeling to the others’ level. The colonel states that nothing in the world smells like napalm, giving it an otherworldly quality that fits with this war’s very bizarre and yet extremely normalized kind of evil. No line better encapsulates the daily atrocities and the men in charge of them that comprise this entire narrative, and that is why it’s arguably the best of them all.
NEXT: ‘The 10 Highest-Grossing Francis Ford Coppola Movies, Ranked’