‘DEATH'S DREAM KINGDOM’: THE REPRESENTATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN APOCALYPSE NOW

Abstract

The film Apocalypse Now, first released in 1979, is now recognized as Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's 19th century novella Heart of Darkness, the film tells the story of a journey upriver into a threatening interior where the protagonists face the challenge of attack from an unseen and savage enemy, disease, madness and death. The film can be ‘read’ from a number of different perspectives: as representing the USA's conflict with Vietnam, as a journey into man's soul or, from a psychoanalytic perspective, as representing the unconscious. Derived from this perspective, the author questions why Apocalypse Now continues to have such resonance. Working with Matte Blanco's theory of the mind which he saw as manifesting a form of logic, and which he called bi-logic, the author interrogates three significant scenes from the film and argues that they can be understood to represent increasingly deeper levels of the unconscious. It is this evocation which makes the film unforgettable.