Colonel Kurz

Apocalypse now. The opening scene of the movie, in which a drunken Army Captain, Benjamin Willard, is dancing maniacally to The Doors, punching his own reflection in the mirror before bleeding on the floor and crying, encapsulates of the corresponding film, if not the entire Vietnam war. Early on, the name of this mysterious Colonel Kurz is mentioned as a man that Sheen needs to kill. The next two hours of traversing hostile terrain is a slow drum-beat build until at last, the mysterious man himself appears before us. Colonel Kurz. With half his face covered in shadow, his appearance not only lives up to expectation, it exceeds it.

So, Colonel Kurz is an interesting character that it very valuable to try and emulate in writing. Firstly, because I have not come across much writing in which a character such as his is employed so expertly.

Agaisnt the backdrop of the Vietnam war, a Lietenant with a file filled with un-orthodox missions is set upon the task of finding and neutralizing the target Colonel Kurz. Within the first stanza of the movie, we are given the official reason for why Colonel Kurz has become a liability. A decorated and valuable asset to the American War machine, Kurz excelled at bringing the war to the Vietcong, with innumerable victories in battle, until one day, he turns. Apparent atrocities against established rules of war are given as reason enough to eliminate Colonel Kurz. As Sheen muses at the time, if that really is the only grounds to neutralise a fellow soldier, than most of the army should hang besides him. He understands that Colonel Kurz's transgressions must have exceeded depravity usually tolerated by the army. Whispers of cult-like strangeness in the shadows of the jungle are teased to Sheen and the audience, but nothing is verified. Kurz at this point is an unformed shadow in the back of all our minds. Sheen is given his mission, along with a diary of Kurz to help get into the mind of his target.

The entire movie up until Sheen reaches Kurz acts as a mind altering drug, an out of body experience meant to warp what the viewer should expect as normal behavior in the post-moral shores of the vietnam war. From