Music and sound in Apocalypse Now Redux

Artistic film parameter: Music

There is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
(Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now Redux)

Indeed, Francis Ford Coppola has infused music into his form of storytelling, acting as a compliment to the themes of insanity and horror of the Vietnam war. Apocalypse Now opens with a song by The Doors that is ironically but not surprisingly named "The End", together with slow-moving images, it creates sort of a “cinematic hallucination”, and thus forewarns its audience immediately that this is not any other war film, but one that explores the darkness and madness of the human mind. The song returns again in the ending of the ...