What was 'Apocalypse Now' really about?

The main theme of 'Apocalypse Now, Redux!'

"The deeper Willard goes up the Nung River and the more he disconnects himself from reality and his humanity the more he connects with Kurtz. Everything Willard experiences on his journey from the film crew to the usage of drugs, the playboy bunnies, rock and roll, and even the French rubber plantation are metaphors for Kurtz’ disconnection and escape from not only society and his command (or God) but his disconnection from reality. This explains Kurtz escaping to live in a remote jungle which is a metaphor for his disconnection from reality and humanity and the liberation of his animal side. Captain Willard, at the beginning of the film, is himself disconnected from humanity because he’d rather be in the jungles of Vietnam than to go home to his wife. This is the meaning of the montage at the beginning where we see Willard in his room and images of a burning jungle. When he gets his mission to find Kurtz, he gets to know Kurtz, sees what he saw, and, in the process, Willard reconnects with reality and his own humanity because out of all the people he’s killed for the CIA, Kurtz is the only one he learns to identify with and gets to know by what he sees traveling up the Nung River. 

By the end of the film, we see Kurtz as a god over the Montagnards, the indigenous people of the Central Highlands. This jungle represents man’s basic nature, our lowest and most basic urges and desires that disconnects us from humanity, God, civilization and morality. This disconnection explains things that seem out of place in the film like the film director telling soldiers not to look into the camera and the weird behavior of Colonel Kilgore who breaks out his surfboard to surf in the middle of a war-zone. 

The “dark side” the general at Nha Trang refers to is the lower levels of our nature, our hidden desires that reveal themselves when we completely disconnect ourselves from both reality and humanity.

To understand the transformation Kurtz undergoes, going from US soldier who follows orders (or obeys others) to becoming a god in a remote Cambodian jungle, a good analogy would be a woman blessed with beauty. Women are biologically designed to attract men, which gives them a certain amount of power over men. But this power in possession of a woman with exceptional beauty is amplified and, without proper moral and spiritual restraints, could be utilized negatively. Men (and women) worship beauty.  This is what I believe transforms Kurtz into a God. He is exceptionally trained and talented (and he knows this), has won every medal one can imagine. His superiority over others (and even his own commanders) is what leads to his corruption, as the General at Nha Trang points out “We all have a breaking point,” and “It must be tempting to be God to these primitives.” This is Kurtz’s weakness, his pulling away from moral restraints, spirituality, and God and succumbing to his primal nature or animal side as described by Madame Sarrault at the French Plantation.

At the end of the film, Willard kills Kurtz as a ritual sacrifice for the crimes he committed. This sequence starts out as 1) baptism where Willard rises out of the water, his face done in tribal paint to look like an animal; 2) Kurtz offers himself up to be killed as the natives sacrifice a water buffalo to their god; 3) Willard leaves the jungle, or the life of an assassin, and returns up the Nung River to civilization meaning that he is reconnecting with his humanity and God. The final image in the film is Willard's painted animal-like face superimposed with the face of the native's statue of God, which is a metaphor for Willard reconnecting with God or command.