Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece “Apocalypse Now” displays an unusual sensitivity in selecting existing musical pieces to match the action onscreen. Certainly, the bookending of the film by The Doors’ song “The End” prepares the viewer for the senseless, surreal armageddon that follows. However, it is the use of Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” to accompany Kilgore’s helicopter attack that is the film’s most lasting legacy.
Much of the music in this film is actually a part of the action, and “Ride of the Valkyries” is no different. Here, Kilgore has the piece blasting from the speakers mounted in the helicopters. He claims the Wagnerian bombardment is psychological – that it scares their opponents, while invigorating his own soldiers. Nevertheless, the soaring classical accompaniment seems disconnected from the action at first. It feels too refined, too academic. However, as the helicopters descend into the forests of Vietnam, the music slowly builds to a climax that is awe-inspiring, even terrifying. The swirling strings that make up the Valkyries’ leitmotif spin and spin like the rotors of Kilgore’s choppers. In the opera, the Valkyries are mounting their horses to descend from the clouds, across the rainbow bridge, into the forest to carry brave souls into heaven. Kilgore’s helicopters descend from the orange cloudy sky to land on a beach filled with the multicolored smoke of smoke grenades. Kilgore, leaving his helicopter with the swagger and assurance of an immortal, calls in an airstrike, raining death down onto the Vietnamese. By playing “Ride of the Valkyries” to announce his arrival, Kilgore has made a Valkyrie of himself, as well.
Unintentionally, Kilgore is also conflating himself with Nazi Germany. Richard Wagner was an idol of Adolf Hitler, and Hitler even took Wagner’s grandsons under his wing while he lived in Bayreuth. Many ceremonies of the Third Reich were carefully orchestrated to Wagner. Hitler, like Kilgore, found Wagner’s stirring music could provoke both feelings of patriotism from his followers and fear from his enemies. Coppola’s use of “Ride of the Valkyries” thus calls to mind two apocalypses: the holocaust of World War II, as well as the Norse Twilight of the Gods.
