The most iconic scene in Apocalypse Now is the one in which Lt. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) hangs speakers below his military choppers and plays Wagner’s infamous theme from the Ring cycle, the “Ride of the Valkyries,” as his air cavalry destroys a quiet and peaceful Vietnamese village. As one writer has argued, this scene “etched” this particular Wagner melody “into our brains forever” (Wilson).
“Ride of The Valkyries,” was composed by the German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto, which is the text of the opera, and the music for each of his stage works. This piece was initially played at the beginning of Act III of the opera Die Walkure, a German opera first performed in 1870 about how Valkyrie Brünnhilde — the daughter of the gods’ leader Wotan – protected Wotan’s mortal son Siegmund with great sacrifices.
To understand the music better, let’s first look at the notes of it on the page. As figure 1 shows, we could instantly realize that most of the notes are trending upwards. They look like waves that accumulate their internal power and eventually release all the power when reaching the climax. Looking closer, we could see that most notes are repetitive, and are played in a tempo of 96 beats per minute, which is moderately fast speed. Having notes grouped and repetitive creates an apparent rhythm that the audience could easily follow. The tempo of 96 is 1.5 times faster than the clock speed, which creates a sense of nervousness and anxiety because it breaks the pace people live with – which is the clock speed. All these factors imply that Wagner desires to let the audience feel a sense of impending danger.
Since the song was initially used in opera, it not only includes orchestral accompaniment but also has vocal parts. The vocal chorus of the music is made up of female voices, and we can hear that the song does not have any lyrics. Thus, the singer is expressing her emotions purely using instrumental sounds created by her voice. Also, it is apparent that the singer’s notes consistently remain at a very high pitch. The notes are also continuous so that the listeners could feel and follow the flow of the song.
Returning to the way the music is used in Apocalypse Now, while the high-pitched female tone maintains there is a high angle wide range shot of the Vietnam defense line (as shown in figure 2) when we hear the music. Accompanied by the female voice, the screen shows a first-person shot from the perspective of a bird, soaring through the Vietnam defense line. With the emotionally depressed vocal sound, the song feels like a woman lamenting how fragile the Vietnamese defense line is. The audiences feels that they become a part of the movie – that they are the bird flying up and down in the war zone with the flow of the music.
The music of the “Ride of the Valkyries” has a unique layered structure. There is a clear division between the string instruments, the vocal, and the brass instruments. For the brass part, trombone and French horn are the main instruments used in the piece, and their sound is majestic and thick. The violin, which fulfills the string instruments element, produces a very high pitched and acute sound. The vocal remains emotional. Using the combination of these instruments, Coppola brings the audience to the emotional peak. Instead of watching the scene, the viewers can feel the scene.
The different layers of the music also relate to the events shown on the screen. In the landing process, whenever the display focuses on the Vietnamese side, the primary instruments in the “Ride of Valkyries” are the string instruments and the female vocal; whenever the screen is about the US armies, the brass instruments play a larger role in terms of volume and rhythm. This pattern implies that when the scenes are about the front battle between the Vietnamese and the US army, all the three instruments, by logic, should be mixed in balance. However, the actual edition of the musical composition is that the brass instruments dominate over the string instruments and the vocal when the scenes come to the confronting battles between two sides. Accompanying the “Ride of the Valkyries,” we see the US army dominating the front line in the movie; they win the battle as easily.
Coppola mastered the cross editing between the music and the cinematography features so that two parts vividly interact with one another. However, there are more implicit meanings in the ways Coppola used the song in the scene. If we focus only on the orchestration of the instruments, the brass instruments are much stronger in terms of volume than the string and vocals, which already implies the fact that the US army overpowers the Vietnamese troops. More importantly, the sound reminds us of things that are related to itself. In this scene, the US army is slaughtering the Vietnamese and destroying their coastal defense line. Playing the background music composed by a German composer, the audience might connect the Vietnam War with Germany in the Second World War because Wagner is known to be a Nazi sympathizer.
But the song has different meanings for the two different sides. For the US armies, this song is their sound of victory. We could see a change in the emotion of the soldiers before and after the song is played. As shown in figure 3, in the beginning, soldiers were tired, nervous, and did not have any facial expressions. The audience could feel that the US soldiers are poorly motivated from this slightly low angle shot. However, as Kilgore said “Yeah, I use Wagner. It scares the hell out of the slopes,” the “Ride of Valkyries” starts. It is almost instant that their morale was lifted. Chef shakes his head with the music, and Kilgore flexes his muscle and gives a pose of power.
However, for the Vietnamese villagers, the song represents death from above. After the director makes an abrupt switch to the Vietnamese side, the background music halts, and the village is quiet and harmonious: children are playing in the playground, and adults are farming. For them, the “Ride of Valkyries” seems to be a harmony of death. The volume of the song is initially almost inaudible. However, as a Vietnamese soldier rushed into the playground and announced the imminent invasion of the US army, the volume gradually increases, and eventually reaches its peak. For the Vietnamese, the song means that the horrifying US armies are getting closer, and their death is approaching.
The onscreen and off screen uses of the “Ride of Valkyries” are worth discussing. This sound is both diegetic –which means that people in the movie can hear the music — and non-diegetic, which means that only the audience could listen to the soundtrack. At first, the sound is indeed diegetic because there is a closeup of an amplifier showing that the music is played on the helicopter. This also implies that the changes in moral of the soldiers are directly caused by the song.
However, after the attack is launched, and the machine guns start firing, the soundtrack is still there. At this point, the sound is non-diegetic because the noise of the bombs and guns would be too loud that the sound would become inaudible and the characters in the movie can no longer hear the music. However, from the perspective of the audience, the volume of the soundtrack remains unchanged. The reason why the director keeps the sound is that he wants to highlight the intensity of the fighting and maintain a general feeling of anxiety throughout the landing scene. Therefore, the audiences could better feel the ruthlessness of the Vietnam War shown in this scene.
The “Ride of Valkyries” also builds tension in the scene. Coppola used a close-up to shoot the surfing board (figure 5) that is attached under the helicopter when the sound “Ride of The Valkyries” is playing. When a director uses close-up, he wants to emphasize the presence of certain objects. However, there is no denying that the surfboard is utterly unrelated to the war. Surfing boards have connotations of entertainment and relaxing. Since we have discussed in the previous part that this background music highlights the intensity of the war, showing the audience the surfing board seems to be a self-controversial setup. Nevertheless, the director intelligently combines these two things so that the audience will question the real intention of the Vietnam War, highlighting that the American army is not clear about its purpose in the war, showing the moral conflicts of the Vietnam War.
Apocalypse Now’s sound director Walter Murch also stressed the reasons for using Wagner in the landing scene in a documentary about Apocalypse Now. Usually, when the army wants to land on the coast, they would launch the fight at night so that they could stealthily approach the enemy and win the battle. However, in Apocalypse Now, not only did the American army launch during the day time, they were playing music before the arrival to inform the Vietnamese their presence. According to Walter, the film wants to express that firstly, the American armies are over-confident about the war. Secondly, the film underscores that wherever the Americans have been, their influence is a big production.
Looking closer at the context of the “Ride of the Valkyries” in the opera, we can feel the sense of irony Coppola wanted to create. In the original story, the Valkyries are the nine warrior-maidens of German mythology, bringing heroes killed in the battle back to Valhalla. The song was made to laud the glorious heroes returning home. However, we can easily tell that the troops of the American army are not the legends the original piece of music depicts.
Who, then, are Valkyries? It turns out that the Vietnamese woman who throws a grenade into the helicopter (figure 4) shares the most similarities with the Valkyries. This Vietnamese woman is brave because she dares to sacrifice her own life to combat the enemy. She is smart because she used camouflage to get close to the helicopter. She is strategic because she knew that helicopters are the key to transportation. In fact, this Vietnamese fighter is the only strong, capable independent woman in the film. She is a Valkyrie. In a subtle way, Coppola used “The Ride of the Valkyeries” to honor these Vietnamese woman warriors.
The “Ride of the Valkyries” scene in Apocalypse Now is often interpreted as the scene that shows the dominating power of the US military. But this analysis has suggested that the “Ride of the Valkyries” shows that the Vietnamese are, in fact, the fearless Valkyries who protect their families from invasions. Since we know that in the original opera the Valkyries eventually won, Coppola successfully foreshadows that although the American troops occupied the Vietnam coastline, the Vietnamese are the Valkyries who win the war in the end.
