The Biggest Nothing in History

“When you ask me why you want to stay here…we want to stay here because it’s ours. It belongs to us. It keeps our family together. I mean, we fight for that. While you Americans—you are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.”

So says the French rubber plantation owner Hubert de Marais (played by Christian Marquand) to Captain Ben Willard (Martin Sheen). While taking a day off from work I took the 3+ hours to watch Apocalypse Now Redux after recently reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

This one line in the movie, taken from a scene not included in the original cut of the film, made me think about what makes a just war and at what point “defense of possession” become a legitimate rationale for using deadly force.

The French colonials claimed they had moved to an area of Indochina where no one was living when they first arrived several generations earlier. They then brought rubber trees from Brazil and began their plantations. The de Marais family then had to fight off several different enemies (including VC and Americans at different points in time) to protect their land.

One could say the VC (or other Vietnamese groups) had a greater claim to that land than the French…but Hubert would vehemently disagree. His family took what was nothing and had brought forth products used the world over. This story parallels similar actions taken by immigrants to other countries. They move into land that is unoccupied, create something new and useful to others, then for a variety of reasons are encroached upon by native populations (relatively speaking) who want those means of production or that land or simply to destroy what’s beautiful.

It’s a heavy scene that can spawn a lot of discussion. I hope to riff more on this topic in future posts.

Side Notes:

•  I believe every white woman in Apocalypse Now bares their breasts. At least a majority. But, hey! It was the 70s!
• After watching a steady diet of movies made post 2000, to turn on something like ANR reminds one how mesmerizing, creative, and enriching the cinema can be. It also reminds one how supremely talented (and somewhat crazy) Francis Coppola was in his glory days.
• "It smelled like slow death in there." -Capt. Willard
• Marlon Brando as Kurtz first appears on screen at the 2'37" point in a 3'15" movie.