What is in our psychology that is so fragile it breaks down? What are the elements that begin and sustain an unraveling? Sometimes a cause can be pinpointed but more often not. And even an obvious experience, like war, provides a multitude of individual responses. Apocalypse Now provides great examples of how war can unravel an individual’s moral sensibility.

When you shoot a million feet of film, you can probably edit any movie you’d like from it. I’m certain there’s a way that, with the proper voiceover, Captain Ben Willard’s harrowing journey could have been recut as the story of a family man fighting his way for home.