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Why has Apocalypse Now been criticized for its portrayal of Vietnamese people?

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Francis Ford Coppola, with a beard, sits on a camera dolly surrounded by crew and actors on the set of The Godfather: Part II, with storefronts in the background. — Francis Ford Coppola American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola won the Oscar for best director for *The Godfather: Part II* (1974).

Apocalypse Now has faced criticism for its treatment of Vietnamese people, with detractors arguing that the film reproduces the racist perspective found in Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, upon which the film is loosely based.1

Critics contend that, much like the original novella—which has been criticized for depicting Africans primarily as a backdrop for the interior journeys of white characters—the film fails to provide depth to its Vietnamese subjects. By centering the narrative almost exclusively on the American experience of the Vietnam War, the film is seen by some as marginalizing the people most affected by the conflict, effectively using them only to frame the psychological descent of the film's white protagonists.1