There is little that can be said about Apocalypse Now that hasn’t already been repeated. It is unique amongst American films, an adaptation that took on a life of its own in a year-long blaze of frenetic, bipolar, fluid production in the Philippine Islands. That journey is well documented in Hearts of Darkness,a film where Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford’s wife, spends 90 minutes telling the tale of a film that never should have been made for all the concertina-wire barriers in the way of its completion. The production suffered the trials of Job, complete with acts of god (a typhoon destroyed nearly the entire production), health problems (Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack early in the filming), drug abuse on the set, and the time-robbing eccentricities of the supporting cast.
Hearts of Darkness was a play on Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness”, the novella that served as a loose framework for Apocalypse Now. During production, the film veered further and further from the original plan by necessity, distancing the two and giving the film a legacy all its own. Though both involve transit into the deep jungles where savagery is the norm, the film has a depth that seems to transcend anything put in print.
Apocalypse Now follows Captain Benjamin Willard, a Vietnam veteran who found life stateside to be too much, so he re-enlists. His first orders are to terminate, with extreme prejudice, the command of U.S. Colonel Walter Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando); the commander went rouge in Cambodia and began his own militia, becoming a thorn in the U.S. military’s side.
This mission puts Capt. Willard on a Navy PBR boat that meets up with the Ninth Cavalry, which airlifts the boat and crew to the mouth of the Nung River, and from there they enter Cambodia in search of Kurtz. By the time they find his camp, the number of the boat’s crew was violently reduced to three.
At the horrifying compound, Willard allows his capture, during which time Kurtz treats the Captain’s body as a prisoner, shackled and subjected to abuse; but his mind almost as a lover, courted with personal readings from the Colonel’s twisted philosophies, deeply held secrets whispered in his ear. At the same time, a crazed journalist played with psychedelic intensity by Dennis Hopper serves, strangely enough, as a thread of sanity amidst the surrounding carnage. His run-on ramblings help to smooth out an otherwise incongruous ending.
The reasons for his special treatment are never truly clear, and Willard finally takes advantage of circumstances to break free and complete his mission, to an unexpected reaction. Only him and the young surfer Lance (Sam Bottoms) survived, and together they leave on the PBR to return home. As the film goes black, we hear, once again, Colonel Kurtz’ final words: “Oh the horror, the horror.”
The visual presence of the film is pure genius, driven masterfully by Director of Photography Vittorio Storaro. Its richness, sadly, cannot be matched by the best television at the highest bandwidth. The Netflix version, seemingly mastered for streaming, still lacks the depth to see the details in the shadows, such as in a real theater or even in some top-notch blu-ray mastering. Even so, the iconic imagery cannot be ignored.
When the documentary was released, it revealed that large chunks of the original edit were cut – primarily to reduce the length from more than three hours. The resulting two-and-a-half hour film made it to the 1979 opening and became one of the most epic war films ever made. This newfound interest was likely the inspiration behind Apocalypse Now Redux, where most of that "lost" footage was restored.
Redux is a wonderful illustration on how good editing can make or break a film. An entire section that was removed happens in an aristocratic French plantation that is well-enough armed to be secure in a war zone. In this breath of civilization amongst the savage jungle, many questions are answered about the character of Captain Willard.
Coppola shot more than 200 hours of film, and at first seemed driven to include as much as he could. Redux, clocking in at nearly three and a half hours, is a gnarly beast to watch, and a true competitor for Ambien. But at the end, you realize what makes the original release version so remarkable was how Captain Willard remained a mystery throughout, in spite of being the storyteller.
Apocalypse Now is in Willard’s voice, which tells everything about the story but reveals nothing about the person. The audience is forced to watch events unfold through the eyes of an enigma, with no frame of reference other than his voice in narration. Sheen says very little on camera, but gives enough narration for an ambiguous context that leaves our own minds to fill in the blanks. Redux steals that mystery, giving Willard a context and a personality, mostly revealed during the 30-minute segment in the plantation’s chateaux. There, Willard and the residents argue philosophies of war and peace, and he speaks freely, revealing much about the man behind the gaze. He is now just a man, no longer an ideal, who eats, drinks, makes love and has feelings.
There are other telling edits that show the decisive path Coppola took when it came to turning Willard from a steely-while-working-yet-fun-and-passionate character, to a cold, passive observer through which we experience, in its entirety, the horrors of war. For instance, one scene in the boat was cut short for Apocalypse Now, otherwise it would have revealed Willard getting chummy with a few of the crew and cutting a big smile. The personality evisceration was a necessity. It transformed the movie from using the novella as way to explain the Vietnam war, to a greater story that tries to explain all war on a universal scale.
The edits made the film so strong and self-reliant that credits were unnecessary. By law, an intellectual property must have a title upon it; hence the graffiti that appears in white paint on a rock at the Kurtz compound, declaring “Apocalypse Now!”, a vision of Kurtz’ stated endorsement of nuclear weapons in conventional warfare.
Had Redux been released first, Apocalypse Now would be a mere footnote as one of the first major Hollywood films to deal with the Vietnam War, and Coppola would have lost the cache he earned with his two Godfather films (as well as a sizable amount of money). Instead, we are thankfully left to peer through Captain Willard’s eyes, which project the appearance of childlike innocence while hiding the cold and efficient killing machine within, but questioning it all.
Ratings: Apocalypse Now, 9 of 10 of the world's most awesome pizza pies
Apocalypse Now Redux, 3 of 10 pig knuckles
Hearts of Darkness, 7 of 10 aluminum ingots
Pain Level: 4
Medication: 100mg Lyrica, 20 mg oxycodone
TO WATCH APOCALYPSE NOW ON NETFLIX, CLICK HERE
TO WATCH APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX ON NETFLIX (and learn to hate a film you loved), CLICK HERE
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