Revisionist History – Apocalypse Now

Features

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

Notable Cast Members: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford.

Summary: An adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now tells the story of Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), an Army Officer sent on a dangerous mission to Cambodia during the height of the Viet Nam War in order to assassinate rogue commando named Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a man who has built a stronghold and made himself a god among the native population around it. Along with the small boat crew taking him up the Nung River to his ultimate destination, Willard’s journey is one that goes deeper and deeper into the madness, until finally he comes face to face with both the very personification of the insanity caused by Viet Nam in Kurtz, and the darkest parts of his own soul.

Initial Thoughts: Looking at how I feel about this film now, it’s almost embarrassing to reveal how negative my initial impression of Apocalypse Now really was. My father, who had raised me on War films such as The Dirty Dozen and The Sands of Iwo Jima, had never really been a big fan of the movie, and the first time I saw it I pretty much agreed with his assessment. There were no heroes to get behind or a lot of adrenaline fueled action. There were just some disgruntled soldiers on a boat, and a never ending and seemingly tedious voiceover.

The first time I actually saw the movie was in an 11th grade classroom during a History course. To say that a Fullscreen, VHS copy on a 19-inch TV is not the optimum way of watching this film is a bit of an understatement. With the distractions of your normal classroom situation not helping in the least, the movie seemed slow and plodding, with performances ranging from insanely over the top to woefully underplayed. The film just seemed to go on and on and the level of depression that the movie inspired just seemed to have no end in sight until the final credits rolled.


Further Thoughts: So how did this film, which had disappointed me so thoroughly, somehow come to be one of my favorite movies? Well I could probably boil it down to one word; Redux. In 2001, Coppola re-released the film to theaters, with 49 minutes of extra footage, though it isn’t the extra scenes that really turned this film around for me. Perhaps more than any movie I have ever seen, Apocalypse Now is a must-see theater event to really be able to take it all in. Projected onto a giant screen with terrific sound, the movie is an overwhelming experience that grips you in its hold early on, and doesn’t let go until the final note of The Doors’ The End finally ring out over three hours later.

Also, as a lover of film, your tastes tend to expand quite a bit in the years in between your junior year of high school and your senior year of college. The second time I saw the film I’d seen as many classic films as I could get my hands on, so Coppola’s vision and what he was trying to get across weren’t as alien to me. I could see why his madhouse vision of Viet Nam really got to the essence of the war, and how it felt to be there. I was also able to finally see why he was never the same director after the picture was completed.

Illumination: Free from distraction and held captive in my theater seat for the entirety of the 3 hours and 20 minutes of the Apocalypse Now: Redux, all the nuances of Coppola’s masterpiece finally opened up to me. First up is the diligent and brave performance from Martin Sheen, as a warrior lost in his own personal abyss, and finally let loose by Army brass in order to terminate one of their own. I was shocked to learn later on that the film’s opening scene with Sheen was improvised and that the binge drinking on film was quite real. Even after he accidentally cut his hand on the shattered mirror, he insisted that Coppola keep going and the finished work ended up being one of the film’s signature moments. Rarely has despair captured on screen been so gorgeously real.


Other performances fall into place from Robert Duvall’s gung ho Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore to Marlon Brando’s gargantuan and almost spectral role as Colonel Kurtz, but the other real star of this picture is Coppola himself. Orchestrating one stunning sequence after another, this is a man at the height of his power within the artform of film. Take a look at how he’s able to capture the mood he’ll be able to sustain for the entire movie in the picture’s opening frames. That mood permeates everything about Apocalypse Now and makes you feel like you were really there in Viet Nam, even if this is the most surrealist vision of the war ever produced. Ranging from absurdist comedy to horrific human nightmares, there’s no place this film doesn’t go and all of it is superb. This is a picture that dredges the depths of the human heart, and Coppola is the man captaining the boat. We’re just along for the ride.

Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.