Apocalypse Now

Colonel Kurtz has disappeared within the jungle, with his troupe of fighting fiends ready to rumble, you've been tasked to take him out, but first you have to search and scout, along a river where the residents are disgruntled (to put it mildly). Lots of bloodshed, bullets, ballistics then flow, there's napalm too that conjures up a glow, many lives are lost and taken, in this hell where you're forsaken, but don't ask why - because nobody, really, knows.

Still a spectacular piece of filmmaking that demonstrates on many levels the destruction, physical and mental that armed conflict causes, and yet we perpetually fail to learn from past events.

Francis Ford Coppola, once the most praised and powerful director in Hollywood, entered the Southeast Asian jungle to make a movie. Armed with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", a small army of technicians, and a 15 million dollar budget, he emerged ten months later with thousands of hours of footage, two nearly dead actors and a nervous breakdown.

The cause of all this personal trauma was "Apocalypse Now", a film in which Martin Sheen is sent up a river and into the jungles of Vietnam to find Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a Special Forces officer who has gone insane.

Conrad's message was that savagery and apathy can wipe out the fragile gains of civilization within a single generation. A thin line stands between civilization and total collapse. Inject a little bit of barbarism, a little bit of chaos, and everything falls apart. Coppola's film tries to build on this, and states that America's inability to relinquish the trappings of civilization (ie- to get out of the boat), ensured its defeat. We lost because we weren't, as a nation, prepared to commit genocide. We committed horrors, but we weren't prepared to go all the way.

The biggest problem with "Apocalypse Now" is that it was written by John Milius, the pro-war, gun toting ultra conservative whom the Coen Brother's based their character Walter Sobchak (from "The Big Lebowski") on. At the end of Milius' script, Kurtz and Willard team up to fight America. They represent the warrior savage, free from hypocrisy but lost in the darkness.

Coppola, of course, found Milius' script largely silly. He removed Milius' violent ending and went in search of something more powerful. For some grand statement on war and human nature. But he found none. How could he? You can't paddle down a straight line for 10 months and then suddenly expect to reach a new destination.

Throughout the film, "Apocalypse Now" tells us one thing, but shows us something else. The Colonel Kilgores of the picture actually fight the war, whilst the powerful warrior God, Col Kurtz, does little beside chopping the limbs off natives or hiding in the shadows. Milius' script saw Kurtz as the hero. A wise and seasoned rebel warrior who sticks his fingers up to the hypocritical veneer of civilization, but Coppola seems unwilling to go down that route.

Coppola's "redux" cut of the film, though badly paced, is more interesting. It adds a French plantation scene which attempts to contrast the French period of colonial rule with America's war in Vietnam. The problem with this is that US involvement in Vietnam and the Colonial mindset of nineteenth century Europe, as seen in "Heart of Darkness", are completely different. American policy wasn't inspired by colonial aims but by ideological ones. The American experience in Vietnam was the opposite of Conrad's colonial experience. No wonder Coppola couldn't find a suitable ending. There isn't one.

Late in the film, Kurtz accuses his country of hypocrisy. They are unwilling to fully embrace the darkness. If he were given a small army of savages, he says, then the war would be over tomorrow. The implication is that the Vietnamese were nothing more than barbaric savages who should be dealt with, not civility, but primal brutality.

Worse yet, Coppola's "war" is one of gorgeous cinematography and exciting spectacle. When a Vietnamese village is raided, it feels more like the Death Star trench run than a savage massacre. Killgore himself is a figure of fun rather than the monster he should be. Milius' script painted a much darker character (hence kill and gore).

Still, "Apocalypse Now" may contain no truths about Vietnam or war in general, but it is a film absolutely dripping with passion. Like "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", "Apocalypse Now" is very much a Werner Herzog film. Herzog was a mad artist who wanted to lift a boat over a mountain. Why lift the boat over the mountain? No reason. He simply wanted to do it in the name of art!

Same thing with Coppola. He wanted to do "somthing" great. He went into the jungle, went insane and came out with a couple thousand hours of mad footage. What is the merit of this footage? The merit is in surviving the journey. In making it down the river and back out again.

And so what we have is a film about its creators. A film about the madness of the white man. The madness of the director. The madness of the crew. Ironically, the film's madness is all a result of indulgence. The indulgence of a staggering budget, studio leeway, accessible drugs, limitless resources and a giant ego. It's the shallowest kind of insanity. The insanity of unlimited power and a lack of boundaries.

8/10 - "Apocalypse Now" ultimately amounts to nothing more than a series of memorable set-pieces. These set pieces don't enrich one another or gel in any way. It's an incomplete film, and even Coppola admits that he didn't quite know what he was doing or tying to say. The film goes up the river but doesn't know why.

Far more interesting is "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse", a documentary shot in tandem with the film. As a study in ego-maniacal madness it's far more powerful than Coppola's film. Narrated by Coppola's wife, it's also very intimate and perceptive. It's also interesting to see how much Coppola relied on Brando's improvisational skills, hoping desperately that the great actor would whip up some kind of climax out of thin air. Brando, of course, was just in it for the huge pay cheque.

Though a failure, this film is worth multiple viewings.

As I stated above, I think that the 2000 version of the film ought to be treated separately. The Redux is not just a longer version. It contains two new and important scenes, and one of them, the "french" episode, adds a whole new touch to a classic movie, WITHOUT breaking the atmosphere or disturbing the overall picture. I remember as I saw the Redux for the first time, that my whole understanding of the war in Vietnam changed, and how I had to go to the library and get an update on a few things. Also it is interesting that Coppola chose the year 2000 for the longer Redux. My guess is that he feels that the movie is as important today as it was back in 1979. He even went to the trouble of making an excellent piece of art even better, in order to actually make all the old fans see the new stuff, and to present a whole new generation with a very controversial and strong comment on one of the most bloody wars in recorded history. The movie is thought-provoking indeed, but also it has a visually very beautifully composed screenplay. Capturing the madness and chaos of war the storyline is also filled with more or less obvious metaphors and philosophical or existential riddles. A friend of mine called it "the most philosophical of all movies" - perhaps an overstatement - in my opinion it is just a very good film about war and the politics of war. But I can see that there is plenty for everyone here. What I'm saying is that it's one of those movies that you are likely to hear distinctly different opinions about, and you are most probably going to think again and again about it. I've seen the Redux 5, 6 or 7 times, and it is always a puzzling experience. Highly recommended.

There are films we watch because they are good, even though they are painful for us. This is a film I saw one time. At that time I thought to myself, this is enough. It was painful to make that journey down the river, wondering what was around every corner. Then we meet the products of our own id impulses, as we are the enemy, our souls have been brought down to this. At the end of the river is the man who came before us, and we see the uselessness of the journey. It is the Heart of Darkness. There are death masters like Robert Duvall. There are those who can only hope to survive, but the war is the master. The Doors music as the napalm settles gently on the treetops and across the ground, sweeps us up gently. Meanwhile it is consuming the flesh of the Vietnamese people, as well as an occasional American soldier. The ancient Romans could not envision peace without war. We and much of the world seem to have embraced those tenets put forth some two thousand years ago. This film gets into the marrow.

I first saw APOCALYPSE NOW in 1985 when it was broadcast on British television for the first time . I was shell shocked after seeing this masterpiece and despite some close competition from the likes of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING this movie still remains my all time favourite nearly 20 years after I first saw it

This leads to the problem of how I can even begin to comment on the movie . I could praise the technical aspects especially the sound , editing and cinematography but everyone else seems to have praised ( Rightly too ) these achievements to high heaven while the performances in general and Robert Duvall in particular have also been noted , and everyone else has mentioned the stark imagery of the Dou Long bridge and the montage of the boat traveling upriver after passing through the border

How about the script ? Francis Ford Coppola is best known as a director but he's everyway a genius as a screenwriter as he was as a director , I said " was " in the past tense because making this movie seems to have burned out every creative brain cell in his head , but his sacrifice was worth it . In John Milius original solo draft we have a script that's just as insane and disturbing as the one on screen , but Coppola's involvement in the screenplay has injected a narrative that exactly mirrors that of war . Check how the screenplay starts off all jingoistic and macho with a star turn by Bill Kilgore who wouldn't have looked out of place in THE GREEN BERETS but the more the story progresses the more shocking and insane everything becomes , so much so that by the time reaches Kurtz outpost the audience are watching another film in much the same way as the characters have sailed into another dimension . When Coppola states " This movie isn't about Vietnam - It is Vietnam " he's right . What started off as a patriotic war to defeat communist aggression in the mid 1960s had by the film's setting ( The Manson trial suggests it's 1970 ) had changed America's view of both the world and itself and of the world's view of America

It's the insane beauty of APOCALYPSE NOW that makes it a masterwork of cinema and says more in its running time about the brutality of conflict and the hypocrisy of politicians ( What did you do in the Vietnam War Mr President ? ) than Michael Moore could hope to say in a lifetime . I've not seen the REDUX version but watching the original print I didn't feel there was anything missing from the story which like all truly great films is very basic . In fact the premise can lend itself to many other genres like a western where an army officer has to track down and kill a renegade colonel who's leading an injun war party , or a sci-fi movie where a UN assassin is to eliminate a fellow UN soldier who's leading a resistance movement on Mars , though this is probably down to Joseph Conrad's original source novel

My all time favourite movie and it's very fitting that I chose this movie to be my one thousandth review at the IMDb