11th Favorite Movie - Apocalypse Now

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Fresh off the success of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola had to be feeling pretty sure of himself. He had just directed two of the most critically praised and financially successful movies of all time and must have felt that he could take on the biggest challenge. So he did. For his next project, he took Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness (which some said was impossible to put into film) and set it during the Vietnam war. His friend George Lucas was set to direct, Warner Brothers would finance it, and another masterpiece in line with the Godfather films would be made. And a masterpiece was made. But it didn't come about as expected. His wife's documentary film Hearts of Darkness chronicles the making of Apocalypse Now and includes some of these tidbits:

*George Lucas, who was going to direct it at first, bowed out after American Graffitti became a hit, so Coppola stepped in to direct. This supposedly resulted in some bitterness between the two men.

*Warner Brothers refused to finance the film because Coppola wanted to shoot in Vietnam, during the war. So they shot in the Philippines instead, but Coppola wound up financing the film entirely by himself anyways so he could have complete control over it

*The helicoptors they used were on loan from President Ferdinand Marcos who kept having to get them back so they could be used in actual combat

*Shooting was supposed to last 6 weeks, but wound up lasting over a year. Harvey Keitel was originally cast to play the lead role, but two weeks into shooting, they decided to go with Martin Sheen instead, who suffered a heart attack during production and was battling alcoholism. The first scene was shot on his 36th birthday after he had been drinking all day. Sheen says he never intended to break the mirror, he was drunk and was improvising and urged Coppola to keep the camera rolling. Brando showed up overweight and didn't know any of his lines. A typhoon destroyed a lot of the sets and pushed back shooting schedules. 200 hours of film were shot, and it took almost 2 years to edit.

Somehow, amidst all of this chaos - perhaps because of this chaos - one of the greatest films of all time was made. Most of the characters in Apocalypse Now are insane, so maybe the insane shooting conditions actually helped.

The story is simple: Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is called on to travel from Saigon into Cambodia by boat to assassinate U.S. Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has gone insane. Along the way he meets a score of colorful characters, played by Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishbourne (he lied and said he was 17 at the time of filming but was actually only 14!) , and Robert Duvall, who steals the show as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. The movie has an incredible drawing power and makes the viewer feel the characters' fear, insanity, and longing to meet Kurtz at the end ("this is the end..."). Much has been said both positively and negatively about the end of the film and Brando's performance. He has a few long monologues which are not easy to decipher. This is my take: the movie is about the darkness that lies within every person. It is about "the horror" that is in the world and what it does to the human psyche. If you take the three officers in the movie that we spend the most time with - Willard, Kilgore and Kurtz - all of them are insane in one way or another. The movie begins by showing Willard's dark side when he punches the mirror in his hotel room. Then we meet Kilgore, who orders his soldiers to surf while bombs are going off all around them. Finally, we meet Kurtz who has become like a god to the natives. The horror of war has made each of these men what they are.

One interesting note: Apocalypse Now is one film that cannot make the claim "none of the animals seen here were hurt during the making of this film". The bull that is butchered at the end is a real bull being slaughtered, but it was not the film crew that decided to kill it. They filmed a real sacrifice that some of natives on the Philippines were performing and used that footage in the film. This continues to produce some controversy and many film lovers refuse to see it because of this scene.

I must comment on which version of the film I prefer. In 2001, Coppola released in theaters a version he called Apocalypse Now: Redux which added about 50 minutes of new footage to a film that was already two and a half hours long. I do not recommend this version, except to the biggest Apocalypse Now fans who have already seen the other version. It has a few scenes which really drag on and it also includes a scene in which Willard steals Kilgore's surfboard and then jokes around about it with the other guys on the boat like a bunch of frat boys. This scene seemed completely out of character for Willard and should have remained cut, or at the most, included as an extra (deleted scene) on the DVD. This version also includes a 20 minute scene at a French colonial plantation right before the finale at Kurtz' compound which disrupts the building intensity of the river journey. I cannot bring myself to believe that Coppola is touting this Redux version as the "official" Apocalypse Now. If you have not seen this movie and have a choice, get the original theatrical version and stay away from the Redux.