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I generally do not like war movies - I'm just not drawn to that universe. For this movie in particular, I had heard so much about the physical and emotional turmoil that Francis Ford Coppola, the crew, and the actors went through to create it that I frankly expected all that agony to translate into a film that I would not connect with at all. I was wrong.
To say that "Apocalypse Now" uses a mission up-river from Vietnam into the jungles of Cambodia by a small group of soldiers to show the insanity and absurdity of war is accurate, but doesn't begin to truly describe this intense film. It also shows how soldiers defending civilized societies must sometimes touch primitive levels within to do what is necessary, and how sometimes that act of stifling one's humanity for the greater good can lead too far into chaos, or Apocalypse. Based loosely on the novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, Roger Ebert described it as a film that pushes us "into the dark places of the soul." The river trip is multi-layered itself - the boat gradually travels from civilization to the primitive, from sanity into chaos, and in a way from the present into the past. Coppola wanted to "take the audience through an unprecedented experience of war and have them react as much as those who had gone through the war."
The acting is phenomenal and fierce, and the music and sound design is innovative and a perfect representation of the setting. Vietnam era music by The Doors and others is masterfully evocative of the period. Even more impressive is that while starting with a script, the last half of the movie was largely written on the spot each night before filming. Several years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece tied for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1979, and is #14 on the S&S Critics List. It's also the newest film in the top 25 of the S&S Critics List, which means they consider it the best film of the past 45 years! Let me say that again - the S&S Critics rate "Apocalypse Now" the best film of the past 45 years. The Directors like it even more - It is #6 on their list. It won multiple Golden Globes plus Oscars for Cinematography and Sound. Coppola would go on to make the Godfather films, and those films along with "Apocalypse" and Martin Scorcese's titles from the same time period are considered perhaps the best American films of all time.
The film is laced with incredible acting - a young Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, a very young Lawrence Fishburne, and a typical just-this-side-of-lunacy effort from Dennis Hopper. And then we come to the lore about Marlon Brando. He famously showed up quite overweight and had not really prepared for the role at all. Coppola panicked and tried to come up with an approach to change the character of the mad commander who has gone rogue and set himself up as a jungle lord. Coppola suggested playing up the madness and shooting in near darkness to hide Brando's bulk, but Brando balked, saying he just didn't see the character that way. Coppola claims that a day or two later, Brando came back to talk to him. Brando had shaved his head and wanted to play the character with more madness and in semi-darkness. Coppola didn't question it, but just told Brando he loved that idea and they quickly shot it. Brando's monologue near the end is an acting tour de force. It's the perfect climax to the entire, slow, simmering buildup of the film. It centers on the fact that the enemy was willing to go to lengths that we could not, or would not, allow ourselves to sink to. This meant that we could never win this war. and Brando's commander was driven mad by this realization.
I viewed this as a Netflix 2-disc DVD. It had a few extras, the best of which is Coppola's commentary. In 2001 Coppola and the original editor Walter Murch released an expanded director's cut called Apocalypse Now Redux that added almost an hour of footage. This was included on the Netflix discs, but I did not watch it. The Wikipedia entry is an excellent resource for more information about the herculean task of making this film. In many ways the production crew also had to undergo a tortuous journey up-river into madness. Martin Sheen had either a breakdown or heart attack at one point, and I also learned that George Lucas had worked as a production assistant on an earlier Coppola film. Lucas suggested that writer John Milius do a script about Vietnam and Coppola bought it. The title was based on a popular button badge that hippies sometimes sported which said "Nirvana Now." In fact, Lucas was involved for a time in the development of the "Apocalypse" script (at about the same time he was writing Star Wars), and at one point Coppola was going to produce the film and asked Lucas to direct. However, Lucas went on to direct "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars" instead.
Ironically, although to me it's a devastating look into the lunacy of war, I read that the film is sometimes used in military training to attempt to get soldiers into the correct mind set before a mission. I assume they're mainly referring to the famous helicopter attack with Wagner in the soundtrack. I suppose that just as with most films, what you bring to it dictates to a large degree what you draw from it.
I did really like this. Roger Ebert has written that the first time he saw it was one of the top few movie viewing experiences of his lifetime. I can't go nearly that far, but, it's a remarkable, mesmerizing achievement, and if you haven't seen it, you must.
To say that "Apocalypse Now" uses a mission up-river from Vietnam into the jungles of Cambodia by a small group of soldiers to show the insanity and absurdity of war is accurate, but doesn't begin to truly describe this intense film. It also shows how soldiers defending civilized societies must sometimes touch primitive levels within to do what is necessary, and how sometimes that act of stifling one's humanity for the greater good can lead too far into chaos, or Apocalypse. Based loosely on the novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, Roger Ebert described it as a film that pushes us "into the dark places of the soul." The river trip is multi-layered itself - the boat gradually travels from civilization to the primitive, from sanity into chaos, and in a way from the present into the past. Coppola wanted to "take the audience through an unprecedented experience of war and have them react as much as those who had gone through the war."
The acting is phenomenal and fierce, and the music and sound design is innovative and a perfect representation of the setting. Vietnam era music by The Doors and others is masterfully evocative of the period. Even more impressive is that while starting with a script, the last half of the movie was largely written on the spot each night before filming. Several years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece tied for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1979, and is #14 on the S&S Critics List. It's also the newest film in the top 25 of the S&S Critics List, which means they consider it the best film of the past 45 years! Let me say that again - the S&S Critics rate "Apocalypse Now" the best film of the past 45 years. The Directors like it even more - It is #6 on their list. It won multiple Golden Globes plus Oscars for Cinematography and Sound. Coppola would go on to make the Godfather films, and those films along with "Apocalypse" and Martin Scorcese's titles from the same time period are considered perhaps the best American films of all time.
The film is laced with incredible acting - a young Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, a very young Lawrence Fishburne, and a typical just-this-side-of-lunacy effort from Dennis Hopper. And then we come to the lore about Marlon Brando. He famously showed up quite overweight and had not really prepared for the role at all. Coppola panicked and tried to come up with an approach to change the character of the mad commander who has gone rogue and set himself up as a jungle lord. Coppola suggested playing up the madness and shooting in near darkness to hide Brando's bulk, but Brando balked, saying he just didn't see the character that way. Coppola claims that a day or two later, Brando came back to talk to him. Brando had shaved his head and wanted to play the character with more madness and in semi-darkness. Coppola didn't question it, but just told Brando he loved that idea and they quickly shot it. Brando's monologue near the end is an acting tour de force. It's the perfect climax to the entire, slow, simmering buildup of the film. It centers on the fact that the enemy was willing to go to lengths that we could not, or would not, allow ourselves to sink to. This meant that we could never win this war. and Brando's commander was driven mad by this realization.
I viewed this as a Netflix 2-disc DVD. It had a few extras, the best of which is Coppola's commentary. In 2001 Coppola and the original editor Walter Murch released an expanded director's cut called Apocalypse Now Redux that added almost an hour of footage. This was included on the Netflix discs, but I did not watch it. The Wikipedia entry is an excellent resource for more information about the herculean task of making this film. In many ways the production crew also had to undergo a tortuous journey up-river into madness. Martin Sheen had either a breakdown or heart attack at one point, and I also learned that George Lucas had worked as a production assistant on an earlier Coppola film. Lucas suggested that writer John Milius do a script about Vietnam and Coppola bought it. The title was based on a popular button badge that hippies sometimes sported which said "Nirvana Now." In fact, Lucas was involved for a time in the development of the "Apocalypse" script (at about the same time he was writing Star Wars), and at one point Coppola was going to produce the film and asked Lucas to direct. However, Lucas went on to direct "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars" instead.
Ironically, although to me it's a devastating look into the lunacy of war, I read that the film is sometimes used in military training to attempt to get soldiers into the correct mind set before a mission. I assume they're mainly referring to the famous helicopter attack with Wagner in the soundtrack. I suppose that just as with most films, what you bring to it dictates to a large degree what you draw from it.
I did really like this. Roger Ebert has written that the first time he saw it was one of the top few movie viewing experiences of his lifetime. I can't go nearly that far, but, it's a remarkable, mesmerizing achievement, and if you haven't seen it, you must.