The Greatest Film Ever Made. Period.

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 2011)

"Apocalypse Now" is the end result of literary genius in direct collision with human madness. A film that took more than two years to make that crippled Coppola's confidence as a film maker and rendered many of its stars ill health -- Martin Sheen suffered a near fatal heart attack and Brando was border line mad -- would have to be meritorious to justify its arduous developments. It was. Loosely based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now is the story of a spiritually listless Captain Ben Willard (in a brilliantly understated performance by Martin Sheen) who is delegated with the task of executing the rogue colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has defected from the American establishment as the condition of a spiritual and psychological awakening. There have been numerous, and better, studies on the themes and popular significance of Apocalypse Now, so trying to encapsulate the essence of the film in a simple review would be discrediting it to say the least.
Its parallels to Homer's Odyssey are obvious, however while Odysseus' journey was fraught with danger it ultimately concluded on a note of harmony and enlightenment. Apocalypse Now, on the other hand, is a hell without purpose in which there is no coherent notion given to reason and logic. It is one of those incredibly rare films that transcends conventional genre and narrative and becomes an alien like experience that delves as deeply into its geographical heart as it does into the human spirit. The film is essentially composed of three acts: Willard's departure; the trip up river, and the destination. Along the way the viewer witnesses the en masse assault on villagers from a barrage of helicopters to the Wagnerian splendour of Ride of the Valkyries, GI's surf during a hectic conflict, and all of this surreal violence is to contrast the moral absurdity of Willard's mission, which by definition sounds straightforward, however as the film unfolds the mission becomes as questionable as the war itself. There's a double-emphasis with the narration, and it is used as a device to simultaneously guide the audience down the river and illustrate Willard's descent into moral chaos. In the first two acts the narration provides an insight into the mission and his mind, however in the third it becomes disturbed and suddenly Willard ceases to exist as a man and becomes a mere physical extension of the task he was relegated to – a "Hollow Man". The irony of this is punctuated between the existential dialogues Willard shares with Kurtz in that there is certain reasoning in the ravings of Kurtz which prompted the Army to surreptitiously assassinate him in the first place. So, Kurtz and Willard are the end result of their superiors. They are two men diametrically opposed, but their fates are cosmically intertwined. Kurtz is the existential Demigod that only could have resulted through war – he is the anti-thesis to the conformist American with conservative values, in fact he is so far removed from the ideal Western citizen that he can only be described as a crude prophet. Indeed his philosophical espousals become truths as he dissects everything from free will to humanitarianism to barbarism. And it is in these dialogues that the film transcends warfare, but aims for the human condition – man's war that is entirely spiritual and deeply personal. Neither man, nor nature, can endure such madness and perhaps it was Coppola's intention to comment on the banality of evil of the Vietnam War by compacting all of its toxic elements within one man's spirit. Apocalypse Now was one of the last of the "great" Hollywood productions in which its grandeur was the end result of a film maker's undying love for the medium. Fundamentally on absolutely every conceivable technical and artistic level, Apocalypse Now endures as a timeless masterpiece that reminds viewers that films can be an art form.