More than just a film and a Masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (26 March 2004)

`Apocalypse Now wasn't about Vietnam, it was Vietnam' they are the famous words of Francis Ford Coppola and I could not agree more with every word he said. Apocalypse Now for me wasn't just a film, it was an experience which I hold dear to my heart and always will. It may have taken a long while for this to be made, but imagine what it would have been like if all the problems that occurred didn't happen, it wouldn't be the same film. It was like it was meant to be a horrendous shoot to make it what it is and that is the great living film ever to be done. If you take notice into every film Coppola has done since Apocalypse Now you see them as not bad or just good films, but he has accomplished something that is so harrowing and epic as this. Coppola put so much into the movie based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness it was like he had no more vision left to put into his other projects. Maybe Apocalypse Now was the film to blame for the not so good Godfather 3. I enjoyed The Godfather 3 just as much the first two but you could see something lacking from the third instalment that he didn't bring up like he did with the other two.
The story revolves around Captain Willard played by Martin Sheen who is an assassin travelling up a river with a small platoon to terminate a colonel who has gone insane. That is the movie. You live with these men for the first two hours of the film on this boat and the situations that happen throughout and then it comes to a halt when they arrive at Kurtz's camp where you finally get to see what you have imagined would look like. I expected to just see a camp full of soldiers but you instead see a platoon of tribesmen and warriors who have no grip on reality and what is the difference between right and wrong. The journey up the river starts off exciting with many things happening whether it would be the invasion on the beach with the crazy but commanding Kilgore or the playboy bunnies concert at the barracks. The more it goes on the slower the plot is and the more relaxing it becomes. The story begins to tire and so do you but not in a bad way. It happens in a way where you just feel you know that these soldiers have travelled so far and tragedy has struck them one to many times and there is no reality in their minds anymore.
Friends ask me what do I prefer, Redux or the original? I say both as the original version of Apocalypse Now was just unspeakable of how good a film could be and when I saw Redux it was just a bonus and answered questions that I didn't have the answers to. It is an emotional roller coaster ride of a movie and does depress you in a way. You either come out of the film thinking `wow' or `What the hell was that'? It scares me to think what George Lucas's version would have been like if he took the helm. It would have been more commercialised probably in my opinion and also under budget. I think if Orson Welles went ahead with Heart Of Darkness then it would have been great and Coppola could have still made Apocalypse without much comparison to Welles's version as it would not have been set in the same backdrop of the Vietnam war. But there is a part of me that is thankful for Welles not to direct Heart Of Darkness because it makes Apocalypse Now stand out more to the rest and that's what makes it so groundbreaking. I remember seeing Redux in the cinema on release and the whole multiplex was packed and when Brando mutters the words `The Horror, The Horror, The Horror' and there are cross dissolves of Willard's painted face and the helicopters from the beginning flying In the background, the lights came on and everyone left in utter silence, and that's what makes Apocalypse Now so good even to this day, it silences everybody and doesn't make you think because there is no message here to read, just an experience of pure madness. Even though Brando is only seen for at least a quarter of the of the picture, he is the man that steals the film under everybody's except Coppola's feet. His ad libing of every scene is what an actor is really about. He is without doubt the last great actor and no one apart from De Niro has been able to touch Brando for what he has achieved in his acting career. He is not your average type an actor, he's your Jim Morrison of the movies who just doesn't seem all there but speaks words of beauty and terror through his words. The music of The Doors is as haunting as any original movie score could ever be and comes in at the right time and Carmine Coppola just shines as more as his music did in The Godfather to bring the horror and heart of darkness to an end.
Apocalypse Now is not one of the greatest films ever made, it is the greatest film ever made and no film will probably ever surpass it, not in my lifetime anyway and if something does come along then it will have to be noting short of a miracle and let's face it you don't see many of them in Hollywood.