"Eventually, the war is going to end"

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2019)

Even 40 years after its release, this film still gives me the chills in a way that nothing else can. As Coppola said, the purpose of this film was to "give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war." After a whopping 202 minutes of haunting sequences one after another, this film surely delivers to fulfill its purpose. This is the all-time greatest war film for me, of course I love the likes of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, but this one just manages to show the madness of war in it's own, unique way.
The film was inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It follows Captain Benjamin Willard, portrayed by Martin Sheen, on a special secret mission to eliminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz apparently went crazy after a long military career, and soon started acting as God and led his own pagan cult in the upper part of the river. Willard, while healing from the mental wounds of his previous Vietnam tour, accepts the task and starts the most disturbing and distressing journey I have ever seen on screen.
The acting is just amazing in this film. Martin Sheen as Willard was just the right man for the role, and it was really strange to see Marlon Brando act as a murdering decapitating maniac after the Godfather. Robert Duvall as Colonel Bill Kilgore delivered a few of the most iconic war-epic scenes ever, and took the madness of Vietnam troops to a whole new level. And to see Dennis Hopper as the crazy photojournalist welcoming the crew to the most haunting place ever, was just better than I could even imagine.
The reason why I think that this movie has developed its own life that still goes on after 40 years of its initial release, is the atmosphere. The cinematography, the long shots and sequences, all the sets end extras, they just create an atmosphere that is rarely seen in cinema. The soundtrack with The Doors, just perfect. They used huge amounts of explosions, fireworks, dynamite, fire and everything to create the most realistic chaos possible. Let's take for example the scene where Kilgore is leading a pack of helicopters with Willard up north, they start playing "The Ride Of The Valkyries" from the speakers. That scene lasted for multiple minutes, just soldiers getting ready to face the enemies, with no idea of what's coming. But it was amazing. The whole movie is about chaining these type of gorgeous memorable sequences together, and that is why this movie is one of my all time favourites. I'll duck everytime when I hear "The Ride Of The Valkyries."
One thing more interesting to me than the film itself, is its production. Maybe the chaos from the film hits the viewer really hard, because the production was an actual chaos. They started filming in the Filippines, until a typhoon cleared the whole set and they had to build it all again. The infamous scene where the Viet Cong blow up the 150ft bridge wasn't so easy either. The typhoon destroyed the bridge, so they had to build it all over again just to destroy it on film. Martin Sheen suffered a heat exhaustion, and was hospitalized for over a month. They flew in his brother and a load of double actors for him. The films budget, at first, was 12 million dollars, and in the end it cost almost 30 million dollars. Coppola's whole life was at stake, because he had the chance to stop filming when they knew that the budget would be exceeded, but he kept on filming.
If you are looking for an easy film to watch and turn off your brains, this isn't for you. But if you want to see something that makes you think and makes you shiver even after a year from watching it, then this is for you. Just to give a little glimpse on why these scenes are so disturbing, I'll give two examples: 1: They actually filmed a real ritual slaughter of a caribou by the tribe Ifugao. 2: In one scene they raid a local villagers boat, and the people in it were actually refugees who had escaped their country only two weeks ago. Imagine that.
All in all, this was an experience that left me speechless and staring at the empty screen for a long time. The film took 238 days to shoot, and this is how Coppola addressed the crew in the end: "I've never in my life seen so many people so happy to be unemployed." I sure was relieved too when the movie ended. A definite 10/10.