Wild chaos

Rating: 9/10 (1 October 2011)

Apocalypse Now is a strange anomaly in the history of cinema. It's a complete disaster of a film, that ran into every catastrophe and hurdle imaginable, and failed on almost every level (just ask Francis Ford Coppola himself). And yet, it's also one of the best films ever made.
Apocalypse Now's wild chaos stands in complete contrast with Coppola's three previous films - The Godfather parts 1 and 2, and The Conversation, all of which were precise, complete and, especially the first one, practically flawless. Apocalypse Now, on the other hand, is filled with flaws; it's messy, inconsistent, at times incoherent, and large parts of it appear (and often are) completely improvised. This is, of course, the one film on which Coppola, having financed most of it himself, had complete creative control. It's the film that brought the age of the auteur to its logical end, and it's also the beginning of the end for that period; one year later the auteur was finally killed by Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. But while Heaven's Gate is a pompous, pretentious, self-indulgent mess, out of the chaos of Apocalypse Now emerged one of the strongest creations in cinema history.
No description of Apocalypse Now can really capture what it's about; it can be said to be a film about the Vietnam war, or a loose adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but it's far beyond either one. It's an exploration of the human psyche when it's taken to the most extreme situations of stress and violence - the Vietnam war is used as the setting for that. But, as can be seen in the documentary "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse", the production itself qualifies as well. Both Coppola and the cast explored the full range of human emotions on the film, and that's what makes it more powerful and more timeless than war films like Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now is the human condition. As Coppola himself said - it's not about the Vietnam war, it IS the Vietnam war. Every failing the film had during production only helps create the chaos and distress that make it so unforgettable and such a landmark in cinema history.