What an amazing film

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2017)

Apocalypse Now was released in 1979 and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie is about a Vietnam War soldier named Captain Willard who is assigned with the task of hunting down one of the best known officers, Colonel Kurtz who has been presumed to have gone insane. This movie takes a metaphorical look at the war instead of just plainly displaying everything on screen which makes for a more interesting experience as it has many more layers and much more depth to it than what appears on the surface (much like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). There are numerous scenes with stand-out metaphors, some of which are even acknowledged directly by the film itself, for example the scene at the beginning with the fan seeming to represent the rotors on the helicopter, and these thing help build up what this film is. Lighting is also commonly used as a metaphor which was interesting. Every member of the cast gave a brilliant performance; Martin Sheen was great as the lead character Captain Willard and his character and his mind was given lots of depth, as from my viewpoint all of the metaphors are created inside Willard's mind. While his appearance was brief, Robert Duvall was great as Lieutenant Kilgore and showed a character who had experience but was strangely enjoying war unlike most which made for a unique character. Marlon Brando gave an amazing, eerie performance as Colonel Kurtz and his character was very well-written; you could see where he was coming from and what his motivations were and also the look into his fractured mind was haunting. Also, the supporting characters on Willard's boat were also great and you could connect with each one individually and they all felt like real people. They also had great chemistry too. Another thing that I believe adds to the film in a way is that it was as much of an apocalypse on set as it was in the actual film; Martin Sheen suffered from drinking issues and had a heart attack which delayed production, Marlon Brando didn't arrive to production the way the director wanted him to, multiple sets were destroyed before they got used and also Coppola struggled to find a satisfying ending. The production was massively delayed from weeks to over a year and Coppola reportedly threatened suicide multiple times due to the stress and how he thought the movie would turn out terrible and would end his career. Most of the time, a troubled production can have major effects on the final product (Alien 3 for example, however the Assembly Cut does significantly improve it), however all of these real issues contributed in a positive way to the film in my opinion; there's a scene where Willard is suffering from post-traumatic stress and goes mental in his hotel room and during the scene Martin Sheen was genuinely suffering from effects of his alcohol troubles and I feel if these issues in real life didn't happen then the film would be quite different to what it turned out to be. I find this film interesting because of, like I mentioned earlier, instead of it just showing war how it appeared on the surface, it goes much deeper and shows the way it is depicted in the human mind; the entire film is told from the perspective of the human mind (seeing as the entire film is a flashback) and would be viewed as the impact the events had on the mind instead. I believe that this is the most effective way of showing how damaging war was because it shows the events from the inside instead of the outside which makes them more understandable and it really did prove to me exactly what war can do to someone psychologically. Overall, this was an amazing, psychological war film which is much more than what it appears, with amazing performances from the cast and also many haunting but effective themes. I would highly recommend this film. 8.8/10