A cinematic masterpiece... easily Coppola's best.

Rating: Null/10 (31 December 2007)

More than twenty-five years on since it's initial cinema release, Apocalypse Now still stands as one of the most powerful and hypnotic visionary depictions of the madness of war ever committed to film, with director Francis Ford Coppola using Joseph Conrad's legendary tome Heart of Darkness as the metaphorical backbone to this surreal, episodic and hallucinogenic rumination on man's capacity for tyranny, and his ultimate search for redemption.
The basic crux of the story remains simple, with Coppola drawing on certain elements from the aforementioned Heart of Darkness, as well as various influences from the classic Werner Herzog film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (in which Klaus Kinski's jungle trip mirrors that of the soldiers here) to give weight to his own cinematic ideas, manifested here by the two warring characters of Kurtz and Willard. Unlike the majority of Vietnam related films (like the Dear Hunter, Platoon, Casualties of War and Full Metal Jacket, to name the most obvious) Coppola's film relegates the technical and factual aspects of warfare and the period in which the film is set to the background, in order to more closely examine the relationship between the soldiers (particularly the above-mentioned Willard and Kurtz) in this intense and to some extent dreamlike situation. Coppola's depiction of 'Nam bares no similarity to those films listed above... with his Vietnam becoming a place where surf-mad soldiers bombard villages from helicopters to the piercing strains of Wagner; playboy bunnies entertain the troops in the middle of the jungle; out-posts are attacked at night by unseen mercenaries, whilst monotonous carnival music plays incessantly in the background; whilst the whole climax of the film juxtaposes rock music, arcane philosophy, decapitation and the ritualistic slaughter of a bull.
Coppola's visuals - aided by cinematographer Vitorrio Storaro, production designer Dean Tavourlarus, and editor/sound designer Walter Murch - are powerful and lingering, with the film offering up a number of astounding sequences and set-pieces (as well as some of the standouts listed above, the opening scene - which finds Willard freaking out to the sound of the Doors in a Saigon hotel room, whilst superimposed images of napalm explosions and juxtapositions of ceiling fans and helicopter rotor-blades drift across the screen - is a great way to introduce the sense of madness and escalating atmosphere that will build throughout the film). Much like the aforementioned Aguirre, Apocalypse Now has a great narrative momentum, with Coppola and co-writer John Millius (...though apparently, much of his contributions were scaled down) keeping the film moving forwards, much like the soldiers in the boat, by offering up a strong and enticing mixture of surreal visions, philosophical discussions, and abrasive action.
It's probably the only film to take the idea of "the madness of war" and makes the description a reality, with the filmmakers evoking a Vietnam that is more like a carnival freak-show than something approaching the hyper-real depictions of combat found in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy (Platoon, Born of the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). Some have, and indeed, still, criticise the final act of the film, in which Martin Sheen's no-nonsense Willard finally comes face-to-face with Marlon Brando's barmy colonel Kurtz, in which the king of method acting turned up over-weight, moody and baring a serious grudge against the director and his co-stars. Regardless of this, I think Brando's performance is exceptional, as great as his portrayals in films like Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris, as he sits hunched over in the shadows, stroking his shaven head and mumbling about T.S. Eliot and the horrors of militaristic genocide.
His appearance in the film is as iconic as the scene with Robert Duvall on the beach, with that oft-quoted line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... smells like... victory" and is as tense and as surreal as any of the film's major (for lack of a better word) action scenes. The hallucinogenic atmosphere established throughout ties in with another Herzog film, Heart of Glass, and would be an influence on the Russian anti-war drama, Come And See, which is probably more important than Coppola's film... though it's certainly less accessible, and a lot more abrasive. Everything about this film is perfectly judged... from the production design, location work, sound design and music (the two are really integrated seamlessly here) and the heavily-colour-tinted cinematography (...getting away from the documentary-like approach of war favoured by many other filmmakers in favour or something more ethereal).
I'm not that familiar with the re-cut "redux" version, released in 2001... being much too attached to this version after years of watching it as a teenage. Also, as someone else pointed out, it's much easier to trust the directorial instincts of the man who just made The Godfather and The Conversation... but not so easy to trust the instincts of the hack that made Jack, and The Rainmaker. Apocalypse Now, in it's original 1979 version, more than stands up as one of the greatest films of the 20th century...blending together the gorgeous, hypnotic transcendence of Storaro's cinematography and Coppola's idiosyncratic take on warfare, with some startling moments of real-horror, philosophy, reflection and character.