The War for your Soul

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2002)

Spoilers herein.
Much has been made of the personal risks taken by this filmmaker and crew, and the mapping to the metaphor of war:
Coppola, already rich and famous for the lush but pointless `Godfather' films, reaches into his soul and decides to risk it to do something important. He deliberately chooses Conrad's metaphor of personal journey, and creates a multi-layered structure: the sense of Man in society; the `reason' of War, colonial wars and the specifics of Vietnam; the meeting of darkness of self at the end of the hero's journey; and at the lowest layer, Coppola's own quest for import as an artist.
When I saw this over a couple decades back, I thought it a failure: earnestness does not equal art; commitment does not deliver skill; Italian passion outraces German nihilism.
But now, with the `restored' footage, I have a completely different take. I still think it a failure overall, but with some powerful images. As with the Doors, its aspirations were too large for the ability, the vision too grand for the reach. But now with the passage of time, the metaphor has had a polar switch.
Twenty years ago, the War was a simple affair: confusing at the bristles, jaded selfishness at the handle. With the passage of time as we learn more, the War has `become' incredibly more complex and unfathomable. Now with the film: it started life as huge, unfocused mess. Over a long period, with radical paring and the addition of a very competent framework of sound, something resulted. Unfocused still, but powerful enough to engage. Over time and repeated viewings, this work has been overgrown by personal probings, and integrated into the imaginative landscape like an incompetent building becoming a fond element of the cityscape. So as the war becomes less pegged in our minds, this film becomes more comprehensible, more whole.
With repeated personal handling, this film has become `true.' Think of this: it now has such a clear center that the filmmaker can `enhance' that message. It is now so coherent, it begs for addition. And the three main additions are so, so very apt and self-referential:
-- The French plantation takes its reason to be from the mere fact that it has been. That is precisely what this film has become: a colonizer of our minds that now makes its own sense to be there.
-- The playmates. Sex -- even exploitative sex -- domesticates.

-- The extra exposure of Brando. Here was a tiger, a man whose presence tore through our minds, who changed the world, who mesmerized. He went down his own personal river before this film and was defeated. Here he shows up in a character who is precisely the actor (with a wildeyed acolyte Hopper similarly spanning fiction and reality). Wasn't clear when the film was new, but is now. These are not the winners we see, but the losers. The horror.
To prepare for this redux, I watched the three `Wallace and Gromit' films. Here also was a personal vision, explored at first with extreme commitment, at high cost in the face of detractors. Working by himself for 7 years produced the first film. It was shockingly weird. The second (and probably the best) was a low-budget collaboration with one other monk. As with `Apocalypse,' this film invented itself, by charm insinuated itself into the familiar as if God had put it there all along. Then by the third film, with scores of people, the magic is transformed to cultural momentum.
But there is hope: `Apocalypse' hangs on the War, and though that metaphoric connection is severed, it still stays on the shelf we first placed it: as a war movie. And there are other war movies. And since films are seldom about reality and instead about other films, we can rely on others to give us distance from this foreign invader. Two very much more skilled filmmakers in particular: Kubrick and Malick. Rely on them.