Problems with the ending (Mainly)

Rating: Null/10 (15 October 2001)

Contains spoilers. The problems I see with the film now: First, Dennis Hopper. At some point Hopper transcended (?) Actor and became a sort of floating Saturday Night Live celebrity guest host for life. --No matter where he is or what he is doing, that is what he is. His characters are never credible, and even more than in the case of Brando, whose celebrity is a monumental thing to sublimate as you watch him, you never for an instant forget you are watching an Actor. Worse than his simple inability to fit into a scenario where verisimilitude is important, though, is the fact that he threatens to undermine the seriousness and horror of this film, by reminding one of the incessantly gibbering, fluttering Disney feature length cartoon comic relief (think of the china ware in Beauty and the Beast). If, along with the reinsertion of formerly edited footage, they could have reduced Hopper's hammy drive-in movie level role (think of Waterworld), they should have. His appearance so close to the end of the film, problematic as that ending already is, is especially damaging.
Second, one is loath to say a clearer or more decisive ending would have been welcome or done the film a world of good. Yet after three hours of the most grueling verisimilitude, three hours in which you accept every surreal, absurd, horrific sight laid before you as Gospel truth, an ending that may act as a reality disconnect is a problem indeed. At the time of the 20th anniversary revival of Apocalypse Now, a friend of mine said "It is a great film, but there is no way I can accept that the ending would have happened the way it does in the film in real life." Not having seen the film at that point, I marked this off as a philistine gripe. It sounded like the complaint of someone disappointed that the ending wasn't a standard action film call-in-the-air-strike fireworks show.
Now, just after having seen it, my friend's comment comes back to nag me. I am forced to concede it is entirely possible that the films agonizingly scrupulous mounting of tone and purpose, one of the most stunning in all film, is damaged by an ending that may make the viewer balk, or at least question its verisimilitude. The end falters by removing us from the most horrifically concrete reality ever put on film --being stuck way up river in the middle of Vietnam during the war; could there be anything worse in the human imagination?-- and offering in place of the reality an arty, impressionistic, cop-out ending that puts a handy Subjectivist toggle switch on Reality/ Perception. Because of this, there is a painted-into-a-corner feeling to the ending, a feeling that an invitation to the audience to fill in the blank has been offered by an artist afraid or unable to complete his statement. The rigorously-wrought horror is dissipated.
Understand, I don't enjoy complaining about this major film achievement. There was no other director in the world at the time-- or maybe even now-- who could have made this film. But the ending is just such an incredible letdown. And there is no way a weak ending can erase the gripping power and brilliance of the three hours before it. But if anything, it leaves this film a special dispensation case. As it stands, Apocalypse Now belongs in the company of Erich Von Stroheim's Queen Kelli or Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons-- films that stand as classics despite weak or unsatisfactory resolutions resulting from third-party intervention. Maybe health problems, the strain of crippling financial worries, over-taxed energy levels and the weight on the filmmakers' conscience of Viet Nam itself intervened here, preventing Coppola and company from achieving a wrap up wholly commensurate with the astounding body of this film. Or maybe they simply couldn't bear to put a period at the end of the sentence.
Whatever the case, what remains is a complicated, genius film, far beyond the scope of a simple star rating system. (But be warned of animal slaughter scenes, by the way, that Coppola could only have gotten away with filming offshore. If this sort of thing disturbs you, maybe you should pass on the film altogether, because acts of apparently genuine animal slaughter unfortunately have been made integral to the layered ending.)