Coppola's Curse

Rating: 10/10 (14 August 2003)

Apocalypse Now certainly maintains a high level of production quality. Few other films are as deserving of their Oscars for Best Sound and Cinematography. Actually, it deserved more than that. The entire movie is one visual trip after another and director Francis Ford Coppola finally understands the value of visual artistry that he avoided in his previous work.
As it is well known, the movie took forever to create and everyone suffered in the production. Coppola, totally obsessed as he was with telling this story, almost went mad and wound up remaking Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the end, no one came out the wiser as many of the cast and crew failed to learn any lessons from this.
The movie is an interesting Vietnam-period parallel to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. However, the moods in the two respective stories are very far apart and nowhere near as similar as one would have you believe. I am certain that the script for Apocalypse Now was written by Milius up until the eventual encounter with Brando, then Coppola took over. You can tell by examining the differing level of detail and interaction.
The story up to that point is so brilliant in its not-so-subtle fashion of hiding the message from us that the audience feels more than a little cheated when the go ahead and hammer it at us for the last half-hour. "The horror. The horror."
As said, the sound creation and editing for this movie is phenomenal. The transport us to a drugged-out, psychedelic battlefield. Coppola's juiced-up camera work enhances the senses and tells the story gloriously with Martin Sheen's edgy narration. The man may not be a splendid actor, but he presents a compelling case.
Even more insightful (or is it insane?) is Robert Duvall. The scene of his introduction plays out more like a carnival than a war zone with different attractions that the camera passes by, none of them holding our attention for long. Perhaps they were trying to create some kind of symbolism with Duvall's character in all this, but he is merely a nuisance and can't supersede "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
Brando is the most controversial element of the story, of this I am certain. He is underplayed, too somber, and half-interested in his work. If Duvall was a nuisance, Brando is a disappointment, not helped by Dennis Hopper's crazy photographer character spouting a load of rubbish everywhere. Perhaps by that stage in the movie, everything was meant for explanation as the preceding 150 minutes hadn't done any of that. I don't know...
Overall, a movie I have mixed feelings about. I recommend one viewing of it (either the original or the mammoth Redux version) to anyone who considers themselves movie lovers, film experts, or wannabe filmmakers. 4 out of 5 stars.