A wandering elephant

Rating: Null/10 (27 March 1999)

"My movie is not ABOUT Vietnam," Francis Ford Coppola said at a press conference during the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. "It IS Vietnam." The men who actually fought that never officially declared war may disagree that "Apocalypse Now," the movie is question, is what its director claimed, but there are similarities. Like Vietnam, this film is long, pointless and costly. It opens impressively, if pretentiously, with Lt. Willard, the almost ghostly protagonist, sprawled across a bed in a Saigon hotel room, mumbling through a voiceover reminiscent of a 1940s private eye movie, while helicopters are superimposed over his sweat-beaded face. Before the scene concludes, Willard (Martin Sheen), seemingly suffers a nervous breakdown, smashing his hand through a mirror, then sinking to the floor, sobbing as The Doors perform "The End" on the soundtrack. This surreal moment soon gives way to a scene that could have been lifted from a dozen James Bond movies: Willard is ordered to track down and kill Colonel Kurtz, a mysterious figure who has established a military outpost that acknowledges no rule but his own. What follows are some spectacular battle scenes, some good acting (Robert Duvall), some bad acting (Frederic Forrest), and some acting leftover from "Easy Rider" ten years earlier (Dennis Hopper), all of it as disconnected as the war itself. When Willard finally confronts Colonel Kurtz, we find Marlon Brando, his head shaved and his enormous bulk swamped in shadows, lethargically mumbling incoherent dialogue that, instead of tying up loose ends, leaves them dangling as precariously than ever. The final moments are so darkly lit, it's debatable whether Willard carries out his mission or not. Peopled by actors who made their name in films with which Coppola was associated (Duvall, Forrest, Harrison Ford), or found renewed popularity under his direction (Brando), this is the biggest home movie ever made. It is essentially a vanity production fueled by the director's enormous ego. Who else but an egomaniac would make a comment like the one Coppola made at Cannes? The true star of "Apocalypse Now," however, is not Coppola or Brando, but Vittorio Storaro whose cinematography almost makes this wandering elephant worthwhile.