Cinema In Mythic Transcendence

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2019)

Know outright that this great film has no aspiration toward being a slice of life document of the average U.S. soldier's experience during the Vietnam conflict of the 1960's and 70's. Psychedelic or otherwise, the Vietnam War was simply the most apropos contemporary setting to place this adaptation of Joseph Conrad's mythic novel "Heart Of Darkness".
The plot is nothing more (or less) than one man's destiny to confront another man. It's Martin Sheen's Captain Willard floating through surreal chaos in existential angst on a clandestinely assigned mission to find this rogue-warrior-cum-mad-messiah figure of Marlon Brando's Colonial Kurts and either end him or succum to the same madness. In dreamy slow burn we hear the internal dialogue and intimate journal entries of a war wery Willard as he drifts futher down river with his army entourage encountering one bizzare event after another, all the while crystalizing his sole focus on finding the deep jungle compound of this enigmatic Kurts and ultimately eliminating him with "extreme prejudice". But will he? Can he? Should he? Why? Who's to say what is even the moral priority anymore in the midst of this grotesque farce of torrential terror and trivial turmoil? The final act and resolution is nothing short of a baroque masterpiece.
The tone is engulfing dread for impending doom. It's this heavy pull-down immersion into the sinking "heart of darkness". It's the apocalypse... right now. As Jim Morrison's voice announces over the opening shot of a carpet bombing napalm drop over a palm tree horizon - "this is the end my beautiful friend".
Vittorio Storarro's hypnotically tranquil anamorphic cinematography is astonishing in both its lushness and chairoscuro tenebrism. Walter Murch's editing and sound design is fluidly detailed, layered, and mercurial. With the vital contribution of Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Heart and Bill Kreutzmann - father/composer Carmine Coppola, and director Francis himself created an eerie vortex of percussion and abstract sonic experimentation that would become a prototype for the progression of ambient and industrial avante garde music. Francis Ford Coppola mounted a seminally bold vision of Cinema as myth at its highest level of narrative trandscendence. Truly an epic odyssey through the struggling volition of the sentient soul, oneirically seeped in perennial paramnesia. Utterly magnificent and profound.
And the behind the scenes making of the film itself is maybe even more harrowing. Following the experience of this magnas opus, watch the outstanding documentary "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" as an essential peak into the ground level turbulence and strife that enduringly plagued the legendary production. As documented on location and narrated by director Coppola's stalwart wife Eleanor (with additional subsequent interviewee perspective), the curtain is totally stripped away as each calamity culminates into dangerous flirtation with complete catastrophe. Broadly considered the most transparent and enthralling behind-the-scenes companion piece to a biblically taxing production of a equally worthy Cinematic achievement ever.
Everything around and about "Apocalypse Now" is just stunning and rife with wreckage, resilience, and resonance.
I personally prefer the extended "Redux" version edit for its ever more sprawling surrealism.