In my top five favorite films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (6 January 2000)

Apocalypse Now is not only my personal favorite work by Francis Ford Coppolla, it's also one of the great visions ever put onto cinema. It makes what was horrific, strange, and ironically exciting and mysterious about the Vietnam War into this mad tale of obsession, death, loss, and the dark side of humanity. While the stories behind the production of the film made it notorious and rather risky back in 1979, it works on its own terms and represents not just Coppola's genius but others in the Zoetrope team as well. It also paints a sometimes lurid, ultra-violent, bleak and curious view of what war does to people, both in the lower ranks, the big-guns, and those who go too far "up the river".
Many have also been perplexed by Marlon Brando's performance in the film, but it's actually one of his very best turns on screen, albeit improvised and close to running off the rails. His few moments on screen (even in the somewhat unnecessary scene plopped into the Redux version) there's enough conviction in what he's saying- and what perhaps isn't said- that makes the trip down the river worthwhile on an intellectual and poetic level. And making up the bulk of the film are delirious turns by Robert Duvall (a Oscar nominated turn he should've won), Martin Sheen as the Captain with almost too much to ponder in an ever increasing state of everything but him being insane; character actors like Sam Bottoms, Frederic Forrest and 14 year-old Laurence Fishburne have some of the best work they've ever done. And it goes without saying that Dennis Hopper comes close to stealing any scene he's in, for better or worse, with the most to say in rambling, yet coherent words.
Every time I watch this film (and mostly the original version which is what first drew me in completely as opposed to the very good if muddled Redux version) I am astounded with how operatic everything is, and how the variations on the madness and chaos of Vietnam is put together. Of course one can give adulation to Coppola for this as he completed it without totally going off the deep end or possibly dying, and his talents are pulled to their richest peaks here as a storyteller and director of actors. But it can't be said enough how much I can't get enough of Vittorio Storaro's cinematography, which has in part come close to perfect for this kind of epic film. The music is perfectly eerie and insidious, with the Doors song used for one of my favorite iconic scenes in the movies (both of them). Walter Murch's editing- which apparently was what saved the film from being a four-hour disaster- makes the action move when it needs to and for individual shots to get their due. And even the production design is remarkable and, to the extent it goes to, original in its partial translation of both Conrad's fiction and the unfortunate realities of life on the river.
If you haven't seen it yet, in short, get off your ass and get a copy; it might cause a kind of shell-shock for a viewer after first taking it all in, but it has some of the purest, most rewarding bits of cinema ever to come out of that all-too-brief American new-wave of the 1970's.