This was a valued rug

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 2008)

Francis Ford Coppola, once the most praised and powerful director in Hollywood, entered the Southeast Asian jungle to make a movie. Armed with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", a small army of technicians, and a 15 million dollar budget, he emerged ten months later with thousands of hours of footage, two nearly dead actors and a nervous breakdown.
The cause of all this personal trauma was "Apocalypse Now", a film in which Martin Sheen is sent up a river and into the jungles of Vietnam to find Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a Special Forces officer who has gone insane.
Conrad's message was that savagery and apathy can wipe out the fragile gains of civilization within a single generation. A thin line stands between civilization and total collapse. Inject a little bit of barbarism, a little bit of chaos, and everything falls apart. Coppola's film tries to build on this, and states that America's inability to relinquish the trappings of civilization (ie- to get out of the boat), ensured its defeat. We lost because we weren't, as a nation, prepared to commit genocide. We committed horrors, but we weren't prepared to go all the way.
The biggest problem with "Apocalypse Now" is that it was written by John Milius, the pro-war, gun toting ultra conservative whom the Coen Brother's based their character Walter Sobchak (from "The Big Lebowski") on. At the end of Milius' script, Kurtz and Willard team up to fight America. They represent the warrior savage, free from hypocrisy but lost in the darkness.
Coppola, of course, found Milius' script largely silly. He removed Milius' violent ending and went in search of something more powerful. For some grand statement on war and human nature. But he found none. How could he? You can't paddle down a straight line for 10 months and then suddenly expect to reach a new destination.
Throughout the film, "Apocalypse Now" tells us one thing, but shows us something else. The Colonel Kilgores of the picture actually fight the war, whilst the powerful warrior God, Col Kurtz, does little beside chopping the limbs off natives or hiding in the shadows. Milius' script saw Kurtz as the hero. A wise and seasoned rebel warrior who sticks his fingers up to the hypocritical veneer of civilization, but Coppola seems unwilling to go down that route.
Coppola's "redux" cut of the film, though badly paced, is more interesting. It adds a French plantation scene which attempts to contrast the French period of colonial rule with America's war in Vietnam. The problem with this is that US involvement in Vietnam and the Colonial mindset of nineteenth century Europe, as seen in "Heart of Darkness", are completely different. American policy wasn't inspired by colonial aims but by ideological ones. The American experience in Vietnam was the opposite of Conrad's colonial experience. No wonder Coppola couldn't find a suitable ending. There isn't one.
Late in the film, Kurtz accuses his country of hypocrisy. They are unwilling to fully embrace the darkness. If he were given a small army of savages, he says, then the war would be over tomorrow. The implication is that the Vietnamese were nothing more than barbaric savages who should be dealt with, not civility, but primal brutality.
Worse yet, Coppola's "war" is one of gorgeous cinematography and exciting spectacle. When a Vietnamese village is raided, it feels more like the Death Star trench run than a savage massacre. Killgore himself is a figure of fun rather than the monster he should be. Milius' script painted a much darker character (hence kill and gore).
Still, "Apocalypse Now" may contain no truths about Vietnam or war in general, but it is a film absolutely dripping with passion. Like "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", "Apocalypse Now" is very much a Werner Herzog film. Herzog was a mad artist who wanted to lift a boat over a mountain. Why lift the boat over the mountain? No reason. He simply wanted to do it in the name of art!
Same thing with Coppola. He wanted to do "somthing" great. He went into the jungle, went insane and came out with a couple thousand hours of mad footage. What is the merit of this footage? The merit is in surviving the journey. In making it down the river and back out again.
And so what we have is a film about its creators. A film about the madness of the white man. The madness of the director. The madness of the crew. Ironically, the film's madness is all a result of indulgence. The indulgence of a staggering budget, studio leeway, accessible drugs, limitless resources and a giant ego. It's the shallowest kind of insanity. The insanity of unlimited power and a lack of boundaries.
8/10 - "Apocalypse Now" ultimately amounts to nothing more than a series of memorable set-pieces. These set pieces don't enrich one another or gel in any way. It's an incomplete film, and even Coppola admits that he didn't quite know what he was doing or tying to say. The film goes up the river but doesn't know why.
Far more interesting is "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse", a documentary shot in tandem with the film. As a study in ego-maniacal madness it's far more powerful than Coppola's film. Narrated by Coppola's wife, it's also very intimate and perceptive. It's also interesting to see how much Coppola relied on Brando's improvisational skills, hoping desperately that the great actor would whip up some kind of climax out of thin air. Brando, of course, was just in it for the huge pay cheque.
Though a failure, this film is worth multiple viewings.