Hallucinatory and enigmatic war film

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2010)

This is a review of the Redux version.
Apocalypse Now is a visually spectacular, cryptic movie that explores the psychological madness of war. This trip down the river is a metaphorical journey, from the gung-ho naivety of the surfing crewmen, via the leaderless and directionless soldiers who don't know what they are fighting for, to finally the battle-hardened madness epitomized by Colonel Kurtz in his Cambodian retreat. The assassin, Captain Willard, has clearly been chosen to hunt down and exterminate Kurtz on the basis that he too is of a similar mindset. He is an extremely damaged individual whose experiences in Vietnam have irrevocably altered his psyche, such that he is a cold and emotionless killing machine. His crew are identification figures for the audience. Clean represents the very young men who were destroyed in this extremely violent conflict and Chief is an example of the committed professional soldier. But perhaps Lance is more illustrative. He enters the story fresh-faced and naive, beginning his journey down the river on a surf board; soon he becomes a part of a massacre of civilians; before long he descends into madness. Lance's journey down the river is the metaphor for the experience of the average combat soldier in Vietnam; from enthusiasm via horror to mental breakdown.
Vittorio Storaro's photography is stunning throughout and really helps create the somewhat hallucinatory tone of the film. Apocalypse Now does not go for the realism of war that the likes of Platoon epitomized. Instead it adopts a slightly surrealistic approach, which works because the movie is more of an expression of the madness of war than an expose of the horrors that the troops had to suffer on the ground in Vietnam. This slightly more artistic manner may be off-putting to some who prefer their war films to be more realistic. Everything is very stylized, from the Flight of the Valkyries helicopter attack to the nightmarish Cambodian retreat of Colonel Kurtz. The film is also bookended by memorable sequences soundtracked to The Doors psychedelic classic 'The End'. The whole Vietnam experience is presented as a bit hyper-real.
The extended directors cut of Apocalypse Now – the Redux version – is an interesting but inferior alternative to the original release. It's debatable whether any of the new scenes actually improve the film. For the most part they break the inertia of the movie, knocking the pacing off, sometimes going into thematic cul-de-sacs or altering the tone unnecessarily. Although I think it's unquestionably a fascinating version with a considerable amount of new material to digest, it's also true that the shorter cut has more purpose and direction, and proves less is more. Nevertheless, I enjoy Redux as an optional, if lesser, alternative. So in summary, the definitive version is the original but Redux is still good. This is certainly a one-of-a-kind war movie and is yet another classic from the fertile 70's film-making period now referred to as New Hollywood.