"Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in 'life'......?"

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2010)

After discovering that the running time for the Redux of Apocalypse Now was more than 3 hours, I dreaded watching it much like one might dread a 12 hour non-stop flight in Economy Class with no television privileges and male flight attendants while seated next to an overly chummy and flatulent overweight man named Huey who thinks that an arm rest is supposed to allow for the comfort of separating his monstrous ass cheeks from one another so as to avoid chafing... Seriously, that entire scenario played out in my mind. That being said, my love for Coppola, Brando and Duvall as a collective entity had been well and truly instated ever since The Godfather, as had my profound respect for Martin Sheen in light of more recent fare such as The West Wing and The Departed. Bearing all of this in mind, I was compelled to at least attempt sitting through this thing. I remember watching the original many years before the Redux and, while I found it compelling and provocative, it was probably not the ideal environment, and so I felt that watching the Redux was necessary. With that, I took myself downstairs to my small and wholly improvised home theatre, sat myself in a precarious position upon the edge of a beanbag and pressed play on the remote... Approximately 200 minutes later, as the final credit rolled, I suddenly became aware of a sharp pain in my lower back, and it wasn't until I laid back in the beanbag that I fully realized what had happened. I was instantly reminded of a small article written by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, in which he recalled a visit to a local theatre as a young man to see Scorsese's Goodfellas. He remembered the film finishing only to discover that he was sitting on the very edge of his seat, much as he had been when the film began. "I'm sure I meant to make myself more comfortable", he writes. "I guess I just never got around to it..." That is the best endorsement I can offer for Apocalypse Now, for the original 1979 version and for the Redux. The film transcends its own frail medium, indelibly imprinting itself on one's memory as if it were some tragic yet revelatory personal experience. It may very well be responsible for more cases of post-traumatic tendencies than the Vietnam war itself! But of course, as anyone with dimensional grasp will explain (often condescendingly), this film isn't really about Vietnam, or any war for that matter, but instead how humanity is tainted and almost always permanently crippled by brutality, by immorality... by horror. The elements that naturally occur during warfare. Really, this film could have been set at any time or place (real or fictitious) in which the boundary between what is right and what is necessary is irrevocably blurred. Speaking as an Australian (and not in a way that condones any atrocious actions as "necessary"), this film could have been made during the Stolen Generation period, with many liberties taken and altered to fit the context of course. But I suppose at the time for America, and for the rest of the world, Vietnam was the relevant component needed; it was, perhaps, even the actual entry point for the audience, the very element that they related with, despite the terrible emotional counterparts associated with it. It's redundant to say that the performances are spectacular; if you're at all a well-travelled film-goer, just a glimpse at the cast list should give you an idea. Complaints will and effectively have been raised regarding the two longest additions to Redux, being the intervals involving the Bunnies and the French Plantation. Over-analysis is a practice designed for the very purpose of robbing art of its intangible beauty, so to speak too much on these scenes would kill them. Suffice it to say that I myself was entirely befuddled with these additions until the final moments of the latter, in which a character says to Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), "There are two of you, don't you see? One that kills, and one that loves." Think long and hard on that in relation to the film. I think it's probably one of the best inclusions Coppola made. How about you?