When it comes to troubled productions and random trivia about the filming, few pictures match the legendary story behind 1979’s Apocalypse Now. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong: there was the intense storms in the Philippines that delayed and damaged the set, Martin Sheen had a heart attack, the original actor bailed as the cameras started rolling, Marlon Brando turned up over weight and without having learnt his lines, director Francis Ford Coppola lost his mind.
The closest comparison from the 2010s is perhaps 2016’s The Revenant; which saw crew members fired and production moved from Canada to Argentina halfway through. Mad Max Fury Road also has its own inspired journey to the big screen. The fact that these three films are masterpieces is kind of head scratching.
Of course, labelling Apocalypse Now as a ‘masterpiece’ can be controversial. For some, namely men born in the 1960s, it is. For others it’s a pretentious slog, too concerned with displaying a more lucid interpretation of the Vietnam war than with perhaps a more flowing and involving story.
Before I trailed to the cinema on Tuesday 13th to see the 40th anniversary release of ‘The Final Cut’, I had only seen the film (theatrical edition) twice. The first time I was not overly fond, instead preferring the straight forwardness of Platoon. The second time was a bit more of a revelation. The visuals, thematic richness and the feeling of emptiness that the film left me with amalgamated into one of the best films I had seen.
So along comes The Final Cut. My dvd version runs at 150 odd minutes, excessive but worth it. This ran for a tad over 180 minutes; the extra 30 minutes of new footage made the ticket a little more worthwhile but to be honest, I would have paid the £13 ticket just to see the normal edition on the big screen.
My general view at the moment is this: the cinema experience was my favourite viewing of the film (obviously) but the DVD cut superior. If this is indeed the definitive version, then it’s a shame because I still feel there is a more concise, streamlined movie in there somewhere.
Apocalypse Now is, to reiterate, a Marmite movie. In the same vein as Titanic, Avatar and The Last Jedi, there are staunch defenders and firm haters. There is a lot of debate as to whether the film is pro or anti war; those that see it as pro war are perhaps more disapproving of the epic. I have always seen it as anti war: the exceedingly young escorts to Sheen’s Capt. Willard and their subsequent deaths throws massive shade towards conscription and that the war was fought as much by teenagers as it was by experienced troops. Then there is the lack of command shown throughout the film; the distant outpost is disorganised and leaderless whilst the seniors we do see are either nicely tucked away in their clean rooms with a range of dishes for lunch or are as unhinged as Willard’s target, Colonel Kurtz, as is the case with Robert Duvall’s unforgettable Kilgore. We also see civilians caught in the line of fire, easily triggered US soldiers and, in one bizarre sequence, the jeering soldiers scrambling to get onto the stage of a river set amphitheatre to get the show girls. War turns men into monsters. Or, as Jorah Mormont wisely puts it “there’s a beast inside every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand.”
Apocalypse Now is a tricky film to critique. For me, it blurs the line between immense entertainment, sheer greatness and also leaving that artistic yet hollow bite which sometimes makes it hard to go ‘yeah I feel like watching Apocalypse Now now’. Some sequences are utterly enthralling. Some put you into a trance. And some are just dull.
The structure is as follows: act 1 sets up the mission to assassinate Marlon Brando’s Kurtz, who has set up a cult in Cambodia. It closes with the tour de force Ride of the Valkyries helicopter attack. Act 2 is a more episodic journey up river that depicts war with the gloves off. There is a tiger, a night time battle at a near abandoned outpost, the aforementioned scene with the show girls and a new (for me) sequence that takes places at a French plantation. The second act ends with their departure, and act 3 begins as the surviving gang arrive at Kurtz’s compound.
Each third feels different to the last, operating as a new stanza in a long and complex poem. The transition from traditional ‘war material’ into the psychedelic and surreal finale is always jarring, but it works. This is due to the constant mystery surrounding Kurtz. We hear a tape of his voice (the snail along the edge of the razor is one disgusting image) and see a photo. Brando, despite being billed first, does not show up until the final 30/40 minutes. But we eagerly await the confrontation.
It’s worth noting Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness here. It is a small book, but it has real weight and vivid imagery. Coppola’s idea of translating the essential part of that colonial-Africa set classic to the Vietnam War is beyond genius. I consider it one of the all time great adaptations. Why? Because it isn’t faithful to the book; it takes the upriver journey to Kurtz as the only material needed and works out everything else from there. The messages align and Apocalypse Now just feels like Conrad’s rich writing. It is smart, with enough originality in the film to justify it as both adaptation and an inspired idea.
“The horror. The horror,” makes the transition from book to film, but there are an abundance of great lines in the script: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” “terminate with extreme prejudice” “a six feet peak?!” The acting is masterful, with Sheen not getting the recognition he deserves, if only because Brando is just mesmerising and Duvall so wild and unpredictable.
The slow fade ins and outs and the layering of shots above or below one another ensures the perpetual dream like quality to the story. Visually, Apocalypse Now is a feast. Some of my favourite shots come from it, particularly the third act. Taking a sip of a beer every time aircraft are shown flying will give you liver failure, but it’s so beautifully captured it does not feel repetitive. Brando’s silhouetted form the first time we meet him, wreathed in shadows as we are gradually teased of his gargantuan form, is exceeding atmospheric. Willard rising head first from the water as lightning flashes over his muddied face is another wicked shot. In the cinema, it all looked fabulous.
And the sound! Oh boy the sound. The speakers knocked my socks off, reverberating down my cinema seat. My dad, on my right, was close to covering his ears as jets and choppers flew out of the screen or gunfire spat out at the audience.
Referring to an earlier point, the ‘better version’ of this is the one without the French plantation scene. It runs a bit too long, removing the focus on Kurtz and flagging the momentum. Yes it’s all acted and shot well, and there is an amusing visual gag, but it adds nothing. There is some gratuitous nudity for next to no reason (who unrobes just to close someone’s bed curtains?) and there is no pay off to the ideas and points made. In the two earlier stop offs at the checkpoint / amphitheatre and at the night time battle, there is little to advance the plot or story. But they were both watchable and added to that overwhelming feeling of futility in war.
Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut is what I would call a flawed masterpiece. Technically it’s outstanding. Thematically it’s rich. The acting superb. The entire mise en scene (and the Phillipines landscape) is gorgeous. It just has some dead weight on it, as well as an agonisingly small window between art and being pretentious for the sake of pretentious sake.
Very few films can wow you with action and visuals and also be a never ending supply for future film dissertations and film theory, yet Apocalypse Now exists to fuse those two often far removed ideas together.
