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Apocalypse Now is one of those movies for which I frequently had been confronted with mouths opened wide in astonishment, how come you have not seen it ? Never heard of the phrase: I love the smell of Napalm in the Morning ? Well, now I have, thanks very much.

In defense of my reputation I must say, I have read the book upon which the movie is based upon years ago (Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness). While the movie follows the book to a large extent, the story is a basic and working formula of a man’s journey both into the world as well as into his heart (of darkness).

The movie is set in Vietnam, instead of the African continent, which works very well and the often cited ‘Horrors’ are many and illustrious in this movie, ranging from physical violence to mental degeneration.

A very good and solid cast (except Dennis Hopper, that moron almost ruined the movie with his horrible performance).

I have never seen a movie whose starpower (concerning Brando) was so evidently woven into the structure. The movie builds up to the climaxing moment when we finally meet the enigmatic man in the middle of darkness, and personally I wanted to meet the character in the story as much as looking forward to the stellar performance (so Ive been told) of the legendary Marlon Brando.

I was not disappointed.

There is an interesting documentary around, called Hearts of Darkness which basically documents the movie’s making. It took 16 months (instead of the scheduled 6 weeks) to make, Martin Sheen suffered from a heart attack, Coppola treated suicide and Brando did not care about his lines.

An epic masterpiece, highly recommended

Although its scope exceeds far beyond anything attempted by the genre before or since, the best way to describe Apocalypse Now (and the extended Redux version released in 2001) is as the most haunting and disturbing war movie ever made. It dared to be surreal and insane and horrific all in one.
Too many directors focus on depicting wars as accurately as possible. But Francis Ford Coppola knew that such aspiration is a futile feat; films can never portray war realistically. So he created a bizarre Brazil-like film that conveys the horror and senselessness of war via a journey into the darkness of the mind. Not surprisingly, Apocalypse Now has been called the most accurate movie about Vietnam ever made.
It’s no exaggeration to proclaim that Apocalypse Now has the best film opening ever. The creepy sound of a helicopter, the surreal yellow mist, and the haunting tune of the Doors’ “The End” fits in perfectly with Coppola’s apocalyptic vision.
We first see Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) lying on his cot, equating the fan in his room with helicopters. This is a soldier who couldn’t adjust to life outside of battle. He is clearly unstable, with a heavy mixture of drugs and alcohol in his system. He suffers from post-traumatic stress and we learn that he just got out of a divorce. A sad reality facing many returning Vietnam veterans was the lack of support for mental illness.
Haunting Willard is guilt over sins he claims to have committed. Not all of his war crimes are detailed, but if the setting of this film (1969) is any indication, Mai Lai was still a raw wound. This also suggests that the mission he is assigned to, tracking down and killing the crazed Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who is hiding somewhere in the jungles of Cambodia, is a sort of punishment. His commanding officers, feasting at a table denied to common soldiers, are likely well aware of his frame of mind but don’t seem to care.
This journey will ultimately unfold as the story of two men who may be more similar than Willard realizes. Although we recognize the voice in the recording of Kurtz presented to Willard before the mission as unmistakably Brando’s, it’s hard not to note how much it sounds like Willard’s. The chilling nonsense heard on the tape proves one thing, that Vietnam made both Willard and Kurtz crazy. Willard just hasn’t gone renegade…yet.
A lot of Apocalypse Now is told like a horror film, especially the music. This turned out to be an effective way of defining Willard’s mindset. He is something of a loner and remains one even after being assigned a crew to man his boat up river. Most of them are young kids sent in to die who still just want to listen to rock & roll and surf. Their innocence is still unbroken.
Capt. Willard would not have had such an impact were it not for Martin Sheen’s performance. It is the kind of drifter-against-the current he had been playing so well before, now in full bloom, finding himself in one of the deadliest places in the world.
The central question of the mission is what makes good soldiers like Col. Kurtz go crazy? Why did he enlist so late in life? The answer is to be found in the insanity of war and the way to find it is in first understanding Coppola’s surreal approach.
As a comparison to Kurtz we are offered the gung-ho Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who likes his job a little too much. He wants to build a reputation, handing out “death cards” wherever he kills an enemy. There is a great irony between what Kilgore and his army say (that they are there to help) and what they do (bomb villages heavily occupied by civilians). He is even willing to bomb a location simply because it has good surfing opportunities. Perhaps this is unreal, but serves as a useful metaphor of many villages that were really bombed for inexplicable reasons.
The notorious napalming scene is shocking, one of the most heartbreaking ever in film, although the surfer dude in Willard’s crew finds it exciting. Few cinematic shots have ever communicated the chaos and indiscriminate killings of war so forcefully. But Willard is also fighting his own war. There is evidence that internally he is starting to question his mission and realizing how war unravels without sense. Here, the movie (through Willard’s narration) partially answers our questions with another question. Why isn’t Kilgore considered as dangerous as Kurtz? Could it be because his victims are not Americans?
Throughout, Willard remains impassive, almost as if he’s taking in everything. He is now like Marlow, his literary counterpart from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He is an observer more so than a doer. He tries to connect with his men but can’t. His experience and insanity have set them apart. He couldn’t even reconnect with his own wife, after all.
At this point, Apocalypse Now becomes increasingly surreal and similar to horror films. It makes sense that horror movies became a fad during Vietnam. The war reminded us that there was true evil and confusion in the world and that sometimes it came from inside.
Shots of the troops venturing out into the jungle are filmed in silence and shadows, presenting an overwhelming feeling of how man is dwarfed by nature. Ostensibly, the tiger that springs out on the men from behind the bushes is a metaphor for surprise attacks. After all, such animal encounters are not very common, but among soldiers fighting in Vietnam being ambushed by guerillas was an all too common threat. After the attack, Willard avows never to venture on land again. This is where the incident takes on greater significance. Outside of the boat is the unknown, a world as unexplored as the depths of the human heart. The movie takes on a deeply psychological tone as it delves deep inside the mind of a soldier.
Look at the USO show where Playboy Bunnies drop by to entertain the men. With approaching drums in the distance, it’s unsettlingly like a creepy carnival. What we take away from the sequence is the primeval and barbaric behavior of the men, which continues even after they leave. Later, we read a letter Kurtz wrote to his son, saying the charges against him are insane. Note how the boat passes burning helicopters and dead bodies while the men read the letter. Willard next pulls out a portrait of Kurtz, which we see as a silhouette and, indeed, they are all faceless and indistinguishable here. Maybe there was something to Willard’s observation that they were all assassins here.
Willard himself has lost his humanity. He has become so obsessed with his mission that he kills a wounded Vietnamese woman because taking her to a hospital would deviate from his task.
This universal loss of humanity reaches its zenith when Willard reaches the last outpost before Kurtz’s compound. There are no commanding officers there, they have either been killed or have abandoned the place. It has become a terrifying madhouse where insanity rules. Soldiers are shot randomly and the definitions of a target are nonexistent.
The letters from home that reach Willard and his men emphasize how far they have strayed from their morality and civility when thrown into a murderous jungle. By taking this sentiment from Joseph Conrad’s novel, Apocalypse Now is testament to that book’s influence on Lord of the Flies.
Essays on the movie usually discuss on Brando’s performance but Sheen is, by comparison, ignored. This is unfortunate because Sheen excels in the harder role, since Willard undergoes such a profound transformation.
The scene in which Willard finally enters Kurtz’s compound is immensely scary, with red lighting, music that sounds like a beating heart, and villagers standing on rafts like statues. They are Kurtz’s mountaineer army and their ambushes are a little too much like that of zombies. Willard’s encounter with Kurtz is one of those scenes in which we hang on to every word. Through both men we reflect that the whole world has gone mad.
Apocalypse Now is the most harrowing character story through war ever filmed. But it is so much more than a war film. What is it really about? Apocalypse Now is one of those very rare movies that linger in our minds so long that the answers seem endless. One thing that can be said for sure is that it has a fundamental understanding of Conrad’s work. It’s about a heart of darkness and what that means to different people.

Apocalypse Now was director’s Francis Ford Coppola’s last masterpiece. Coppola (The Godfather) based his film from the Joseph Conrad novella A Heart of Darkness and also draws elements from Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Coppola, however, turned these narratives into a highly unconventional exercise in a war film. Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) is sent on a confidential mission en route to a secret outpost in Cambodia to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has become a renegade of the U.S. military, and is both feared by the Americans as well as the Vietnamese.

Coppola’s 202 minute epic (Redux version) is enlightened by many creative characters and much realistic warfare along the way. In essence, Coppola takes his viewer on a fantasy ride as Willard’s boat travels through the rivers of Vietnam and Cambodia, much like a ride at Disneyland. Yet Coppola reconstructs the Vietnam war right before the one’s eyes, which so many filmmakers have trouble doing. More amazingly, this film was no easy feat. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse documents the lengthy and troubled production of Apocalypse Now. Throughout production, Coppola had to delay and postpone to severe weather destroying expensive sets, which also hurt him financially. Many times, the film had gone over-budget and Coppola, himself, had to dip into his own finances to fund the film. In addition, producers were troubled with Brando showing up to the set overweight, and Martin Sheen’s health following a heart attack he suffered during filming. The release date was set back many times due to post-production and Coppola’s unwillingness to come up with an ending of the 1000 feet of film he had shot.

Many positives did come out of Coppola’s film, however. Marlon Brando who is introduced as Colonel Kurtz about three quarters into the film gives one of the most haunting, incredible performances of his career. Dennis Hopper, who plays an American photojournalist part of the Kurtz camp is delusional and comedic. Robert Duvall who plays Colonel Kilgore is a brilliant portrayal of a man who uses unconventional tactics and a great lead in for Colonel Kurtz. These three actors were the outstanding performances, though Martin Sheen gave a great performance as well as Sam Bottoms, Frederic Forrest, a young Larry Fishburne, and even Harrison Ford. Vittoro Storaro photographed the film beautifully as he always does, John Milius’ screenplay was haunting, the use of The Doors’ song “The End” was psychedelic, and Coppola’s direction was simply stunning.

Today film students hardly realize what it takes to make a film. And although Apocalypse Now is an extreme example, many lessons can be learned from production. However, if one wants to perfect their art, one might go crazy doing it. In the case of Mr Coppola, the filmmaker who has was prolific throughout the 1970’s producing four of the finest films ever made, he’s yet to reach his peak again. It is easy to assume that Coppola didn’t want the headache like the one he had from creating his Vietnam epic, but much credit to him for not giving up on what could have easily turned out as a disaster. Apocalypse Now is a psychedelic war masterpiece like no other!

While Stanley Kubrick’s vision of Vietnam is extremely entertaining and visually stunning, it has nothing on films like Platoon or Apocalypse Now. It’s really like two different war movies put together, which is a strength but also a weakness. It feels like you are cheated out of a real whole story and given some moments of someone’s military experience. Pvt. Joker is a completely uninteresting character, but somehow the supporting characters balance everything out. It’s really Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin and Vincent D’Onofrio that carry the movie and make it the semi-masterpiece that it is. Kubrick’s style is always amazing and is always the essential element in his films. This is definitely where that comes in handy because without it, this would not be as strong a film.

(Sunday / March 21, 2010 / 2:15am)

“Apocalypse Now” can arguably be the best, if not the greatest war film of all time. The magnificent direction of Coppola in this war film soars so high that many modern war film directors cannot and will not level with. Watching “Apocalypse Now” is like going on a trip to your favorite place and just living the life with extreme memorable experiences that are hard to forget. The presence of Marlon Brando in this film adds depth and creepiness that will take over your mind and body. This is another masterwork from Coppola that will stand the test of time.

War has never been good for the man. The man was never very good at war. But what is war? The ability of the man fighting for justice? What is justice? Values established as certain and true that liberty is the fundamental reason for its existence? The war is only one reason! A place where people die, where people struggle. Where some are considered heroes by acts honorable, where others just live with the hell and to realize that the human mind is fragile. A place where rationality can be replaced by painful representations of unreality built by horrific experiences. Where a man can fall over the precipice and simply never get to the bottom. A trauma that haunts the end of his days, or at least until when the memories of that time are forgotten. It is also a place where our wills are explicit, a place that is no reason to forget what we identify. It is a place to forget our personality, but a context that has to be adapted to it. The war is a horror, but a horror.