This is an
extended version of Coppola's 1979 classic, with 53 minutes of newly inserted
footage filling out the story of Captain Willard and his crew as they voyage
towards the compound of Captain Kurtz.
Burnt out Captain Willard (Martin Sheen, The American President, The West Wing)
is sent into the jungle with orders to find and kill Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando,
The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris) who has effectively set up his own army.
As he descends into this alien territory, Willard is slowly affected by the
mesmerising power of the jungle itself, as well as by the aggression and insanity
which surrounds him. His crew, equally vulnerable, succumb to drugs and are
killed off one by one. As Willard's journey continues, he starts to show some
similarity to the man he has been sent to kill.
Coppola: "This film
isn't about Vietnam. This film IS Vietnam."
The release of Apocalypse Now Redux has, like all directors' cuts, raised the
tantalising issue of which version works better and why. Does the colonial sequence
come across as distractingly silly? Do the extended Playboy bunny scenes slow
down the plot? Did we need so much more dialogue, so many more words in what
is essentially a war film? These are all matters of comparison, and for the
first-time viewer will carry little weight. Then film still has to stand or
fall on those merits of engagement it can muster while an audience is in the
process of watching it, irrespective of the (admittedly, not inconsiderable)
note-taking fun of observing and assessing each alteration.
But Apocalypse Now, whether or not Redux, is a movie on a large canvas, and
other questions can be asked of it. Before it gained classic status, not all
reviewers were overwhelmed by its sheer scope and intensity, and its variable
and possibly self-indulgent sense of pace was open to criticism:
"Apocalypse Now is an ambitious film which carries the weight of its ambition
with obvious labour, growing slew-footed where it ought really to be pressing
forward. Coming from a director of Coppola's record (and somewhat boosted by
having won half of the Grand Prix at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where evidently
it was screened "unfinished"), the movie disappoints me; yet it has,
inevitably, a certain interest, mostly on account of two set-pieces which abound
in cinematic fireworks, and are perhaps too flamboyant but in the circumstances
blessedly enlivening.
Moreover, even in the slowest patches, there is a constant devotion to lyrical
imagery: telling compositions and often a beguiling use of the slow dissolve,
testify to Coppola's filmic sensibility, and also of course to the high talent
of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Last Tango In Paris; 1900) Yet it seems
to me that in a number of big close-ups of Martin Sheen's thinking eyes - and
once even a screenful of just one of these eyes - there is a trace of anxiety,
a feeling that without such bids for concentration we should be insufficiently
engaged by the predicaments in which the Sheen character finds himself. Sheen
is a clever actor, but on this occasion his task is pretty thankless."
Gordon Gow, FILMS AND FILMING, Nov. 1979
The subject matter and setting
of the film came in for some analysis on its first release, questioning whether
as an epic on so recent a wound to American confidence as the Vietnam War, it
could possibly do justice to the implications of its theme:
"Captain Willard witnesses an attack by helicopters of the 9th Air Cavalry
on a Vietcong beach-head. The officer in charge, Kilgore, blasts the enemy with
The Ride of the Valkyries as well as rockets, dresses and struts like the hero
of a John Ford cavalry western gone ape, and insists on trying the surf at the
beach before the firing has ceased. Continuing his journey upriver, Willard
muses in voice-over: 'If that was how Kilgore fought the war, I wondered what
they [the army] had against Kurtz…' The question, one feels, has been inserted
defensively. If the audience is to accept the spiritual/philosophical project
that takes up the rest of the film - an investigation of the heart of darkness,
of good and evil, of fundamental myths of ritual sacrifice and renewal - it
must be convinced that there is a deeper explanation of the Vietnam war than
Kilgore's macho madness and technological overkill. At the same time (as the
collected Notes published by his wife reveal), Coppola evidently suspects that
the helicopter attack sums up what the film has to say specifically about Vietnam
- thereafter the war will be merely a local excuse for a much broader enquiry.
Far from representing the acceptable and unacceptable faces of military insanity,
Kilgore and Kurtz are really the protagonists of different nightmares, and Coppola's
attempt to link them through Willard indicates both the boldness and ambition
of his film and its fundamental misconception. For one thing, the metaphorical
transformation that overtakes the film absolves it from accounting for Vietnam
in any substantial sense, while raising uncomfortable questions about the way
it recreates the war. The helicopter attack epitomises its seemingly liberal
stance - this was a "dirty" war because of the massive technology
unleashed on a peasant society - while happily involving the audience in the
exhilaration of being on the unleashing end.'
Richard Combs, Monthly Film Bulletin, Dec. 1979
Writing more recently in response to the new cut of the film, Lihn Dinh has
pointed out its remarkable lack of named Vietnamese roles or (excluding the
south Vietnamese army translator) speaking parts:
"This movie, then, is really about a bunch of pale guys, Coppola included,
wading into their own hearts of darkness. It's certainly not about Vietnam.
I'm not even sure it's a Vietnam war movie.
Firstly, the Vietnam war was essentially a civil war. The two major combatants
were the north and south Vietnamese, as borne out by the casualty figures: 1.1
million for the north, 223,746 for the south, and 58,200 for the Americans.
Of the three major offensives of the war - Tet (1968), Easter (1972), and Spring
(1975) - U.S. ground troops participated in only one. You would never know that,
however, from watching any American Vietnam war flick, be it The Deer Hunter,
Platoon, The Boys in Company C or Apocalypse Now.
To many Americans, the Vietnam war was an American extravaganza, staged in Vietnam.
To concede that it was a civil war is to relegate America to a supporting role
in someone else's drama. But that is exactly what it was: someone else's drama.
In spite of all the billions spent by the U.S., the Vietnam war was essentially
a Vietnamese affair. The stakes were simply much higher for them."
Linh Dinh, The Guardian, Nov. 2nd 2001.
Francis Ford Coppola was
one of the new breed of American directors in the 1960s, who came to the business
via film school rather than through the studio system of hands-on training,
although his early career must have given him a crash course in the unvarnished
practicalities of getting a film made.
Brought up in New York, the son of composer/musician Carmine Coppola, Coppola
gained a degree in dram from Hofstra University before going on to graduate
work in filmmaking at UCLA. In the early 1960s he worked for Roger Corman, king
of the low-budget horror film, swiftly graduating from his role as assistant
to that of (not always credited) director. The first film he "directed"
was actually a bought-in Russian movie, Nebo Sovyot, which Coppola re-edited
and added to before its American release as Battle Beyond the Sun (1960).
He went on to direct such memorable titles as The Playgirls and the Bellboy
(1962) and The Terror (1963, uncreated) before moving beyond Corman's
lurid output.
Later titles include Finian's Rainbow (1968), The Conversation
(1974), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974),
Apocalypse Now (1979), Peggy Sue got Married (1986), Bram Stoker's
Dracula (1992) and Jack (1996). Even this partial list of his directing
credits (he is credited with 30 titles, some of them TV) illustrates the impossibility
of categorising his output. Apocalypse Now was his twelfth film. He also has
input as a writer of screenplays (21 listed) and as a producer (54 credits).
He was responsible with George Lucas for setting up the film production company
American Zoetrope, based in San Francisco, under the aegis of which he produced
(and Lucas directed) the award-winning American Graffiti. Coppola has also been
active as Executive Producer for the films of such non-American directors as
Wim Wenders and Akira Kurosawa, bringing their work to a wider audience, and
played a major role in making available the 1927 silent masterwork Napoleon
by Abel Gance. The actress Talia Shire is Coppola's sister, Sofia Coppola is
his daughter and Nicholas Cage is his nephew.
"But what of the new
stuff? It's all good, but there are niggles - when Willard and his men rag Kilgore
by stealing his surfboard, it deepens their characters and makes some nice relief,
but the extra footage blunts Duvall's great exit line ["Some day this war's
gonna end."] The Playboy bunny scene has moments but feels unfinished,
and a crucial moment with Laurence Fishburne is still MIA. The long French plantation
sequence has weird echoes of Sid James and co taking tea during battle in Carry
On Up The Khyber, but the first ghostly appearance of the colonials in the mist
is magical. A bit with Brando reading articles aloud makes this a more specific
film about this particular war, but is literal editorialising. Now, it's a slower
film, with a little more intellect and sentiment, but perhaps the added time
to think will make you feel less overwhelmed."
Kim Newman, EMPIRE
"Like all great art,
though, Apocalypse Now is ageless, and after the recent terrorist attacks on
America, there's perhaps no better time for Francis Ford Coppola to unveil his
second strike at the quintessential Vietnam war movie. The film, originally
released in 1979, reflected on the futile, aimless nature of America's involvement
in Vietnam. Two decades later it still stands up as the most chilling and commanding
anti-war film ever made…..As it stood, Apocalypse Now was an astonishing
film that dragged you into the horror and carnage of a senseless war. Overhauled,
it does this to an even greater degree. And so we have it, a masterpiece crafted
from a masterpiece. For sheer exhilaration it doesn't get any better than this.
Incredible."
Nick Johnstone, UNCUT
" Brando has an outstanding
new scene, reading aloud an article about the war from Time magazine claiming
that things 'smell better now'. 'How do they smell to you, soldier?' he asks
his prisoner, Martin Sheen. That's a line to match Duvall's napalm-in-the-morning
haiku. What passion this film has - what mad daring, what ambition. And what
have we got now? CGI. Apocalypse Now is supposed to be a film you grow out of.
I can only say it's time to grow back into it again. Because they really don't
make them like this any more."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
| Notes Compiled by: | |
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Tyneside
Cinema |
