Movie Notes: Apocalypse Now

March 2nd, 2009

Apocalypse Now

= 5 stars

Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall
Directed by Francis Ford Copolla

The definitive Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now still raises the blood pressure and confounds today. From the opening scene of Willard (Martin Sheen) going bloody nuts punching a hotel room mirror to the confusingly brooding Kurtz (Marlon Brando), it’s a long, rough ride. By movie’s end, nearly everyone we’ve met is killed off – mostly for no good reason – and we’re exhausted.

I’ve read the actual filming of Apocalypse Now was a hellish experience. Filmed in the Philippines with an unfinished script, it quickly went over budget, actor Martin Sheen had a heart attack, director Francis Ford Copolla had an affair, and Marlin Brando showed up on set grossly overweight and requested he be filmed hiding in shadows. The footage was edited down to a prohibitively long two hours and thirty-two minutes, while the more recent “Redux” version clocks in at a brutalizing three hours and sixteen minutes. Still, it’s quite fitting that a movie about the insane inhumanity of man was created under insanely inhumane conditions.

The character of Willard is our entry point. He’s tired of war but still following orders to go into the jungle and find the enigmatic Colonel Kurtz, who’s stopped following orders and taken “matters into his own hands.” It’s impossible to say what he’s been up to or why, but it’s assumed neither is good. Of course, in true melodramatic war lingo, this mission is so secret it “doesn’t exist.”

The insanity of going into the war-zone to take out one of your own officers on a mission that doesn’t exist is not lost on Willard. He joins up with a boat-crew to escort him up-river. Along the way they’ll encounter a horror show of war atrocities, growing more wacky by the mile. One of the more notable nut-jobs is surfing enthusiast officer Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who insists on catching waves during battle.

Every scene gets progressively more disturbing: from the USO Playmate show, the infamous river-boat search scene, the sudden outbursts of extreme violence inflicted on the boat crew, to the “asshole of the world” bridge camp. It’s important to remember this film was made before computer graphics. Therefore, when we see a squadron of helicopters swoop over a beach and blow the hell out of a village, or a napalm strike (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning”) raining down like a thunderclap, it has an undeniable visceral quality.

All through the journey up until we get to Kurtz, we wonder how much suffering is worth enduring in order to reach one man? What’s are Kurtz’s reasons for going AWOL? Is he privy to some holy-war knowledge? By the time we get to the Kurtz compound and realize the insanity that awaits Willard, we realize this mission’s end has only one positive element: now we can go home. Despite some sort of bohemian-guru-pagan-God role the Photographer (Dennis Hopper) places on him, and his tribe of native followers, Kurtz is completely off his rocker. There are no explanations necessary or sufficient to explain anything he says or does.

I’m unsure about the ending to this film. It’s said Copolla intended it to be hopeful, but following the hellish journey it seems a bit subtle. I’d liked to have seen the explosive destruction of the Kurtz compound worked into the film. Something utterly apocalyptic would have put a complete and definitive end cap on such a traumatic journey.

The differences between the “Redux” version and the original 1979 version seem largely hit and miss. I enjoyed the fleshed out surf scenes and Playboy Bunny footage, but the French colonial scene seemed extremely out of place (not to mention having some extremely awkward synthesizer music). I highly recommend watching the original first.

IMDB: Apocalypse Now
Wikipedia: Apocalypse Now
Rotten Tomatoes: Apocalypse Now 100%