Apocalypse Now (1979) – Timeless Classic

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Genre – War Movie

Time: 3 Hours , 20 minutes (Redux).  3 hours, 5 minutes (Final Director’s Cut)

Platform:  You Tube Free

Director : Francis Ford Coppola

Some films are easily forgotten after watching. Then there are films that have a lasting impact on you and remain relevant, making them timeless classics.  Apocalypse Now is one such film – a true American classic that questions any and everything to do with the Vietnam War and by extension every War.

The film’s making was an odyssey in itself . Coppola had been experimenting with Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and its dark portrayal of White colonialism in Africa. However, after numerous revisions and basing it in the then concluded Vietnam War, he almost gave up. Then John Milius, no slouch himself as a Director, was brought in to revise the script and did an excellent job of rendering a coherent narrative.

The film was a classic example of Murphy’s Law at work. All the things that could go wrong, did go wrong – without exception. The whole three-year odyssey was made into a documentary by Coppola’s wife Eleanor Coppola (whose news of passing reached me while I was typing this blog). Some things that went wrong :

• Harvey Keitel, who portrayed Captain Willard, was dismissed and replaced by Martin Sheen. Consequently, all his scenes had to be reshot.
• All the sets were torn down by a typhoon.
• Because of the need to address a real insurgency, the Philippine Army and Air Force recalled the helicopters, tanks, and other gear that were on loan for this simulated war.
• Martin Sheen had a heart attack on the sets.
• The budgets kept bloating with ever increasing demands from Coppola who persistently threatened to kill himself.
• Marlon Brando who played Kurtz arrived overweight and so was shot in shadows. He also threatened to walk out of the film and keep his advance.
• The amount of footage shot was monumental. The DVD extras have many such deleted scenes.
• Given that the Vietnam War had ended up with ‘defeat’ and with images of American struggling to reach a rooftop to board a helicopter, interest in the ‘defeated ‘ war’ and a movie was minimal.

Eleanor Coppola’s documentary about the Making of  Apocalypse is available on You Tube

Given all these tribulations recorder by Eleanor Coppola on camera and in her book of the same name , the rumor mills of Hollywood went into overdrive . A  common derogatory joke was “Apocalypse When”.

But when the film released in 1979, audiences worldwide were overwhelmed and it won the Best film prize at Cannes which was followed by the Oscar for Photography and Sound. Since then, there have been multiple versions which were released.

The theatrical version was only about two hours and 50 minutes. In the late 1990s, most of the deleted scenes were introduced and a new version, “Apocalypse Now Redux” was released . Coppola ever the restless soul, finally chopped off some more scenes from the Redux version and released the Final Director’s Cut in 2019.

So does the story stand the test of time ? Perfectly. When it comes to depicting the insanity of war and justified warfare, the film is flawless.

The story is pretty much straightforward. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) , who is on an alcoholic bender and has other unspecified problems, is briefed to “terminate with extreme prejudice”, the command of a Colonel Kurtz who is creating havoc behind enemy lines, operating from a sanctuary in Cambodia. Willard is ‘driven’ by boat ‘upriver’ . The boat crew comprises Chief Philips (Albert Hall) , the ‘captain’ of the boar,  engine man ‘Chef’ (Frederick Forrest), Gunners Mate Lance (Sam Bottoms) , Gunners Mate ‘Clean’ (Laurence Fishburne).

The trip ‘upriver’ grows bizarre as symbols of American dominance and ‘American way of life’ are thrust on the unsuspecting Vietnamese. Willard and his crew observe :

• blanket bombings
• destroying villages to ‘save them from Communism’
• the war becoming one big TV show with a documentary team director (Coppola in a cameo) yelling at them to “keep going as if you are fighting”

• being attacked by a Tiger while they are foraging
• helicopter attacks on a village because the Surfing mad Colonel wants Lance to surf in a ‘Charlie infested’ village
• a Playboy bunny show that turns violent

• The French occupants of a deserted plantation who do not want to abandon their old ways, even though the French Administration officials had left Vietnam in 1953.

• watching soldiers without officer, defending a bridge
• being attacked by mysterious natives and finally …
• the ultimate bizarre event – Kurtz and his lair deep in Cambodian territory where Kurtz has gone mad mounting the severed heads of his enemies on poles.

Like the book, the journey into the ‘heart of darkness’ is undeniably a journey into the madness of war and its insanity, as evidenced by Kurtz’s behavior and how he was perceived by his own side. As long as he was killing the enemy, he was promoted and given medals. But the moment he ‘went rogue’, Willard is given an order to ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’.

Strangely, the film is highly popular with the current generation of US military soldiers . It’s possible that they are drawn to the violence and don’t fully understand the implications of interfering in a foreign war in a foreign land with a foreign culture.

On its initial theatrical release in 1982 , I saw the film three times in one week at Sterling Theater in Mumbai. The discovery of the Redux version in 2003 during a foreign business trip and its deleted scenes turned me into an ever lasting fan . The film has a ‘bad psychedelic nightmare’ like quality from which we want to wake up soon.

Like most films set in the Vietnam War, the sound track is made up of classic rock artists of the 1960s .The opening and the ending are set to Jim Morrison’s The End – a truly disturbing track that serves as a perfect balance for the bizarre onscreen happenings.

The Redux version is free on You Tube but with Spanish hardcoded subtitles (you can overlook that and concentrate on the English dialogues). Unfortunately it is unavailable on Amazon India but available on Amazon US.

The stunning photography by Vitorrio Storaro deserves a post by itself but lets be content with just some screenshots from the film :

As someone who has seen it three times in theater and many times on video, I can go on and on but let me stop here and end the post with the final line from the film :

Historical Background – 5 out of 5

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 5 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 5 out of 5

Total – 5 out of 5