Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now!: Old School Reviews

Apocalypse Now! (1979)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Stars: Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Marlon Brando, Larry Fishburne, Frederick March, Sam Bottoms

Release Company: Paramount

MPAA Rating: R

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"The most important thing I wanted to do in the making of Apocalypse Now was to create a film experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam War."
--Frances Ford Coppola

Many years from now movie buffs will look back at the various movies created about the Vietnam War, and one film will stand out above the rest Frances Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! In fact, this classic work will tower above the other war films because it's not necessarily about war - more like war as metaphor to peer inside the inner struggles of the heart. Indeed, it's well known that the film's script is based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but here Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) searches for Kurtz (Marlon Brando) upriver into Cambodia instead of Africa.

The film begins with one of the most mesmerizing openings I can recall with hueys (helicopters) dissolving and superimposing themselves with napalm bombings, a ceiling fan, and close-ups of Willard's unsleeping face—all done to the Doors song, "The End." I especially like the transition Coppola makes from the sound of the huey to the visual of the ceiling fan before Willard looks out his Saigon window.

Willard spends his days waiting in his room. Waiting for a mission, and like the Doors lyrics imply, he's going a little insane. Witness one of Martin Sheen's finer acting moments as he punches out a room mirror and opens a vein in his hand and painfully gets inside himself. Sheen uses his own inner demons to reach that point, but it fits Willard's character, as he has entered a no man's land—a place where he can't stand to be involved with the war, yet is no longer fit to reside comfortably back in civilian life. He needs a mission since he's getting softer as Charlie gets stronger.

And what a mission he gets— to hunt down the enigmatic American Colonel Kurtz and to terminate his command with extreme prejudice. This is not one of those missions that will ever reach the history books or be acknowledged by the military itself; in fact, the military will officially deny any knowledge of this mission. But the American military are quite adamant that Willard be stopped for his unsound methods of acting on his own in the jungles of Cambodia with his Montagnard troops—they feel he has given in to the dark side of his psyche and clearly gone insane.

Willard had killed before on similar missions, but the target had never been American. He realizes that the official excuse given is bullshit since "charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500." Clearly something has the American military chewing its shorts over Kurtz. One general (character actor G.D. Spradlin) states, "there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and irrational, between good and evil." So now Willard spends the rest of the film getting to know Kurtz as he travels up the Nung River. He has his assigned mission, but not even Willard knows for certain what he will do when he meets Kurtz—but we are privy to all Willard's thoughts as the journey becomes more and more surreal.

So many scenes stand out that show the absurdity of Vietnam, and of war in general—skiing behind the boat only foreshadows what is to come. One of the most memorable has to be the scenes with First Airborne Captain Kilgore (Robert Duvall). Who can forget Duvall jumping all over a South Vietnamese soldier for not sharing canteen water with the brave VC with his guts hanging out, and then witness Duvall abruptly forget the VC as soon as he hears that one of Willard's boatmates is a famous surfer? The whole thing about surfing is hilarious; in fact, Willard's high priority mission gets attention because of it. Kilgore only decides to clear out the "hairy area" because of a fantastic 6-foot peak for some surfing fun alongside the VC sniper fire. After all, "Charlie don't surf!"

And of course, there's the great Air Calvary attack force complete with Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," and the most quoted line from the film: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning . . . Smelled like... victory."

The fact that the Academy honored Melvyn Douglas with the Best Supporting Actor award over Robert Duvall's memorable performance is further proof of Oscar absurdity. Fortunately, Duvall was later able to use much the same character in The Great Santini.

The role players in the boat are all effective as well, providing Willard with only a relatively safe haven on board but showing subtle signs that the Vietnam experience is unraveling. Lawrence Fisburne is only a teen when he plays Clean here, and "Larry" acts suitably immature as he dances to the Stones on board, orgasmically ogles the Playboy bunnies, or panics when confronting the locals. Sam Bottoms plays tripped out Lance (and I think he literally WAS tripping most of the time Apocalypse was filming if I remember correctly from A Filmmaker's Apocalypse). Frederick Forrest portrays Chef, who only wants to return to New Orleans and resume his saucier career and totally freaks out when a mango hunting trip meets up with a surprise encounter. Running squarely up against Willard's commanding presence is the boat captain Chief (Albert Hall), who is only put into his place after an ill-formed decision to search a civilian boat.

Similar to Huckleberry Finn's trek down the Mississippi, Captain Willard finds more and more absurdity each time he gets out of the boat, and it gets progressively surreal as we go from a playboy bunny USO show, to the bridge at Do Lang that is bombed nightly and rebuilt daily without a commanding officer. Dubbed the "asshole of the world" I couldn't imagine being in a worse hellhole, but Coppola has one further surreal setting for us along the lines of the Manson murders that we read about over one of the soldiers—Kurtz's compound that is heavily littered with headless bodies. And even scarier than the cult-like natives surrounding the camp is the now bloated Marlon Brando lurking in the shadows.

Brando still dominates the screen when present, just as his Kurtz persona has captured our interest all through the journey. It's the reason that Coppola invested the millions in star salary for his cameo. Brando also becomes the reason behind the mixed reviews that Coppola received for his ending. Coppola was torn about exactly how to end the film and had wrongly assumed that Brando had prepared for the role by reading Conrad's novel, and would be mentally and physically ready for a three-day shoot.

Scratch that plan, Frances. As soon as the 350 + lb. Brando arrived in the Philippines wanting to avoid shooting full body shots, Coppola suspected trouble. This was even more confirmed when he discovered that Brando had never read Heart of Darkness and was completely clueless about his character. Given the situation, Coppola went into salvage mode, spending a whole day just talking with Brando about the character and setting up numerous improvisations.

So, if you wonder why Brando is always shot in the shadows, it's because Marlon was embarrassed by his appearance. If you wonder about the absurdity of Brando's dialogue, that can be explained as well. The method actor always had difficulty remembering lines, and this time had entered the production not knowing who he was supposed to be. But given the character of Kurtz, Coppola does extract some memorable absurdities and pseudo-intellectual lines from Brando about gardenias and snails crawling across razor edges. The part I like best about Brando's performance is the time he chucks the book at Dennis Hopper, who is ranting about Kurtz's dialectical brilliance.

Martin Sheen gives the performance of his life in Apocalypse Now; in fact, it nearly was literally his last. Sheen suffered a massive heart attack while filming, one of many reasons that caused a halt in production. Get hold of the 1991 documentary about the making of the film called Hearts of Darkness: a Filmmaker's Apocalypse for the full story on that. "The horror . . . the horror!"

With four great films coming out in the 1970's—two Godfather epics, The Conversation, and Appocalypse Now—Coppola had an awesome decade. Had he not run into so many problems during the production of Apocalypse Now, he might have made even more. On the other hand, the challenges Coppola faced during filming actually add more depth to what we see on screen—the entire cast and crew are drug through a virtual war zone during the filming process.

Most people love the early parts of Apocalypse Now with the charging Air Calvary scenes and cite the confusing last 15-minutes as problematic. I've even heard some people recommend that people just stop their DVD with the Kurtz compound scenes!

Granted these scenes are quite different from the rest of the movie, and are made so necessarily by Brando; however, the juxtaposing the ritual water buffalo slaying with Kurtz and Willard is beautifully edited, and Coppola mixes absurdity of the Kurtz compound quite well with his theme. Much like Rod Taylor's final maneuvering through Hitchcock's menagerie of birds (The Birds), Martin Sheen's silent movement through the natives is a worthy ending. And not that ambiguous, as long as you see the final credits darkened as Coppola envisioned, without clouding the issues with additional imagery like the early rushes did. Although the recently released Apocalypse Now! (Redux) adds restored footage that re-inforces Coppola's themes, the original version remains powerful.