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Apocalypse Now (1979)
 
Review
Francis Ford Coppola's gargantuan,
all-encompassing Vietnam (anti-)War film has got most every hallmark of a
timeless movie masterpiece. In scope and ambition it's in a league of its own.
Apocalypse Now aspires to be the war movie to end all war movies, both
thematically and qualitywise. It certainly is a testament to Coppola's ability and
artistry that his film even after 40+ years looks and feels unconnected to its
year of production. Not only is the film magnificently shot and has arguably the
best production values of any film from the 1970s, but there's also a
timelessness to the characters. Admittedly, they do belong to the political and
historical era in which they exist, but the realization of them appears to be
unaffected by the typical traits of 1970s film characters.
After a wonderfully evocative
onset, which establishes Martin Sheen's delicately subdued Captain
Willard, we embark on what can only be characterized as a war road movie when
Sheen is accompanied by Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms and
Larry Fishburne up the Nùng river. The first part of the film shows the
chaos and meaninglessness of war. The unaffected and invincible Lt. Col
Kilgore (iconically played by Robert Duvall) is only concerned with surfing amidst an onslaught on a village
of civilians. This
segment, which has a certain whimsical quality, is an antipole to what
awaits Willard further upstream, when the chaos and meaninglessness is
substituted with desperation and madness. This is the process of war,
suggests Coppola; how it eventually transforms you from a trigger-happy,
unfazed patriot (Duvall) via an introspective questioner (Sheen) and into
a full-blown deranged demagogue (Brando).
Apocalypse Now is a
resonant film, no matter where you're coming from. Although it's
anti-war in essence, it's not devoid of romanticism. The landscape
populated with the spectacles of war is at times photographed with a
sense of longing, almost as a wonderland. But it's a dangerous wonderland from
which there is no escape, at least no sane escape, claims Coppola towards the end of his film. Ultimately, the climax and
wrap-up becomes, if not exactly an anticlimax, then at least the film's
least remarkable part. As Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz takes center stage,
the film becomes a little too wrapped up in its own mysticism. As if
Coppola lets himself be beguiled by the very character and phenomenon
his film is supposed to warn us against. Or perhaps because once you
signed Marlon Brando and let him take command at this point in his
career, an unavoidable decay set in. If so, I suppose he was right for
the part of Kurtz after all.
PS! This review is based on the
re-edited Redux version, released in 2001, which adds 49 minutes of
material compared to the original cut, including two new scenes. One of
these scenes, from a French rubber plantation, gives the film a
significant added backdrop, according to this reviewer.
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