The howwor…the howwor…
I recently had the luck to attend a screening of the brand new
4k cut of a Coppola classic that has been imitated, parodied, and misquoted
uncountable times over the last forty years. It’s also incredibly long (and in
my case was made even longer when the screening suffered an unfortunate power
cut). Nevertheless, Apocalypse Now remains a technical masterwork that
encapsulates the themes of insanity and pointless warfare, with iconic
performances from everyone between Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando. The film’s
production was, much like the war it portrays, an insane nightmare that left
many in the kind of drugged-up haze only the seventies could provide—and in
some ways, perhaps adding to the dreamlike, bad trip atmosphere of this epic.
You probably know the gist of the story—a troubled US
officer in Vietnam played by Sheen is recruited by his shady superiors to track
down Colonel Kurtz, played by Brando. Kurtz has gone rogue and is committing heinous
acts in the jungle, like murders, mutilations, and reading pretentious poetry. Boarding
a boat to head along the Vietnamese rivers to Kurtz’s location, Sheen is joined
by a not entirely co-operative crew, including a positively baby-faced young Lawrence Fishburne (who began filming when he was only fourteen) and Frederic
Forrest. On the way, they encounter everything from demented officers more
concerned about catching good surfing waves than the battle around them, wild
tigers, striptease shows that go badly wrong, and in this cut, a stubborn French
family. The soundtrack, combining everything from acid rock to synth to Wagner,
adds to the chaotic feel that permeates the bloody insanity of the war—and insanity
is a strong theme throughout it all indeed.
Insanity was also how the filmmaking went. First of all, the
man besides Coppola who drove the project was John Milius—who, by Hollywood
standards, is a bit of an oddball. Suffice it to say that Charlie Sobczak in The Big Lebowski was directly inspired by him—and Milius indeed is that sort of
person who’s right-wing but not entirely, conservative yet happy to hang around
liberals, and so on. As such, it’s easy to see his take on the contradictions
of war and the handling of it by governments here—but there’s also some
unclearness as to how much of it reflects his own feelings. Nevertheless, the
slightly demented Milius proved an apt fit; his first choice for director was
none other than Coppola’s friend, George Lucas. Lucas ended up being too busy with
a little thing called Star Wars, but he did give Coppola some much-needed worry
when he hit it big with that one.
On filming in the Philippines, everything that could go
wrong did. A hurricane wrecked the production, extending the shoot by so long
that the teenage Fishburne reached adulthood by the time it was finished. New
locations bounced all over the place, from the western Pacific to California,
and Coppola had to wrangle every ounce of credit from everything he had. It was
chaotic enough that books and documentaries have been made of it—and even,
indirectly, a film you might’ve heard of called Tropic Thunder.
Brando eventually showed up—and it turned out he was a big
player in Hollywood in every sense of the word. Learning that his star liked pork
chops to much to properly film some intended scenes, Coppola had to keep Marlon
mostly in shadow, dressing him in black to blend him in with those backgrounds,
and using all sorts of smart camera tricks and body doubles. You still feel
Kurtz’s presence as such through the film in the form of audio tapes, meaning
that his eventual appearance, emerging from the darkness, hits all the more.
And that’s the lesson from Apocalypse Now—that despite the
shit you go through, persevering and believing in your product will turn out
something that really is a product of passion. The helicopter assault scene in
particular, complete with Ride of the Valkyries and surf colonels, is one of my
favorite cinematic sequences period, amazingly shot and directed with nothing
but the real thing before the lens. And though the cast might’ve been harried
and taxed by the exhausting shoot, in many ways, that’s exactly the sort of
emotional state you want when you’re playing ‘Nam vets tired of the madness and
blood. Apocalypse Now was in many ways a culmination of the post-Vietnam
seventies malaise, and brings it all to the forefront in a very memorable experience.
Of course, the eighties would soon come along with very
different takes on Vietnam, such as Rambo 2. Milius went on to work with other
cult productions, such as Conan the Barbarian, bringing some weird muscleman
from Austria to the forefront, and eventually Red Dawn in 1984, which we’ll get
to soon. Between all this, it’s not surprising that some things from Apocalypse
Now get taken out of context in a more jingoistic way—we all know ‘I love the
smell of napalm in the morning’, which is often quoted in a triumphant way, but
the actual delivery in the film reflects something more akin to jaded
weariness. Probably how the actual actor was feeling by then.
I heartily recommend the gorgeous 4k cut if you can still
manage to see it. It’s not as long as the Redux one, but it’ll be one long sitting,
and hopefully not one with unexpected delays as I had. And though some of the
scenes that Coppola longed to insert, like the one in the French villa, might
feel slightly padded (though it does reinforce the themes throughout the film)—it’s
those iconic shots, be it the nighttime bridge battle, Brando in the darkness,
and of course, Sheen emerging from the water, that make it all worth it. Grab
your surfboard and give it a watch if you haven’t.
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