by Joel Bocko
Apocalypse Now Redux, 1979 (revised in 2000), directed by Francis Ford Coppola
The Story: Capt. Willard, an increasingly strung-out Special Forces commando, is assigned a top-secret mission in late 60s Vietnam: travel up the Da Nang river to assassinate the renegade Col. Kurtz, a mysterious military genius who has set up a private empire in the wilderness. Along the way, Willard and his shipmates encounter increasingly bizarre characters and situations, and by the time they arrive in Kurtz’s unholy domain, it has become clear that the colonel is only as mad as the war around him.
When the troubled production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now was mired for years in the Philippines, Hollywood wags dubbed the film “Apocalypse Later.” The implication, of course, being that such a crazy idea – an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, transposed to Vietnam, and shot in conditions which were themselves often warlike (literally, the crew had to negotiate with both sides of a civil war which was raging around them) – could only exist on paper or perhaps in Coppola’s crazed, grandiose mind. When the film arrived at Cannes finally, at the tail end of the 70s, it could have merely been a footnote to the legendary turmoil of its making, something like the later big-budget flop Heaven’s Gate, labeled a “folly” and quickly cast aside.
Instead, Apocalypse Now proved a work of vitality and tremendous intensity – not just a sprawling mess but an unforgettable experience, which thrived on its own terms even as the legends of its creation added fuel to the mythic fire. In the Philippines, star Harvey Keitel was fired and replaced by Martin Sheen, who suffered a heart attack. Marlon Brando, as the supposedly fit and intelligent Kurtz, showed up on set grossly overweight and insisted on improvising his own dialogue. He refused to shoot scenes with his co-star Dennis Hopper (some have later speculated that this was because Hopper, then in the throes of his decades-long drug addiction, refused to bathe and gave off a foul odor). Amidst all this – plus the logistical problems inherent in shooting a war movie in a war zone far, far away from stateside comforts and supply routes – Coppola felt he was losing his mind. His wife agreed, recording his ravings only to unveil them years later in the memorable documentary Hearts of Darkness.
That Coppola emerged from all this with not only a coherent movie but a work of art is a testament to his willpower and vision, though not to his alone. Apocalypse Now, initiated when the edgy and personalized New Cinema of Hollywood was at its peak, was released when the auteurist bubble had already begun to burst. As such, it’s one of the last films to belong to that second golden age of the American film industry, when directors were widely considered “auteurs,” or authors of their own films, and given carte-blanche to make the movie as they saw fit. But by 1979, Jaws and Star Wars (ironically, both highly auteurist entertainments) had started turning the trend towards the blockbuster and Hollywood moved away from the idiosyncratic, financially unreliable directorial visions to big-budges fantasies and action movies with reliable youth audiences.
All of this is well-known, as is Apocalypse Now‘s canonization as a pinnacle of Hollywood auteurism. In fact, the film might not have come off as well, or at all, without some notable collaborators, and they deserve celebration alongside Coppola. The screenplay’s weirdly countercultural-yet-militarist bravado owes much to the right-wing hippie surfer Jon Milius, who co-authored the script with Coppola (Milius went on to direct the paranoid and – unintentionally? – campy Red Dawn, in which Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, and Lea Thompson form a band of teenage guerrillas who fight off a Soviet invasion of the Midwest; the writer/director was later parodied as Walter Szobcek in The Big Lebowski). Milius’ touch is most notable in the character of Col. Kilgore, a gung-ho, insane – and yet weirdly lovable – Air Cavalry officer who famously declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Kilgore decides to attack a village because it’s close to a point break where the wave peels off left and right; as a surfer (and, incidentally, a goofy-footer, make of that what you will) he can’t resist the temptation, forcing his men out on their boards in the midst of a bombardment. Robert Duvall, who plays – or embodies – Kilgore also deserves much credit for the film’s success. Though the part is short – nearly a cameo, and the character disappears as soon as the boat hits the river and the narrative proper begins, he sets the tone admirably. Furthermore, even those who find the overall film bombastic and over-the-top tend to find Duvall’s performance intoxicating. Here, the ambivalence of movie audiences towards violence is fully exploited: we both recoil from and embraces Duvall’s single-minded devotion to carnage, as an almost abstract thing of beauty.
Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to characterize Apocalypse Now as an anti-war movie, though it isn’t exactly pro-war either. It seems to take war, or at least violence and insanity represented by war, for granted and asks how one functions in this world of “horror.” Willard finds that one just flows upstream with the river, not asking any questions, taking things as they come, and finally dispatching one’s duty with a ritualistic fervor. The assassination of Kurtz which closes the film owes little to any actual military tactics and a great deal to myth – with Willard as the cosmic “errand boy” who creeps through an ancient temple and slays the father figure while an ox is slaughtered outside. The sacrifice complete, Willard – his camo makeup doubling as tribal tattoo – is allowed free passage by the natives, as if one god has just slain another.
This mythical conclusion is underpinned by another crucial collaborator of Coppola – this one posthumous. The vocals and lyrics of Jim Morrison, not to forget the driving music of The Doors, become inseparable from the film’s effect although – like Duvall – their impact is brief. Only one Doors song is utilized – “The End” – and it’s played only at the very beginning and end of the film. But no one who’s seen Apocalypse Now has ever forgotten the palm trees going up in flames as Morrison croons, “This the end…my only friend…the end…” or Kurtz collapsing in a stream of his own blood while Willard hacks at the officer with a machete and Morrison chants wickedly, “Kill…Kill…Kill…”
Speaking of the soundtrack, Coppola’s final collaborator – and perhaps the most important – was Walter Murch. In the film’s credits, he’s listed as one of three editors (and as the sole editor of the 2000 director’s cut Apocalypse Now Redux – expanded from 1979’s trimmed version to encompass 3 1/2 hours). More crucially, he is credited for “sound design” and “sound montage” for both versions of the film, and his work is credited in some circles for “saving” the film. There’s no doubt that the weaving together of sound and image accomplishes wonders, making a collage out of Coppola’s potential mess, and determining the film’s nightmarish foreboding as much by the uneasy audio mix as by the intense visuals. Famously, Murch opens the film with the sound of a chopper seamlessly dissolving into the whirl of a ceiling fan and at once the movie’s claustrophobic yet apocalyptic atmosphere is established.
The Music Hall screened the Redux version of the film, which restores footage to the original cut and adds a number of detours for the protagonists – including a humorous (if somewhat broad) tryst with Playboy bunnies in downed helicopters and, most memorably, a long segue in which the unit shacks up in a French plantation, where the aging colonialists rant endlessly about Dien Bien Phu and the French defeat in Vietnam, while Willard makes love to a beautiful young widow, who gives him opium and tells him that animal and angel co-exist in every man, including himself. Earlier we have seen the darkest side of Willard, when, following a one-sided “firefight” in which innocent Vietnamese peasants are killed, he shoots the one surviving woman, feeling it would be a waste of time to take her to safety, when they’ve got a mission to accomplish.
Upon mistaking the killing of the woman for a “new” scene when initially viewing the Redux years ago (in fact, memory was deceiving; the scene had been in the 1979 version all along) it seemed the most powerful – and perhaps only needed – additional footage. Now, however, it seems that the plantation scenes add a great deal to the film with their simultaneously ghostlike and ultra-realistic aura (in the sense that, even as the characters appear out of nowhere like spirits, they provide context and history where the rest of the movie does not). By taking us off the river, they remind us how much of the world exists outside of the characters’ experience, which only makes the diversity and madness of their encounters all the more biting – these surrealistic episodes are not occurring in a vacuum, but are rather a few of an infinite variety of possible experiences, each stranger than the last, with only a crumbling centre to hold them.
Some words finally then, on that centre – Kurtz, or more pertinently, Brando. Even many impressed by the film’s mad vision have found the Kurtz scenes a letdown, just more self-indulgence from possibly the greatest actor of all time, who saw fit to squander his gifts. However, it is the character – not only the actor – who was extremely gifted, yet who chose to set up a tropical fiefdom (Kurtz in Cambodia, Brando in Tahiti) and disregard his talents. Though much of this lay in Brando’s future in 1979, in retrospect the role offers one of those eerily prophetic character turns – much like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane – which adds resonance to the picture and the portrayal.
Furthermore, while some of Brando’s ramblings are underwhelming, some expand the film’s scope and one in particular seems to hold the entire, hard-to-pin-down moral vision of the film in the palm of its hand. Willard is our hero, but he is a man without a time or a place, a rootless antihero who seems barely aware of the world around him, focused as he is on the mission at hand and the psychedelic fireworks of the collapsing world around him. Kurtz, on the other hand, is a man fully aware of and immersed in history, in context, in civilization. His awareness encompasses not just the mystical, but the tangible, and his readings from Time Magazine and T.S. Eliot enrich the film’s reach. If Willard is postmodern, centreless, wandering, without context or perspective, Kurtz is the last of the modernists with his mournful knowledge of art and history, combined with a painful awareness of their fragility and an impotence in the face of their fading power and glory. Hence, it is quite appropriate that Willard kills him.
As for that amazing monologue which is Kurtz’s most famous, it gives the film a code and a moral which is absent in the less self-aware passages dominated by Willard. Kurtz recalls a village in which the children were inoculated, only to have their arms hacked off by guerrillas in a gesture of defiance against imperial presumption. Kurtz remembers weeping, being revolted and horrified and then – “as if struck by a diamond bullet” – realizing the genius of these warriors. They were not monsters, but men, men who knew right from wrong but could self-consciously act against their own moral judgement, to take an action for the greater good which offends them to the core of their being. Kurtz finds this far more moral than the hypocrisy of the American war, in which soldiers are trained to kill but cannot write “fuck” on their airplanes because “it’s obscene!”
And here we have the troubling “message” of Apocalypse Now, to the extent that it has one: war, and perhaps even all existence, requires the surrender of one’s scruples to “the mission”; self-realization means becoming inhuman. The irony is that Kurtz, who supposedly embodies this ethic, is in fact the most human character in the film – because he’s still troubled by this logic, whereas others – like Willard, or even the seemingly “normal” commanders who send him on his way – have already become numbed to the enterprise they are involved with. And so Col. Kurtz, possibly the most evil man in the movie, a man who sets himself up as a god, who celebrates the maiming of children, who beheads dozens if not hundreds of people, is also the conscience of Apocalypse Now. And when he’s killed all that remains is the nihilism of the moment, the “Now” having overcome the “Apocalypse.” This is the true horror Kurtz speaks of.
[Originally this post provided a link to my piece, which was first posted on the Examiner. As of 1/29/10, it has been moved here in its entirety.]
Well, I certainly didn’t ask for this, but I’m flattered you saw the review fit to print here. I would ask one big favor, though – could you provide a link in the opening to the actual piece? I am paid by the hit, and while the eventual sum is bound to be paltry, I do need the traffic I can get. While this will no doubt greatly increase readership of this article, it would be a pity if it stopped here, since the essay was originally written in my capacity on that site. If you could please ask your readers to click on the link to support the article if they like it (and also to read my other pieces over there), that would be greatly appreciated.
Also, I think it’s important to announce loudly that I am not a “film scholar” – no research was done for this review, just reliance on my own memory and impressions. This is neither to denigrate myself nor film scholarship, just to make an important distinction there. If titles we must have “film writer” will do just fine, thanks!
“Apocalypse Now, initiated when the edgy and personalized New Cinema of Hollywood was at its peak, was released when the auteurist bubble had already begun to burst. As such, it’s one of the last films to belong to that second golden age of the American film industry, when directors were widely considered “auteurs,” or authors of their own films, and given carte-blanche to make the movie as they saw fit.”
Excellent point Movie Man, but as you subsequently discuss, the rules of the game changed right after this. It could be argued that Coppola (who always resisted playing by the studio rules, even today in fact) was an “overlapping” auteur, whose work in this sense was a contuation of what he had started years before.
“They were not monsters, but men, men who knew right from wrong but could self-consciously act against their own moral judgement, to take an action for the greater good which offends them to the core of their being. Kurtz finds this far more moral than the hypocrisy of the American war, in which soldiers are trained to kill but cannot write “fuck” on their airplanes because “it’s obscene!”
In my view, you make here your most superlative point, and the general principal at any understanding of the work. Kurtz lost his sanity, but there was an underpinning of value judgement that seemed to make much sense.
“And here we have the troubling “message” of Apocalypse Now, to the extent that it has one: war, and perhaps even all existence, requires the surrender of one’s scruples to “the mission”; self-realization means becoming inhuman. The irony is that Kurtz, who supposedly embodies this ethic, is in fact the most human character in the film – because he’s still troubled by this logic, whereas others – like Willard, or even the seemingly “normal” commanders who send him on his way – have already become numbed to the enterprise they are involved with. And so Col. Kurtz, possibly the most evil man in the movie, a man who sets himself up as a god, who celebrates the maiming of children, who beheads dozens if not hundreds of people, is also the conscience of Apocalypse Now.”
Ah, brilliant stuff here. I can only marvel. Col Kurtz, is one of literature’s most enigmatic and fascinating characters. It’s that simple.
Movie Man you area gentleman and a “_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _” Well you get my gist! LOL!!!! It’s funny that you mentioned the link to the piece, as I was just going to add it!!!!! I can’t believe we thought abhout it at the same time. I will also paste my comment here to the Boston Inde site!
I read somewhere from one critic that he thought the boat trip came across like “a ride at Disneyland.” The same critic thought the philosophizing scenes between Brando and Sheen were “Bergman boring”. But there’s no doubt this is one of the most powerful films of American cinema, and while I can’t say it matches Conrad’s novel, it’s close enough. An extraordinary essay here.
Here’s Joel’s links to two other reviews he posted on GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WILD BUNCH:
http://www.examiner.com/x-13438-Boston-Indie-Movie-Examiner~y2009m7d3-Gone-With-the-Wind
http://www.examiner.com/x-13438-Boston-Indie-Movie-Examiner~y2009m6d26-The-Wild-Bunch
(I see there is a link on the bottom – sorry I missed that before! If you could still put a link to the specific piece at the top, though, that would be great – I think it may help with my metrics – i.e. figuring out how many people read what, though I’m not sure if the website measures this yet. Thanks again for your enthusiasm, Sam.)
Movie Man:
I’m sure this piece will get great exposure as it richly deserves to. As tomorrow is Monday, the morning Diary and a piece from Tony are time-scheduled to go up over it, be rest assured it will be on the first page for several days, and it’s excellence will ensure enthusiasm from more people than just me.
Well… (deep breath, sigh, another deep breath, feekings of despair). I had thought I might pen a piece on APOCALYPSE NOW to add further resonance to Allan’s essay. Hiwever I seem to have been beaten and bested by this thoroughly investigated and deeply empassioned essay by the dude of dudes, MOVIEMAN! My hats off to you, this essay was a complete pleasure anf an informed read about a movie I have been obsessively in love with since I saw0it in original release. All the territory is covered here; the history of the production, the intent of the filmakers and, of course, Marlon Brando and THE DOORS. Gigantic round of applause MOVIEMAN, my friend, this essay was the high-lite of my long day. Thank you so much for this. Dennis PS-i’ll have more to say about this film before the day ends!
MOVIEMAN.. We fans of APOCALYPSE NOW must unite! If you’d like to talk in detail over the phone about this you can reach me at 201 658 4565.
Dennis, the more the merrier! Please send Sam your piece as well.
Among other things, I’d like to hear why you feel the Redux is superior – a position I would not say I’m in right now but which I’m closer to sympathizing with after a second viewing. Is it just that the madness grows with the length? Or do you feel there are elements put into play which strengthen the work? As I said, please do submit your own piece. Maybe we can a blog-a-thon going in the space of a single blog!
While I have no problem with the 79 version of the film, I have always felt that the addition of the “french plantation” sequence adds more depth to both Coppola AND Conrads theory of the trip down the river as a journey BACK in time. The further Willard goes, the more primodial his surroundings become. Kurtz speaks of the “crystalline” thinking and power of will that the natives displayed by hacking off the innoculated childrens arms. This, to me, suggests a high regard to simplicity in actions. Like Palahniuk and Fincher suggesting man’s perfect form as primordial in FIGHT CLUB, so do I think does Kurtz. Coppola’s additions enhance the journey back to this perfected ideal.
I may not get the lines exactly right but; “you must understand that these were not monsters. These were men whose hearts were filled with love. But they could step away and have strength, THE STRENGTH, to do that. If I had ten divisions of these men our problems here would be over very quickly.”. In a nutshel, it’s that passage that I feel sums up what we all have the ability to be. That so-called “civilization” we live in is far more barbaric than ourselves of the past millions of years ago. Problems were addressed and laid to rest with simple exactings of clear thinking and the will to react to them. Simplicity, as I think Kurtz isd admired of, is true strength, accomplishment, love and joy.
And, again, I would rather discuss this over the phone as I can’t get all my thought of this film to you tapping away on this annoying Blackberry. If you like you can hear what I have to say and possibly incorporate it into your own better writing. But I’ve relentlessly studied this film for three decades and like to think of myself as a minor “scholar” on it. Call it APOCALYPSE NOW 101! LOL!!!!!!!
Sam, I hate to be a wet blanket, but I think you need permission from The Examiner to reproduce the article in full. So to avoid any legal issues, I recommend you cut this down to an intro and a short selected quote with a link to the artitcle. This way also, Joel gets his full share of hits.
This is not a bad idea, Tony. I am not sure how the Examiner feels about this, but for the sake of Wonders in the Dark it’s probably best to play it safe. In the mean time, I will ask a representative of the site about reproducing content when I get the chance.
I think probably a single paragraph would be safe, but whatever you guys want to do is fine with me – I didn’t even expect to see it up here in the first place, so I can’t complain!
Dennis, I am probably done writing about A-Now for now, so it’s all on you! I still think you should put up a piece…especially as this one may be coming down now (at least in its present form).
Apoclaypse Now is fine as it is, but Redux is a treat in its own right. Between the added comedy and Clean’s funeral, Redux sometimes strikes me as more like John Ford’s Apocalypse Now than Francis Coppola’s — though that’s not a bad thing. The expanded version seems more like a Classic Hollywood epic in its sheer expansiveness and variety of moods than the original theater version, which is more a product of its time in its undiluted madness.
Movie Man:
Have you seen this???
I will have more to say about everything tomorrow, but it’s 2:00 A.M. now, as I recently came back from NYC and did some additions to the Monday Morning Diary. I must get up at 7:00 for summer school…………
Movie Man great work.
all this talk of AN and no Clash ‘Charlie can’t surf’? What gives?
^^’Charlie DON’T Surf’^^ it’s 1:15 am, but that is NO excuse. my apologizes, to the sublime genius of the Clash.
FABULOUS WORK THERE JAMIE!!!!!!!!!!!! You’re the best!!!!!
Thanks, Sam – that article was great!
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