Special forces veteran Willard (Martin Sheen) is tasked with a unique mission.
Go into Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has gone rogue.
I have never seen Apocalypse Now before now.
For years I had wanted to see it but I could never find the theatrical cut.
For a movie I have never seen, I know a tonne about Apocalypse Now.
I have seen Hearts of Darkness a couple of times. I read Eleanor Coppola’s memoir of the production, and countless making-of articles.
And there are near-fifty years of movies which reference this movie.
The one piece of related media I have not read is Joseph Conrad’s novel.
What is there to be said about Apocalypse Now?
I was thinking of Barry Barclay’s concept of Fourth cinema throughout the movie.
We are so embedded with Willard’s POV, I started thinking of Barry Barclay’s concept of Fourth cinema - the idea of indigenous filmmakers taking control of the camera, and turning it back on the coloniser.
I was constantly thinking of the Vietnamese characters, and their lack of voice. To the film’s credit, it is constantly poking holes in its own grandiosity.
The sequence of the helicopters flying soundtracked by ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, is followed by a long shot of kids fleeing a schoolhouse as they hear the music.
The film juxtaposes moments like this, perforating the iconic imagery, with the humanity they are about to destroy.
As the movie gets more surreal, and parred down to a metaphoric journey into the you know what, they feel more like a mass - a cult of bodies, extensions of Kurtz’ chaos.
It is hard to not be impressed with this film for the sheer virtuosity of it, the sense of ambition.
Yet the film is in its own way an act of colonisation.
It is memorialising, mythologising a war that America lost, and shot in a country carrying its own traumas from American imperialism (an irony the film subtly acknowledges - we glimpse Kurtz’ dissertation on the US occupation of the Philippines).
The helicopters we see were loaned by the government of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
When they were not being used for filming, those vehicles were doing real attacks on rebel forces opposing the regime.
It is an irony that adds a darker edge to Coppola’s cameo as a heartless newsman, screaming directions at the soldiers as he films Kilgore’s raid.
The middle act is the transition point, the point where we and the characters step into another world - the USO show where Playboy bunnies cavort for an audience of soldiers (while locals watch form behind a chain fence); the bridge where soldiers shoot at shadows while the site they protect is constantly in the process of being destroyed and rebuilt.
It is not nearly as iconic as the opening, but it is the point where any resemblance to a traditional war movie is shed.
The third act is almost its own movie.
It is hard not to think of his behind-the-scenes bullshit, but Brando’s performance - built in linger-ing, shadowy closeups, and judicious editing of rambling monologue - is fascinating. He is otherworldly.
I don’t think we get a full body shot (apparently Coppola used a larger actor as a body double for some of the long shots, to increase Kurtz as a physical presence). Kurtz is a cult leader (at one point someone reads news from Stateside about Charles Manson).
Kurtz is a shadow of Willard, his dark twin. As he travels upriver, the film slowly reveals more of Kurtz’s story - slowly revealing more about Willard without explicitly stating so.
He is even doubled in the fact that he is not the first person to go on this mission; his predecessor ended up switching sides.
This character, played by Scott Glenn, has no dialogue and only appears in a few shots - more of a ghost, a doppelgänger of Willard.
Willard is being shown a premonition of his possible future (already clear in the way he seems to accept and acclimatise to Kirtz’s thinking, the more he learns of the older man’s story).
Coppola’s latter movies have their defenders. They are welcome to those films. Maybe after more immersion in his filmography, I will find my own way into these works.
Megalopolis was an interesting watch, but I am not sure if I would go back to it.
This movie, The Godfather, and Dracula to a lesser extent, are the mode of Coppola I prefer. He is at his best when he has a clear narrative spine he can extrapolate from.
Apocalypse Now’s story is simple - it could have been a straightforward action movie (as it is, a lot of people seem to take that away from it).
But that narrative spine, that attachment to genre, provides a launching pad for Coppola to address its themes.
Megalopolis has so many different impulses, so many ideas it wants to address, it almost negates itself.
The version I saw began with the napalming of the jungle and featured no credits. I was really worried it was going to be Redux - every time the boat went into fog I was worried we would end up in the French plantation sequence.
I am glad I got to experience it the way it was intended.
