Apocalypse Now

 

Year of release

1979

Directed by

Francis Ford Coppola

Written by

Francis Ford Coppola

John Milius

Michael Herr

Starring

Martin Sheen

Robert Duvall

Marlon Brando

Frederic Forrest

Apocalypse Now

    

 

Plot - Vietnam, 1969. A Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz (Brando), has gone insane in the eyes of the United States army. So concerned are they by his actions that they delegate a Special Forces officer with a covert mission - to find and assassinate Kurtz. That officer is Captain Willard (Sheen). Sent up the Nung River on a US Navy patrol boat, Willard investigates Kurtz's military history and discovers he is one of the most decorated officers in the army, making him question his mission. As Willard and the crew descend deeper and deeper into the jungle they begin to fall prey to the insanity all around them.

Apocalypse Now is an occasionally splendid, but frequently flawed film in my eyes. I guess it's pretty much what you'd expect given the struggles that occurred during its infamous production. I just felt the film had more than an occasional air of pomposity and pretentiousness. This was achieved through a mixture of things; beats on the soundtrack, the continuous narration, the ponderous pace, some forced and overwrought moments such as when a soldier lies dead as a recorded message from his mother plays telling him to watch out for bullets. I just found it to have quite a grand sense of self-congratulation.

The boat that Willard and his fellow soldiers are aboard meanders very steadily along the river towards Kurtz; and it's a suitable representation of the film's pace as whole, just meandering along. It really is quite a curiously paced film. After some thrilling sparks of action early on, more often than not the film seems content to settle into a slow trudge towards its destination. I just felt the story lacked direction, which may sound strange given its straight-ahead linear nature, but the main crux of the story didn't greatly interest me, and I failed to really engage with any of the characters. I also felt that the film didn't really tie itself to the Vietnam war in a way. I want a war film to really place me in the war its tackling and the issues that went along with it. This felt like it could have taken place during any war.

Martin Sheen I think gives a very solid performance, but I feel that he is sabotaged from giving a truly great performance by the style of the film itself; he's sent up the river if you will. He is handed an almost continuous amount of narration to deliver, meaning that on screen he is left with little more to do than glare menacingly. Some of his fellow soldiers on the boat I felt were created with some hammy performances but were generally solid. The real star for me would have to be Robert Duvall, even in his limited role. He just absolutely pops off the screen when he appears as Bill Kilgore, the terrifyingly colourful Lieutenant Colonel with a penchant for surfing, and for napalm in the morning. Considering what, and who they find at the end of the river I was left wishing that the film had just dropped us off with Kilgore; I imagine it would have made for a much more interesting and entertaining experience.

So indeed quite a few flaws, but even then it was still going along rather well. The real nail in the film's coffin however in terms of my really liking it? It's third act. Drawn out and just flat out dull. After so much build-up to meeting this apparently monstrous god of a man, what do we get? A fat, bald guy who hides in the shadows and recites poetry. It fell tremendously short of what my mind had been creating. And it was most certainly not helped by Brando's hammy mugging. The film tries to sell the repugnance of Kurtz's character with his lair. I get they were going for horrific with all the bodies dotted around the temple like buildings, but for me personally it felt pretty gaudy and pulpy. I wondered whether Sheen had been on that damn river for so long that he had ended up arriving on the set of Conan the Barbarian or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I just found the whole thing to be a spectacularly underwhelming conclusion.

One place where I can have no criticism whatsoever however is in the film's visuals. The sheer scale of the canvas that Coppola told his tale on is epic, leading to some truly spectacular scenes and striking images. I can just picture Coppola's way of thinking at times - “why settle for just a few helicopters when we can have ten of them?”, “why have dozens of extras when I could have hundreds?” The ultimate culmination of this occurs during the tremendous Ride of the Valkyries sequence. Further heightening the visuals is some absolutely beautiful cinematography from Vittorio Storaro. The scenes with the boat floating down the river, the orange sun bouncing off the water with lush wilderness all around are gorgeous. And its the visuals which also prove the saving grace of that conclusion; the use of lighting is terrific, creating a cavernous setting that makes it feel like the characters are down in the very depths of hell itself. Even if the lack of lighting was merely a device to try and hide Brando's immense weight gain!

Conclusion - Overlong, self-indulgent and with a weak finale that leaves a sour taste in the mouth, I found this very far from the masterpiece that many people paint it as. In terms of numerous technical aspects (direction, editing, cinematography) however I do think that it is an exceptionally well-made film; it's just that I wasn't particularly taken with the film that ended up getting made. However some of the extraordinary visuals mean that I certainly wouldn't have a problem recommending people give it a try.