Apocalypse Now

A fantastic film cataloguing insanity, war and imperialism, Apocalypse Now is a sprawling, magnificent film that masterfully builds up dread and tension through its adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Martin Sheen is Willard, the main protagonist and soldier ordered to go after Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, a soldier who has turned away from his orders and gone insane – ordering tribes of Vietnamese people on a quest of murder and horror. Willard joins a troop of naval soldiers and travels up river to find Kurtz – but what he discovers harks back to the original’s title – the very heart of darkness and a hell on earth both in physical and mental forms.

Sheen is fantastic here – he is on-screen most of the time, yet appears distant, his character so far gone into the world of the post-war veteran, and sent back, his demeanour is suggestive of someone addicted; he didn’t want this, but he needs it, and there’s nothing else he can do. His narrative’s parallel with Brando’s Kurzt is masterfully played out, and their eventual meeting is impressive to behold. Brando is not in the film that much – in fact, it is in hearing recordings of his voice and seeing pictures of him that we gain a mounting sense of mystery, and when the viewer finally sees the man, the actor does not disappoint – conveying a sense of insanity with that of a man who has had enough with fighting for someone else, and has decided to take that power and use it for his own ends.

The male co-stars here are numerous and incredibly diverse; from the cameo from Harrison Ford, to the gleeful madness of Robert Duvall’s madman officer Kilgore, the supporting cast has many small standouts. The boat captain, played by Albert Hall, is perfectly in sync with Laurence Fishburne’s young upstart soldier, and along with Sam Bottoms and Frederic Forrest, they make the small boat’s crew that much easier to relate to throughout the movie – these are young guys, not ready for war, and not ready to face the hell that Willard commands them into. Dennis Hopper pops up towards the end as a spaced-out, drugged-up photographer who is part of Kurtz’s gang, and his rabid, non-stop idolising of the man makes good use of Hopper’s hyperactive acting as well as continuing to big up the reputation of the as-yet unseen Kurtz.

The documentation on the hell this movie went through on its way to production is widespread, and sometimes it shows here. However, Coppola’s taste for realism is starkly apparent in the way this film has been made – the army attack on the Vietcong coastal village in particular. Coppola has made what I think to be his best film with Apocalypse Now – The Godfather is a fantastic film, don’t get me wrong, but this is, in my opinion, the peak of what he could hope to achieve. The adapting of Conrad’s novella is ingenious in incorporating the Vietnam War, and the sets, actors and visuals are an example of how film should be; the best of the best, without concession.The dialogue takes many aspects of Heart of Darkness, and even tops the book in places where the madness of Kurtz is laid bare for all to see. And the quotable lines – well, you probably know most of them already, an indication of the influence this film’s script has had on popular culture.

The soundtrack was actually the most disappointing thing about the film – other than the great use of The Doors and Ride of the Valkyries, it’s all synth strings – a real shame when you consider the epic scale of the film. With an orchestral soundtrack, it would have been unbeatable, but the synth really ruins some key emotional scenes. The battle of the Vietcong village, which I’ve already mentioned, is a conquest of filmmaking; the sight of helicopters bombarding a real village with real fire-power, followed by a napalm bombing of the forest, is breathtaking to withhold, a battle the likes of which you would be hard pressed to find in any other film. It’s astounding, both in execution and in the way it’s been visualised Using the Philippines as a substitute for Vietnam allowed for Coppola to get the forests, rivers and vistas that only accentuate the splendour, and Kurtz’s palace at the conclusion of the film is an example of the grand, opulent sets that movies used to have. No effects are needed nor were used – only assisting in making the film’s visual acumen that much more profound.

It’s remarkable that this film was ever made, with the amount of problems it encountered – but thank goodness it was, as it remains one of the best films I have ever seen and is not simply the war movie people expect it to be – it’s a journey into the heart of the human soul, and a voyage to the dark side of human nature, packaged in a visual feast amongst the hell of war.

10/10