Flick of The Day: Apocalypse Now

All great artistic movements have moved in cycles, with a small scale beginning, a high point of some great work which is swiftly followed by excess, hyperbole and an eventual nadir. The so called New Hollywood movement of the 1970's was no different. Today's flick of the day, Apocalypse Now fits neatly into that curve just past the zenith when the movie brats that had taken over Hollywood began  to become self indulgent creating cinema of monumental excess that would end with Michael Cimino's Heavens Gate. That is not to denigrate Apocalypse for it is a film borne of some amazing talent. A wild ride into the heart of darkness in the Vietnam war. It is, in short, unlike anything else you will ever see.

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

With a principal shoot lasting well over a year and a post production period that dragged on for another 2 years, this is a film that was literally years in the making. Martin Sheen is Captain Benjamin Willard, a special forces operative on the edge of reason. He is despatched by some shady superiors on a mission upriver into enemy territory to track down and terminate "with extreme prejudice" Colonel Walther Kurtz played by Marlon Brando, a deranged officer who has gone too far and set himself as a demigod in the heart of the Cambodian jungle. What follows is one hell of a trip. As Willard moves upriver, he encounters a surf happy Colonel Kilgore in the Air Cavalry played by an amazingly over the top Robert Duvall who goes into battle blasting out Wagner. He encounters Viet Cong, Playboy Bunnies and madness at every turn before finally reaching Kurtz's compound for a final showdown.

Based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now isn't so much an account of the Vietnam War as it is an indictment of the madness of all war transposed onto the Vietnam conflict. It is violent to the point of cruelty at times and overlong but there is much to enjoy here. For a production that was beset with difficulties, storms, Sheen suffering a heart attack and Brando turning up on set bloated and overweight, there are some spectacular set pieces. The dawn helicopter raid and the the arrival at Kurtz's camp are particular highlights. Given the amount of film that was shot, it is amazing Francis Ford Coppola managed to produce the film he did, indeed the film is as famed for what was left out as left in. There are a number of expensively assembled sequences which didn't make the final cut and yet it still feels too long by the end given that it takes so long to arrive at its destination. The film was re-cut for a redux version in 2001, which restores 49 more minutes of footage but this version has always felt as overkill to me.

Ultimately though it doesn't really matter about the length because there is just about enough here that is entertaining and enthralling to carry the film till the inevitable conclusion. One sour note that I feel must be mentioned though is the decision of Coppola to hack in a cow to death with machetes for the climax of the film, in homage to a local tradition. This is a reprehensible act and once again reinforces the feeling that this is the beginning of the end in terms of the New Hollywood movement. It earned the film an "Unacceptable" rating from the American Humane Association. One cannot fail to agree with that sentiment.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that? 

Lance: What? 

Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. 

[kneels] 

Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like 

[sniffing, pondering] 

Kilgore: victory. Someday this war's gonna end... 

All in all, this film broke new ground in its portrayal of war, and despite its many flaws, is worth seeing if only for it's place in the history of cinema and the career's of the fine cast which populate it.