![]() ![]() With his back to the wall Coppola came through with a good third act, a brooding contemplation of dark, elemental savagery. Marlon Brando arrived at the Philippine location too out-of-shape to perform any kind of action scene. The novel Heart of Darkness seems to have provided a thematic life preserver when Coppola had to improvise a final chapter that could be filmed with his scarcely-cooperative three-million-dollar star. Perhaps what I read was some proto-idea Milius threw together at USC? Coppola’s Apocalypse did indeed take a strong left turn into deep-dish Joseph Conrad territory. Milius can’t have been proposing a radical anti-American effect like that of William Klein’s Mister Freedom. For the final battle Kurtz is dressed literally like a DC Comics superhero, in colored tights and a cape. The capper is difficult to imagine on film. When the ammo runs out and barrels melt down in the first trench, Kurtz’s irregular army retreats to the next trench where await fresh weapons and ammo. Expecting thousands of Viet Cong attackers, Colonel Kurtz organizes his defense as a series of concentric circular trenches. The finale was a zonked-out fantasy battle to either top John Wayne’s ‘Fort Apache’ battle in The Green Berets, or to mock it. Milius envisioned the fighting in Vietnam as unending comic-book insanity - Colonel Kilgore’s name was originally Colonel Kharnage, if I recall. I read one at UCLA’s Theater Arts Reading Room around 1974. The finished Apocalypse Now is a different animal from the earliest drafts by John Milius. Thus the Oscar-winning film was accepted by both extremes of our political divide. Schaffner’s Patton presented the controversial General as both a patriotic warrior-genius and a reckless military fanatic. Francis Coppola had experience writing big war movies starting with Is Paris Burning? in 1966. The epic film is a realistic fantasy, a stylized attempt to express a ‘poetic truth’ about an ugly war, and wars in general. Yet its insane excess doesn’t feel like a lie. I personally was the perfect age for conscription, but a high birthdate number in the 1972 draft lottery saved my student-deferment hide.Īpocalypse is certainly not the movie to see for a documentary picture of the war. An editing partner joined the National Guard, and trained in the desert every few weekends. A CE3K co-worker declined to offer details because too much of what he experienced was ‘crazy.’ A family friend spent his ‘in country’ tour as a warehouse slug and often had to sleep on packing crates. My brother-in-law was a Marine working with exotic landing craft. Was Vietnam really like that? The movie cued heated arguments, perhaps because no two veterans had the same experience. Not since 2001: A Space Odyssey had audiences exited in such a fine confusion: what were those last thirty minutes all about, with Marlon Brando lolling like a musk ox and mumbling to himself? It was an overwhelming audiovisual experience, a cinematic onslaught in a New-Wavish package. ![]() They might have thought to install seat belts in the first 20 rows of the Cinerama Dome when Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now came to town. Produced by Francis Coppola, Gray Frederickson, Fred Roos, Tom Sternberg Written by John Milius and Francis Coppola, narration by Michael Herr Original Music: Carmine Coppola, Francis Coppola Lee Ermey.įilm Editors: Lisa Fruchtman, Gerald B. Spradlin, Jerry Ziesmer, Scott Glenn, Bo Byers, James Keane, Kerry Rossall, Cynthia Wood, Colleen Camp, Linda Carpenter, Father Elias, Bill Graham, (Christian Marquand, Aurore Clément, Michel Pitton), R. Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Albert Hall, Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper, G.D. 40th Anniversary Edition / 1979 70mm Road Show cut, 2001 Redux cut, 2019 Final Cut versions / Street Date Aug/ Re-tooled and polished up for picture and audio, this qualifies as a prime audio show-off disc too.ġ979, 2001, 2019 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 147, 196, 183 min. The release is agreeably all-inclusive: the original Road Show cut and the two revised versions are here along with the excellent making-of feature Hearts of Darkness. ![]() Francis Coppola & John Milius’ Vietnam War epic may not be perfect, but it’s one of the most exciting movie experiences ever and one of the top achievements of the first film school generation of moviemakers. Apocalypse Now in 4K? After The Wild Bunch this is one title likely to get me to invest in a new format. ![]()
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