OK, its October, its dark, its rainy?? How about a post that suits this time dreich time of year and is rather dark, well OK the film it covers certainly is, which will be Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's epic war film, which is a surreal take on the Vietnam war, as a burnt out army Captain is set on a mission to kill a crazed Colonel. So let's have a look it in more detail......
The film is set in the middle of the Vietnam war, with the main character, Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) an army captain who has returned to Saigon, and is approached by military intelligence officers Lt General Corman (G.D. Spraldin) and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford). The officers give Willard the task of locating a rogue special forces Colonel, Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brandon) and kill him (or "terminate the Colonel's command" as Lucas says). Kurtz apparently has gone insane and is practicsing unsound methods with his Montagnard soldiers inside neutral Cambodia and has apparently established a cult following. Willard takes the mission and travels on a navy patrol boat, lead by Chief (Albert Hall) and his crewmen, Lance (Sam Bottoms), Chef (Frederic Forrest) and "Mr Clean" (Laurence Fishburne). Willard and the crew are escorted through to the mouth of the Nung river by Lt Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who leads a squadron of armed transport helicopters. Kilgore bonds with Lance as they are both keen surfers, and he finds a spot on the river where they can ride the waves, but before that they launch an assault on a VC village. Kilgore has some of his men, who are surfers hit the waves evern during enemy fire, but Kilgore soon orders a napalm strike, after which he says "some day this war is gonna end".
After this Willard and the patrol boat crew get back onboard the boat and continuing their travels up river, during which Willard looks at Kurtz's personal file which reveals he was a model officer with a very promising career. The crew arrive at a supply depot where they watch a show which features Playboy playmates, but the overenthusiastic soldiers get involved and the show goes awry, with the playmates eventually being choppered out of the depot. Afterwards back on the river, the crew encounter a Vietnamese boat, on which the Chief orders an inspection, during which Clean panics and guns down the civilians onboard. One of the civilians onboard, a woman, is still alive but badly injured, and despite the Chief's insistance to get her some treatment, Willard shoots her dead and tells them to go on. As Willard grows more distant in the eyes of the crew and they travel on, they soon come to an American outpost on the river, manned by American soldiers, but with no commanding officer, Willard decides to move on up river. However they are soon attacked by unseen enemies and during the firefight, Clean is killed, with the Chief growing even more hostile toward Willard, angered by the danger he has put them all in.
And things come to a head when they are attacked again by spears, thrown by Montagnard warriors, one of which hits the Chief in the chest, who in his dying moments tries to strangle Willard and push him down onto the end of the spear, but Willard stops him as the Chief dies. Willard finally tells Chef and Lance about his mission, and while Chef is angry he decides to go with Kurtz and travel up river until they reach Kurtz. Once they reach Kurtz's outpost it is filled with Montgnard warriors and there are dead bodies hanging and also headless corpses lying around. Willard meets an eccentric photographer (Dennis Hopper) who praises Kurtz for his twisted genius although he does admit Kurtz can go too far as well. Willard goes back to the boat and tells Chef that he will go into Kurtz's temple with Lance but if they don't come back he is to order an airstrike. And as Willard heads toward the entrance of the temple, Kurtz's warriors surround him and they tie him up and take him to finally face Kurtz.......
There is no doubt that Apocalypse Now is one of the most memorable war films ever made, which is more of a surreal experience than a realistic war film, as it certainly doesn't fall into that category (unlike Oliver Stone's Platoon which is a far more realistic depiction). The film itself was largely inspired by Joseph Conrad's short novel, Heart of Darkness, which was based on Conrad's real life experiences as steamboat paddleboat Captain. The two main characters in Conrad's novel, Kurtz and Marlow (Willard's equivalent) work for a trading company that exploits African workers, with Kurtz going insane and eventually gaining a tribal following. The film script was written by John Milius who was inspired to write a film about the Vietnam war conflict, and the story was written back in the late 60s, but it was several years before it was to be realised as a film, with Coppola eventually taking the helm.
Getting to the film's performances, which are easily one of the film's strengths, especially with Martin Sheen who is superb in the main role as Willard, a burnt out army Captain who is given little choice in going on the mission to kill Kurtz. Sheen delivers the film's narration with such a dry tone you get the feel of a man that is so broken down in his life that the mission is just about all he has left. The narration itself, written by American author Michael Herr is both morose and witty at the same time, with Sheen getting so many great lines of dialogue to deliver. A few examples include one in the opening scene where Kurtz lies silently in his bed and we hear his narration "I hardly said a word to my wife until I said "yes" to a divorce". Later on when Willard is on the river and studying Kurtz's files as it reveals Kurtz was to be charged with murdering Vietnamese locals, and he says "Oh man, charging a guy with murder out here is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500!" and "The bullshit piled up so high in Vietnam you had to have wings to stay above it!". Sheen also has some really effective moments that show his short fuse, such as when he suddenly grabs a smart ass member of staff at the supply depot and he says "Just get us some fuel!". Also another scene is where Willard shoots the Vietnamese civilian on the boat after Clean has gone trigger happy and taken out the rest of them, and the other men look in shocked silence as Willard looks to the Chief and says "I told you not to stop, now let's go". Another favourite line of mine from Sheen is where Kilgore has some of his men out surfing during enemy fire, and Willard angrily shouts to Kilgore "Goddamnit! Don't you think this is a little risky for R and R???!!". Sheen himself also went through some serious personal torment at the time of filming as he was in the middle of a divorce, and he was drinking and smoking heavily, combined with the stress of the role, which lead to Sheen suffereing a serious heart attack during production. And in the opening scene we clearly see the real life torment he went through as he smashes the mirror in his hotel room, drinking heavily and sobbing. Sheen thankfully however soon recovered from his heart attack and eventually continued with the production.
Albert Hall as the Chief is also really good, as the Chief is a pretty straight laced, no nonsense guy who is ultimately just looking out for his crew, and he ends up butting heads with Willard as their journey progresses. Frederic Forrest is great as well as the Chef, a highly strung guy who as Willard rightly describes as "being wrapped to tight for Vietnam, and probaby also wrapped to tight for New Orleans!" (where the Chef is from). Forrest's best scene is where he and Willard go out in the jungle looking for mangos, and they are suddenly confronted by a tiger, as they both panic and run back onboard the boat, the chief asks what happened and the Chef yells "Fucking tiger!!" and "All I wanted to do was fucking cook, man! I ain't built for this shit!". I also liked the scene where Chef looks around Kurtz compound and says "He's gone crazy!" and Dennis Hopper, who plays the photographer says "Wrong wrong! If you could only have heard the man the other day! And you are gonna call him crazy???" and the Chef replies "Fuckin' A!". Sam Bottoms provides the film's most unusual performance as the spaced out Lance, a young surfer from LA who spends most of his time dropping acid or smoking dope (as he did in real life at the time during filming!). And a very young Laurence Fishburne, makes a good impression as the young Mr Clean, and his most memorable moment is of course when he dances to the radio which plays the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction". Fishburne also provides a poignan t moment in his death scene as he is killed during the enemy firefight and he lies dead and a tape mailed from his mother plays in the background while the Chief sobs cradling Clean's body. Fishburne apparently lied about his age when he was cast in the role and he was actually only 14 at the time, although by the time the film was released he was the same age as his character, 17 years old.
Dennis Hopper is also great in his role as the eccentric unnamed photograher who is in awe of Kurtz but eventually ends up leaving as he grows tired of Kurt's mood swings. And this brings up Hopper's best line as he talks gibberish to Willard in Kurtz's temple who sits reading a book and in a sudden outburst throws some food at the photohgrapher, yelling "You mutt!" which prompts the photographer to say "You see this is the way of the fucking world, you see this fucking shit we're in man??!! And with a bang and a whimper, and with a whimper I'm fucking splitting, Jack!".
Getting onto the more heavyweight performances (or The Godfather crew if you like!) Robert Duvall is great as the crazy and reckless Kilgore who commands a squadron of armed choppers. And in the film's most memorable sequence we see over a dozen choppers fly in the skies and the sound of Wagner's "The Ride of Valkeries" play in the background as Kilgore says "We'll just come up over the rising sun and then we'll play the music! I use Wagner, it scares the hell out of the slopes!". Duvall also get's some other great lines, of which his most quoted one is of course when one of his men questions his decision to surf on a pretty heavy zone occupied by VC, and Kilgore says "Charlie don't surf!". Also in the scene where they lay down the napalm strike, Duvall also get's a terrific short monologue where he talks about effects of napalm. "You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I remember one time we had a hail bomb and after we didn't find one stinking dink body. That smell that gasoline smell, it smelled like.... victory. Some day this war's gonna end."
And finally we get onto Marlon Brando who is unforgettable in his role as the enigmatic Kurtz, a highly decorated soldier who has gone totally insane now operates outside his superiors and has command of a warrior tribe who worship him. Brando was Coppola's first choice for the role, however Brando demanded a huge fee for his work and he was paid $3.5 million for a month's work. Due to Brando being overweight, Coppola mainly had Brando filmed in the dark shadows, which definitely helps add to the effectiveness of his character. Brando's performance is in itself an enigma and his monologues are almost indicipherable in their meaning at times, but they are nonetheless quite potent, and I think his most memorable line of all is of course "The horror! The horror!" in his last moments. But for me Brando's best line is when he asks Willard if he is an assassin and Willard says he's a soldier and Kurtz replies coldly "You're neither. You're an errand boy, send by grocery clerks to collect the bill!".
As for Coppola well there is no doubt that he had done a superb job with Apocalypse Now, and there is no doubt it was the toughest, most physically and emotionally challenging film of his entire career. However Coppola in directing Apocalpyse Now produced some amazing action sequences and set pieces, particularly the attack on the Vietcong village and the amazing napalm strike, which is an unbelievable visual and one of the most visceral scenes in any war film. He also creates some bizzare imagery aswell such as where we see a cow being hoisted out on a winch by a helicopter during Kilgore's first scene, while we see a priest and some soldiers gather praying. The scene with playboy playmate models is also quite a surreal sequence where the girls dance to the sounds of "Suiz Q" before the soldiers invade the stage to try and get a leer. And the scene at the last American outpost in the river is also quite bizarre as Willard tries to find a CO (commanding officer) but instead finds a bunch of spaced out soldiers. Coppola's own trials and triabulations of making film are of course well documented in the superb documentary about the film, Hearts of Darkness. The film was also of course re-released as a director's cut, which is known as the Redux version, which features 49 minutes of extra footage, however my personal preference is the original theatrical version, which feels more taut than the Redux edition, which is rather bloated in comparison, although it does show Willard in a slightly better light.
Getting onto technical aspects of the film I cannot forget to mention the cinemaphotography by Vittorio Storaro which is absolutely stunning and features some amazing and gorgeous visuals, as Storaro employs great use of vivid colour (my favourite is when Willard first arrives at Kurtz's outpost and sees a soldier sent to kill Kurtz who turned over to his army, and there are some amazing bright orange colours in the background). Storaro also provides some incredible imagery as well including the devastating napalm strike and also the unforgettable image of Willard wearing camoflague rising out of the water and he heads to kill Kurtz. And finally another striking aspect of the film is its score which was written by Coppola and his father Carmine Coppola, which is mostly electronic and synthesizer based but it has plenty of atmospheric passages in it. Coppola also makes great use of The Door's "The End" at the start of the film as Willard meanders in his hotel room. Also the film's soundtrack for its time was quite remarkable and to this day with its incredible war scenes and moody atmospherics, Apocalpyse Now still remains a strong favourite for home cinema surround sound.
Soooooooooo after that very exhaustive post that its for my critique of Apocalypse Now which still to this day remains an incredible and surreal experience (you could almost say its the 2001 of Vietnam war films!) and if you haven't seen it and are partial to war films, please give it a go.
And I shall.... leave... it.... there. The horror.....
Bye!
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