Classic Film Night - Apocalypse Now

 

It's a brand new Classic Film Night, and as the title tells you I'm reviewing Apocalypse Now. Let's get to it.

Apocalypse Now is a psychological epic war film loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, and it's produced by Omni Zoetrope and distributed by United Artists. Francis Ford Coppola directed and wrote the screenplay with John Milius.

The story is, in 1969 jaded operative Captain Benjamin L. Willard takes on a perilous journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz, who was reported to be a once promising author but has now gone mad. Willard and his crew set off on Nùng River to Kurtz's post, they'll soon realize the further and further they travel, the more they enter into the heart of darkness.

Why The Delay?

For anyone who read my review for Scream 7 then you're well aware I was suppose to have this uploaded on Monday. So what happened? Well just my luck, I suffered an outage. Nothing to serious just my internet wasn't connecting. It eventually did come back but when it did I just had to delay the review by day. So I hope you can understand.

My Thoughts

I do have but one slight criticism, and it's very common one when it comes to this movie, and that's the pacing. Now I've only seen the theatrical and Redux versions, haven't seen Coppola's perfered version that being the Final Cut, but going just by those two versions the pacing is a bit of letdown. There are times when things just and if you're watching the Redux version, you're gonna feel that three hour runtime believe me. And it sucks too because the movie is so brilliantly done and has great writing but that pacing.

Alright even with being a bummer, let's get to the good stuff. One of those being the cinematography! This movie came it in 1979 and the look of how has only aged well. From shadowy interiors to fiery napalm to lush jungles to the often duplicated helicopters flying while there's a sunset behind them, the look of the movie is amazing. I couldn't get enough. So props to Vittorio Storaro, he killed it.

I always want to praise the dialogue. I think everybody one way or another knows of the line of "I love the smell of napalm in the morning". And don't get me wrong, that's a great line, but there was also other lines that I fell way more in love with that one. One being "The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.", and my all-time favorite being "I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one." Oh how I love that mission line!

Then there's the performances. Martin Sheen (by the way I'm so use to seeing him as an old man that seeing a 30 something version of him took me by surprise) stands out as the emotional core. He brought raw internalized intensity. Throughout the movie, especially during the river trip, he perfectly conveys Willard's growing numbness and quiet rage. Now Marlon Brando as Kurtz appears late mostly in the final act, but he delivers. He's performance feels haunting, even more so with some philosophical madness with his monologues. Rounding the characters is a supporting cast of Robert Duvall (who sadly passed only two weeks ago, so my he rest in peace), Dennis Hooper, Laurence Fishburne (with this being one of his earlier roles), among many others. The supporting cast brought something grounded, something frenetic, and often times something relatable that helped bring some humanity to some more tense scenes and dynamics.

The final things I'll praise is what the movie is about. Now is controversial for a variety of reasons, you can look it up on online, watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, or do both of why this movie gets a lot of flack. But one reason is it people debate whether it was an anti-war movie or that it was glorifying violence. I prefer to view it as film that was showing soldiers dive deeper and deeper into insanity because of the violence they'd witness or were apart of. Now some of you could say that's being anti-war, but I don't think so. Coppola always felt like an anti-war film would be something more happy and didn't view Apocalypse Now as such a thing. Which I agree with. And you can't even say "well then it was glorifying violence! Checkmate!" No! Had the movie glorified violence there would've been scenes where it looked awesome or the solders would be standing up and cheering when one of their buddies killed someone whether they were innocent or not. So I view the movie as what it is. A psychological journey into how a few brave men lost their minds. And for that, I say the story should be celebrated.

While the runtime will always be an issue, it goes without saying but Apocalypse Now is essential movie to watch not only because of its place in the war genre, but for its place in cinema as a whole.

My final rating is, Great!

So that's all for now. Once again I apologize for the delay. But do come back on Thursday, Mar 5th, where I'll begin the Road to Scary Movie (2022), or the Scary Movie 6 as we all know it is. But until then, enjoy the rest of your day.