The Horror...

Note: After many issues with my old blog, I'm going to start moving my reviews here one by one.

I love war movies. Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Letters from Iwo Jima. These are all in my top 50 films of all time. I love them. This film made me think about why I like them.

Apocalypse Now is going to be a difficult film for me to review. If I had to classify the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola film into a particular genre, I would probably say it was a horror film. In technical terms, the film is excellent. The cinematography and lighting are both beautiful and stunning. The music, though I wouldn’t listen to it outside the film, is perfect, fitting the scenes excellently. The editing is very good, which is amazing, as millions of feet of footage had to be edited, and it took almost two years to finish the post-production.

This film looks seriously gorgeous. 

The acting is perfect, as it is in most of Coppola’s films. He really knows how to pick the right actors (no, I haven't seen Godfather Part 3 yet, I don't know how bad it actually is). Martin Sheen as Willard is great, essentially acting as the audience's point of view in the film, as we see everything through his eyes. The filming was especially hard on him, as before the filming was completed, he had suffered a heart attack from working in the jungle for so long. Marlon Brando is... well, he’s Marlon Brando. Amazing, but not overly dramatic, especially in this film. Quiet, and almost overly thoughtful. When he showed up to the set, he was too fat, and he had not read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novella the film was inspired by, so the director had to work around these issues, and I honestly think the film is better for it. The rest of the cast is just as excellent, with Robert Duvall in particular standing out as the slightly insane Lieutenant Killgore, loudly ordering his men to surf on a beach while under fire, a huge change from his most famous role as the quiet Tom Hagen in the Godfather series.

Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz

Now, the story, arguably the film’s best part. Captain Willard receives a mission, to go and eliminate Col. Kurtz, who has apparently gone insane, and now commands a force of native soldiers in neutral Cambodia. Willard joins up with a squad of soldiers, Chief, Lance, Chef, and Clean, and heads off to find Kurtz. They are initially escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Killgore, who commands a squadron of attack helicopters. After an attack on a village run by the Viet Cong, Willard and his force head down the river, encountering Viet Cong soldiers, civilians, insane US soldiers, while their own sanity starts breaking down. A major turning point comes when they encounter a civilian boat, and start searching it, only to end up killing everyone, and finding out that the civilians weren't doing anything wrong. This shakes the whole crew badly, but they carry on. Eventually, they reach Kurtz, though not all survive the journey. Willard immediately becomes unsure about his mission when he meets Kurtz, who starts to explain his theories of war, and humanity.

Martin Sheen as Captain Willard

Kurtz is fascinating to watch, as he explains his ideas, and really makes the whole film strange. There are huge action scenes, where war is shown to be glamorous, but in the quiet scenes, where Kurtz talks to Willard, and explains the horrors of war, and this is where the film is at its best.

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me."

Overall, I would highly recommend this film, because it made me feel. I felt emotions I didn’t think a film could make me feel. Everything Willard felt, I felt. I may never watch it again, unlike the Godfather films, but I can proudly say I’ve done it once. Coppola’s films are usually a bit strange, in that I generally don’t like them the first time I see them, but each time I rewatch them, I love them more and more. This is a film I loved and hated the first time around, though I don’t know why I hated it. Perhaps it’s because I don’t really know if I can think about war movies the same way anymore.

Note: This is a strange review of the film, as for the first half, it was the first version, and for the second half of the film, I was watching the Redux version, as far as I know. I'm reviewing it as I saw it.