"Apocalypse Now: Redux" Review

 

by Daniel White

River of No Return

Released in 1979 after what was probably the most tortuous filming in the history of motion pictures, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now opened to mixed reviews but respectable box office receipts. Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) is the version the director recrafted, adding close to 50 minutes that had been edited out. Hypnotic, hallucinatory and haunting, it's a memorable film that is unlike anything ever created. Redux means brought back, revived and I suppose that's what he wanted to do: revive for the world the film that was closest to his artistic vision. It's a mesmerizing flick and a miracle that so stunning an artwork survived such a messy history.

And yet, can it be called a masterpiece? I have my doubts. Having recently watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, which IS a masterpiece, I will not bestow that honor on this important, yet flawed film. Why? Because of the patchwork method in which it was constructed. Reams and reams of film were shot, several endings were considered and chunks of movie were cut out, only to be added later. It's like the Frankenstein monster: awe inspiring that it was put together in the first place, but quite unnatural.

I admire a director who storyboards his films, like Kubrick and Hitchcock. Artists who prepare beforehand and are not at the mercy of the cutter, who get exactly what they want up there on the screen because there is no other option. Everything shot is used because that's all there is. Perhaps Coppola didn't have that choice, considering the conditions he was filming under. And I do admire this flick. The screenplay by Coppola and conservative nut job John Milius is provocative and better than anything else written in that era. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has provided us with a glimpse into what eternal damnation looks like, and it is chilling. Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, even the obese, unprepared Marlon Brando manage to embody and emanate gripping, effective performances.

The episodic journey up river, the encounters with the dreamy, shell-shocked Playboy bunnies, embittered French colonialists and spear chucking habitues of the wild, all gripping and visually compelling. But all this twisted, mind-blowing, nihilistic beauty, is it on the same brilliant, economically composed level of Shadow of a Doubt? That's a judgment call, what do you think?