Apocalypse Now Re-Release Review

• 16th May 2011

Films depicting the gruesomeness and unyielding destruction of war are a common commodity in Hollywood and beyond. They bring in the crowds, the awards and, of course, the dough. But when Coppola’s Apocalypse Now hit silver screens in 1979, it would set a new standard of war films and is considered by many to be one of the greatest films both of its genre and ever created.

My experience of this ground breaking cinematic production extended only to its name until about a week ago. I knew nothing about it, even as I sat in the screening room waiting for it to begin, expecting more of trippy ‘pre-hash’ of Platoon than the psychedelic carnage which followed. As the room darkened, the deafening sound of what could have been one hundred helicopters filled the air and on screen appeared what’s gone down in history as one of the most iconic film openings ever.

The tropical calm of the Vietnam jungle is at once engulfed by thick yellow smoke which soon turns black as fires tear down the trees. Helicopters dip casually in and out of shot and all the while The Doors’ The End psychedelically twangs over the top of the action giving it a disturbingly eerie air of casualness. Martin Sheen’s sweat-drenched, detached face melts into the picture and creates a translucent screen from the destruction which continues in the background; he may not be witness to it but he’s still very much a part of it.

The film follows Captain Willard (Sheen) on his return to the Vietnam Jungle as he embarks on a top secret mission to bump off renegade Colonel Kurtz (Brando) whose methods have been deemed “unsound” by the omnipotent General Corman. This mission “does not exist now, nor will it ever exist.” But as we observe Willard and his crew (including a sterling performance from 14-year old Laurence Fishburne) drifting upstream towards Kurtz’s Cambodian stronghold, we see it taking its toll on their mental state as a series of events unfold, each more surreal than the last.

There are moments from Apocalypse Now which could make a film in their own right. Most famous is their run-in with the appropriately named Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, oft-quoted for his grisly “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…  smells like victory” line. The Lieutenant stages an air strike of grandest proportions, bombing the life out of a coastal settlement to the deafening blast of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries (a piece, after all, with strong ties to various Nazi atrocities).

Initially met with bafflement and dismay by Willard and his crew, particularly California surfer-boy Lance, it’s not long before these culls are the norm for them – a telling example sees Chef unwillingly boarding and searching a civilian sampan leading to a bloodbath at the hands of the Americans over a Labrador puppy which a young woman on board had been trying to protect. This sequence is one of the most uncomfortable in the film. It’s the first time the audience sees a truly inhuman, unnecessary act from our protagonists and marks the turning point after which the crew descends into a drug-fuelled, fear-ridden stupor as one by one they’re killed off.

As the surviving characters cross the Cambodian border and enter Kurtz’s nightmare, we share their sense that no atrocities they’ve witnessed so far have come even close to preparing them for the cut-off world Kurtz has created. Marlon Brando famously showed up on set looking like an oversized shadow of his former self. He’d gained a significant amount of weight and his trademark chiselled good looks had all but disappeared. His elegantly combed hair had gone and I, for one, did a small double-take when he was revealed to the camera for the first time; he appeared so unlike the Brando we’re used to seeing on film. But this certainly worked to the advantage of his ability to play the quietly deranged Kurtz, a man who, for all his insecurity and his unassuming appearance, is all the more dangerous, sinister and believable. It’s far too likely that a man with the strength and command to enrapture an incredibly traditional village would be confident, self-assured and attractive. Instead what we find is an everyman who’s accessed areas of his soul which the rest of us leave off limits, allowing him to condone atrocious acts through lofty philosophical ideals. Brando’s is an incredibly disturbing performance to the extent that when he’s butchered by Willard, the audience may feel the smallest twinge of the bloodlust which Kurtz himself preached of.

Playing the sidekick to Kurtz is Dennis Hopper’s I’m-an-American-citizen-photojournalist. Hopper plays perhaps the more traditional embodiment of Vietnam: a tripped-out, pretentious bystander with no real ideals and a huge stash of dope. Speculation of Hopper’s actual mental state at the time aside, his character works very well as an alarming antithesis to Kurtz; someone so unhinged from their own mind that he laps up Kurtz’s every syllable like an attention-starved puppy dog.

For a film where so many of its major characters, including Willard and Kurtz, are played with such understatement and subtlety, the action scenes are wildly grandiose and spectacularly realistic. Whole villages are routinely ripped from the earth and awesome water features are created with perfectly positioned aerial bombs – there’s a horrific beauty in the destruction so recklessly carried out by the Americans in this film and if it was Coppola’s intention to expose the perverse magnificence of war then he’s certainly achieved it with his dedication to destruction.

The phrase “Theatre of War” has more truth when applied to Apocalypse Now than it does in any other context in which I’ve heard it used. The film holds nothing back and never shies away from “horror” or malignance and its contrasting use of spectacle and detail give the audience a full and harrowingly intimate experience of the nature of the Vietnam War, with characters who’ll stick in your mind even after their lines have faded. It’s definitely well worth a trip to the cinema to catch it on the big screen as the visual spectacle is all the more impressive and ‘close-up’. And it plays a vital part of any person’s film education in whatever format you can manage.

Apocalypse Now is back in cinemas on 27^th May and on Blu-ray on 13^th June.

Dani Singer