Word: coppolas
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...that the movie is in the theaters, audiences are at last going to learn just why it took Francis Coppola $30 million and almost four years to finish Apocalypse Now. The answer, it turns out, is not nearly so mysterious as one might suppose. Coppola delayed the completion of his Viet Nam film for the simple reason that he could not bring off the grand work he so badly wanted to make. He tinkered right to the end-long after a lesser director would have cut his losses-but his movie remains a collection of footage. While much...
...letdown is especially upsetting because Apocalypse Now seemed the ideal marriage of a major artist to an important subject. Except for Stanley Kubrick, no other contemporary American director is as gifted as Francis Coppola. In his classic Godfather films, he proved that great themes-power, family, violence, love, morality-could be expressed in the richest language of popular moviemaking...
...thriller The Conversation, he offered the most sophisticated indictment of Watergate-era politics yet to appear onscreen. Given his talent for fusing ideas with the diverse demands of big-budget entertainment, Coppola was the only real candidate to make the definitive film about Viet Nam. Apocalypse Now promised to go beyond the narrow scope of Coming Home, beyond the wrenching drama of The Deer Hunter. These promises, though broken, can still be seen in the film. Like other legendary movie mishaps, from D.W. Griffith's Intolerance to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, Apocalypse Now is haunted by the ghost...
...Coppola's first instincts were correct: there was a fine idea for a movie here. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, Coppola wanted to portray America's Viet Nam adventure as a literal and metaphysical journey into madness. The literal journey is taken by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), an officer who is commanded to travel upriver from Saigon to Cambodia. His mission is to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once exemplary Green Beret who has now gone crazy and set up a kingdom of murder in the darkest jungle. "There...
Shocks of a more surreal nature follow. When Willard meets up with a bump-and-grind U.S.O. show in the proverbial middle of nowhere, Coppola creates a haunting spectacle of corrupt American values loose in an alien world. Later, Willard encounters a platoon of spaced-out black G.I.s who are shooting aimlessly into the night without benefit of a commanding officer. "It's the asshole of the world," says one fleeing soldier. Coppola's eerie visions, sculpted out of smoke, fire and darkness, make the words real...