More darkness: Review about Apocalypse now Redux (by Daniela Gómez)

More darkness

Review about Apocalypse now Redux

By Daniela Gómez S.

Before Apocalypse Now’s new cut was showed to filmgoers, nobody knew what was going to happen. The movie could be better, but it was improbable. So, it could get worse. However, the result of the re-edition by Francis Ford Coppola, the director, and Walter Murch was amazing. Roger Ebert, one of the most important critics, wrote: “More than ever it is clear that Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" is one of the great films of all times. It shames modern Hollywood's timidity”.

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) is forty nine minutes longer than the original (1979). This new material was not just an addition of deleted scenes. It was “a new rendition of the movie from scratch”, Coppola explained. Obviously, the story is the same: US Army special operations officer, Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) accepts the mission to kill the renegade and presumed insane US Army Special Forces, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). But the new version has scenes and dialogues that help to understand the context and the characters better. For example, while Willard’s team sail the Nung River, they decide to stop in a French plantation. Then, the owners tell them how they have survived in their little enclave. This is a small sample of agony of the French colonization of Vietnam.

The classic scenes that immortalized the original version are in the second one too. The film begins with the Captain Willard —drunk and desperate— waiting for a mission in his room in Saigon. The sound of ventilators mixed with the noise of helicopters crossing the sky. Then, in the river, Willard and his team —mediocre and terrified soldiers that don’t want to be in Vietnam, like the rest of the troop— met with the Air Forces and his leader, the Capitan Kilgore (Robert Duvall). At this moment, it happen the most famous scene: the helicopters assault a small village with the loudspeakers blasting “Ride of Valkyries” by Wagner. The conversation between Kurtz and Willard is magistral too. Kurtz explains him his vision about humanity and war.

The most unexpected thing about movie was the reworking of the old three-strip Technicolor. The color dyes were transferred to the film directly “resulting in the stunning `Technicolor' look of the '40s and '50s: Lush, gorgeous, bright, sharp, and vivid, with deep, rich, true blacks," said Jeff Joseph, expert on prints. Also, the soundtrack was remastered. All these results are incredible if we remember the circumstances of recording: the movie was filmed in the Philippines. Costly sets were destroyed by severe weather.

Upon release, Apocalypse now redux was acclaimed for its cultural impact and philosophical ideas. The screenplay by John Milius and Coppola is an adaptation Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, but the authors replaced the European colonialism of book with American interventionism of Vietnam War. According to Ebert, “The film is a mirror reflecting our feelings about the war in Vietnam, in all their complexity and sadness”. The movie was selected for preservation by The National Film Registry.

The portrait made by Coppola is essential to film history because of its technical developments (those napalm bombings are memorable) but, especially, for its characters. The disaster of war is summarized in Colonel Kurtz. His last words —“The horror”, the horror!— condense the arguments against conflicts. In comparison with others frivolous films about war —for example, Pearl Harbor (2001), even Commando (1995) or The Patriot (2000)—, Apocalypse now, first and second, is a masterpiece full of poetry and truth.