Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now
Coppola is a truly unique director in several ways. Perhaps the one thing that really defines him is that he is NOT defined by his gimmicks. When you watch a film by Martin Scorsese, he may surprise you, but you know that you’re going to get some exotic camera movements, some fast paced editing and, if it’s set in modern times, “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones will play at least once. Apocalypse Now defines Coppola’s unpredictability.
The film is, supposedly, based on the novel Heart of Darkness, but to be completely honest, there are really only a few key parallels, some similar scenes. The movie itself is an entity all its own. Benjamin J. Willard, played by Martin Sheen, is our lead, a special operatives agent, an assassin, who is slowly going stir crazy awaiting his next assignment.
All he wants is to be put back in the field. “Every day, Charlie grows stronger while I grow weaker”. He thrives on the blood lust of battle and can’t take another day cooped up in this room. The opening scene is immediately gripping, with the choppers flying overhead and Willard simply going insane in a bedroom somewhere in Saigon, waiting for his next mission.
The famous shot of Sheen punching the mirror was not scripted. He really went that crazy. The film is full of scenes and moments that were not scripted, and not just because of Coppola’s open attitude towards improvisation. The making of feature on this film is just about as wild and as fascinating as the movie itself, but we’ve only got time to review one or the other for now…
The movie is simply loaded with unforgettable characters. Without even discussing the main cast, we have Cockroach, a youth from Harlem capable of sleeping through the most intense battle, waking up to launch a perfectly arced grenade at an enemy hiding in the shadows, eliminate him, and go back to sleep. We have Dennis Hopper as a maniacal photo journalist, and Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, a mix of samurai, Patton and surfer dude, sending his men out to hit the waves amidst napalm detonating against the beach.
You could remove any of these characters still tell the story, these are not major characters, but, they provide more color and personality to the film than the entire cast of most films. The real heart of the film is Colonel Kurtz, as played by Marlon Brando. He defines the nihilistic dread that casts itself over the entirety of the movie.
The film succeeds on every possible level. It is endearing, at times, when you see the camaraderie between the men on Willard’s boat. It’s funny, it’s exciting with some of the greatest action set pieces ever put to film, it’s a jaw dropping piece of cinematic art, yet… The pessimism, the nihilism of the two main characters, Willard and Kurtz, eventually takes over and overwhelms every other aspect of the film.
While Coppola claims Rumble Fish as the personal favorite amongst his body of work, his fans typically consider it to be between Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part II. It is, at the very least, his most wild, insane and epic film to date.
So in the beginning you have to have a story, a concept, or an idea. Movie Dowload These shots make use of offscreen space by only capturing one character on screen at a time. Mind Over MatrixThe Matrix Trilogy offer me in an allegorical and virtual visual way a vision of my own awakening.
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