Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 Academy Award, Cannes Palme d'Or and Golden Globe winning American film set during the Vietnam War. It tells the story of Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard who is sent into the jungle to assassinate United States Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who is said to have gone insane. The film has been viewed as a journey into the darkness of the human psyche.

The film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script by Coppola, John Milius and Michael Herr, and was in large part based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899), as well as drawing elements from Herr's "Dispatches" (1977), and from Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972); Coppola himself has noted, "Aguirre, with its incredible imagery, was a very strong influence. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it."[1]

The film stars Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard (based on Marlow in Conrad's novella), Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz, Dennis Hopper as a photojournalist, and Robert Duvall in an Oscar-nominated turn as the wild Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore. The movie became notorious in the entertainment press due to its lengthy and troubled production. In the end, Coppola had to finance the film with his own money.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot
2 Alternative versions
2.1 Endings
2.2 Apocalypse Now Redux
3 Adaptation
4 Background and production
5 Controversy over the Killing of a Water Buffalo for the Film
6 Responses
7 Home video release aspect ratio issues
8 Cast
9 Awards
10 References
11 External links



[edit] Plot
U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard has returned to Saigon; a seasoned veteran, he is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers approach him with a special mission: go up-river into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces.

They state that Kurtz, once considered a model officer and future general, has allegedly gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia. Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and/or recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and "terminate... with extreme prejudice."

Willard studies the intelligence files during the boat ride to the river entrance and learns that Kurtz, isolated in his compound, has assumed the role of a warlord and is worshipped by the natives and his own loyal men. Another officer, Colby, sent earlier to kill Kurtz, may have become one of his lieutenants.

Willard begins his trip up the Mekong River on a PBR (Patrol Boat, Riverine), with an eclectic crew composed of by-the-book and formal Chief Phillips, a black Navy boat commander; GM3 Lance B. Johnson, a tanned all-American California surfer; GM3 Tyrone, a.k.a. "Mr. Clean", a black 17-year-old from "some South Bronx shit-hole"; and the New Orleanian Engineman, Jay "Chef" Hicks.

The PBR arrives at a Landing Zone where Willard and the crew meet up with Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore, the eccentric commander of the regional AirCav unit, following a massive and hectic mopping-up operation of a conquered enemy town. Kilgore, a keen surfer, befriends Johnson. Later, he learns from one of his men, Mike, that the beach down the coast which marks the opening to the river is perfect for surfing, a factor which persuades him to capture it. The problem is, his troops say, it's "Charlie's point" and heavily fortified. Dismissing this complaint with the explanation that "Charlie don't surf!", Kilgore orders his men to saddle up in the morning so that the AirCav can capture the town and the beach. Riding high above the coast in a fleet of Hueys accompanied by H-6s, Kilgore launches an attack on the beach. The scene, famous for its use of Richard Wagner's epic "Ride of the Valkyries", ends with the soldiers surfing the barely claimed beach amidst skirmishes between infantry and VC. After helicopters swoop over the village and demolish all visible signs of resistance, a giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard in a famous speech in which he eulogises "the smell of napalm in the morning", which he says smells "like...victory."


"I love the smell of napalm in the morning…It smells like…victory."The lighting and mood darken as the boat navigates upstream and Willard's silent obsession with Kurtz deepens. Incidents on the journey include a run-in with a tiger while Willard and Chef search for mangoes, an impromptu inspection of a Vietnamese sampan that leads to a massacre, a surreal stop at the last American outpost during a Vietnamese attack against a wood bridge under construction there, and the shocking deaths of both Clean and Chief Phillips during a gunfire ambush with hidden Viet Cong soldiers and a spear thrown by a native on the shore, respectively.

After arriving at Kurtz' outpost, Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an air strike on the village if he does not return. They are met by a borderline-psychotic freelance photographer (Hopper) who explains Kurtz's greatness and philosophical skills to provoke his people into following him. Brought before Kurtz and held in captivity in a darkened temple, Willard’s constitution appears to weaken as Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity, and civilization. Kurtz explains his motives and philosophy in a famous and haunting monologue in which he praises the ruthlessness of the Viet Minh: If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. For it is judgment that defeats us.

While bound outside in the pouring rain, Willard is approached by Kurtz, who places the severed head of Chef in his lap. Coppola makes little explicit, but we come to believe that Willard and Kurtz develop an understanding nonetheless; Kurtz wishes to die at Willard's hands, and Willard, having subsequently granted Kurtz his wish, is offered the chance to succeed him in his warlord-demigod role. Juxtaposed with a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz's chamber during one of his message recordings, and kills him with a machete (This entire sequence is set to "The End" by The Doors, as is the sequence at the very beginning of the film). Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror... the horror." (This line is taken directly from Conrad's novella.) Willard walks through the now-silent crowd of natives until he comes upon Lance, who seems to have integrated himself into the society. The two of them make their way to the PBR and float away as Kurtz's final words echo in the wind as the screen fades to black.


[edit] Alternative versions

[edit] Endings
At the time of its release, many rumors surrounded the ending of Apocalypse Now. Coppola stated an ending was written in haste in which Willard and Kurtz joined forces and repelled the air strike on the compound; however, Coppola never fully agreed with the two going out in apocalyptic intensity, preferring to end the film in a more encouraging manner[citation needed].

When Coppola originally organized the ending of the movie, he had two choices. One involved Willard leading Lance by the hand as everyone in Kurtz's base throws down their weapons, and ends with images of Willard's boat pulling away from Kurtz's compound superimposed over the face of a stone idol which then fades into black. Another option showed an air strike being called and the base being blown to bits in a spectacular display, consequently killing everyone left at the base.

The original 1978 70 mm theatrical release ended with Willard's boat, the stone statue, then fade to black with no credits. Later, when it was no longer practical to not have any credits, Coppola elected to show the credits superimposed over shots of Kurtz's base exploding (anamorphic 16 mm rental prints circulated with this ending, and can be found in the hands of a few collectors); however, when Coppola heard that audiences interpreted this as an air strike called by Willard, Coppola pulled the film from its 35 mm run, and put credits on a black screen. In the DVD commentary, Coppola explains that the images of explosions had not been intended to be part of the story; they were intended to be seen as completely separate from the film. He had added them to the credits because he had captured the footage during the demolition of the set in the Philippines, which was filmed with multiple cameras fitted with different film stocks and lenses to capture the explosions at different speeds.

Because of the confusion over the misinterpreted ending, there are multiple slightly varying versions of the ending credits. Some TV screenings maintain the explosion footage at the end, others do not, and there are several other versions.

The 70 mm release ends with no credits, save for 'Copyright 1979 Omni Zoetrope' right after the film ends; This mirrors the lack of any opening titles, and supposedly stems from Coppola's original intention to "tour" the film as one would a play: the credits would have appeared on printed programs provided before the screening began. This was, in fact, done in certain cinemas and was repeated during the theatrical release of Apocalypse Now: Redux.[citation needed]

The first DVD of the theatrical version plays like the 70 mm version, without beginning or ending credits, but has them on a separate part of the DVD. The credits to Apocalypse Now: Redux are different again: the credits play over a black background, but with ambient music by the Rhythm Devils.


[edit] Apocalypse Now Redux
Main article: Apocalypse Now Redux
In 2001, Coppola released Apocalypse Now Redux (Latin for "brought back") in cinemas and subsequently on DVD. This is an extended version that restores 49 minutes of scenes cut from the original film. Coppola has continued to circulate the original version as well: the two versions are packaged together in the Complete Dossier DVD, released on August 15, 2006.

The most significant footage added in the Redux version is an anticolonialism chapter involving the de Marais family's rubber plantation, a holdover from the colonization of French Indochina, featuring Coppola's two sons Gian-Carlo and Roman as children of the family. These scenes were removed from the 1979 cut, which premiered at Cannes, presumably because political critiques of the French colonization of Vietnam were taboo in France at the time. However, in behind the scenes footage in Hearts of Darkness, Coppola expresses his anger, on the set, at the technical aspects of the shot scenes, the result of tight allocation of resources. At the time of the Redux, it was possible to digitally-enhance the footage to accomplish Coppola's vision. In the scenes, the French family patriarchs argue about the positive side of colonialism in Indochina and denounce the betrayal of the military men in the First Indochina War. Hubert de Marais argues that French politicians sacrificed entire battalions at Điện Biên Phủ, and tells Willard that the US created the Viet Cong (as the Viet Minh), to fend off Japanese invaders.

Other added material includes extra combat footage before Willard meets Kilgore, a humorous scene in which Willard's team steals Kilgore's surfboard (which sheds some light on the hunt for the mangoes), a follow-up scene to the dance of the Playboy playmates, in which Willard's team finds the playmates awaiting evacuation after their helicopter has run out of fuel, and a scene of Kurtz reading from a Time magazine article about the war, surrounded by Cambodian children.


[edit] Adaptation
Although inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novella, based on Conrad's real experiences as a steam paddleboat captain in Africa, is set in the Belgian Congo during the 19th century. Kurtz and Marlow (who is named Willard in the movie) both work for a Belgian trading company that brutally exploits its native African workers.

When Marlow arrives at Kurtz's outpost, he discovers that Kurtz has gone insane and is lording over a small tribe as a god. The novella ends with Kurtz dying on the trip back and the narrator musing about darkness of the human psyche: "the heart of an immense darkness."

In the novella, Marlow is the pilot of a river boat sent to collect ivory from Kurtz's outpost, only gradually becoming infatuated with Kurtz. In fact, when he discovers Kurtz in terrible health, Marlow makes a concerted effort to bring him home safely. In the movie, Willard is an assassin dispatched to kill Kurtz. Nevertheless, the depiction of Kurtz as a god-like leader of a tribe of natives and his malarial fever, Kurtz's written exclamation "Exterminate the brutes!" (which appears in the film as "Drop the bomb. Exterminate them All!") and his final lines "The horror! The horror!" are taken from Conrad's novella.

Coppola argues that many episodes in the film — the spear and arrow attack on the boat, for example — respect the spirit of the novella and in particular its critique of the concepts of civilization and progress. While Coppola replaced European colonization with American interventionism, the message of Conrad's book is still clear.[2]


[edit] Background and production
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The film was originally written in the late 1960s by John Milius, who would later direct films such as The Wind and the Lion, Red Dawn and Conan the Barbarian. Milius claims to have been inspired by his film professor's claim that no one had successfully adapted the book Heart of Darkness, despite attempts by such legendary directors as Orson Welles and Richard Brooks. Ironically, given that the finished film is seen as an anti-war movie, Milius, who is politically a rightist, originally conceived the title as a cynical answer to the leftist hippie slogan "Nirvana Now!" and his original screenplay includes several speeches by Kurtz extolling the virtues of combat and the warrior way of life.

The script was originally to be directed by George Lucas, who was then Coppola's protege at American Zoetrope. Coppola founded Zoetrope to create an alternative to the major Hollywood studios which would support the work of the rising generation of film-school graduates who would become known colloquially as "the movie brats." The war in Vietnam was still active at the time and the initial plan was to shoot Apocalypse Now guerilla-style in Vietnam itself. Warner Bros., which had a production deal with Zoetrope, refused to finance the project both for commercial reasons and the fear that the filmmakers would be killed trying to shoot it in a war zone. Lucas has claimed that the studio saw the project, as well as him and his colleagues, as "crazy." After Lucas found success with American Graffiti, Coppola chose to direct the film himself. This reportedly caused some friction between the two men. Coppola chose to finance the film entirely with his own assets, using money earned from the two Godfather films and a bank loan, in order to retain total creative control over the final product.

Coppola also rewrote the script to accommodate his vision, removing much of Milius's macho dialogue and changing the film's ending. Milius's original ending showed Kurtz and Willard joining forces to fight an American air assault on Kurtz's compound. The compound is destroyed in a massive air strike and Kurtz dies of his wounds as Willard looks on. Coppola dismissed this ending as cartoonish. The ending would be rewritten multiple times over the course of production and most of Kurtz's role would eventually be improvised by Marlon Brando. The film's narration was written during the editing process by Michael Herr, who had written the book Dispatches while a war correspondent in Vietnam.

Apocalypse Now was the first time Coppola worked with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who had shot several films for Bernardo Bertolucci, including The Conformist, one of Coppola's favorites.

It was said that Coppola had approached legendary B-movie director Roger Corman, Coppola's mentor who gave him his first break as a director about Corman's experience with shooting in the Philippines. (As much of the film was shot in the country, most notably the Pagsanjan River and Hidden Valley Springs), had Corman advising the director: "Don't go." as the film would start shooting during the country's monsoon season. Such weather helped fuel the shoot's history as being legendary for its length and difficulty; filming took so long, critics eventually began referring to it as "Apocalypse When?". The film went far over budget and over schedule for several reasons. A typhoon destroyed many of the sets, which had to be rebuilt at great expense. The Philippine Air Force helicopters used for shooting Col. Kilgore's attack on a Vietnamese village were constantly being called back by President Ferdinand Marcos to serve in actual combat against anti-government rebels.

The lead role of Captain Willard was to be played by Harvey Keitel but it was recast two weeks after shooting began. Keitel's footage was re-shot with Martin Sheen, who suffered a near-fatal heart attack during production and was suffering from alcoholism during the shoot. In 50 Films to See Before You Die, aired on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 on the 22 July 2006, Sheen reveals that the opening scene was completely improvised, that he had been drinking all day, his 36th birthday, before it was shot, and that he broke the mirror by accident. When he started bleeding, Coppola wanted to stop filming, but Sheen insisted that he continue. Watching the scene back, Sheen said it was good to see where he'd come from knowing that he was never going to go back there again. It took Sheen weeks to recover and return to the set, during which time the film was in danger of being shut down. Being similar in appearance and voice, Joe Estevez, Sheen's brother, stood in for Sheen in some of the long shots and would later record some of the film's narration.


Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz.Marlon Brando appeared on set massively overweight, despite his character's description as sick and emaciated. The majority of Brando's dialogue had to be improvised, despite the short time during which the actor was available.

Coppola famously said of the shoot: "We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane." The director faced bankruptcy and financial ruin if the film was not finished or shut down; his personal investment and the bizarre circumstances of the production created immense personal pressure. According to the 1991 documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse directed by Eleanor Coppola, George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr, Coppola's marriage almost fell apart and the director suffered a nervous breakdown, including declaring to commit suicide three separate times through the making of the film.

The film took over a year to edit, with the editor making an average of three cuts a day, mostly on state-of-the-art editing equipment purchased by Coppola specifically for the production. The initial rough cut was just over four and a half hours long and had to be severely cut. A three-hour version was screened as a "work in progress" at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme D'Or for best film. It was at the Cannes press conference that Coppola made his famous comment that "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." The director, according to archival materials in the recent "Complete Dossier" edition, also stated that his plan was to create a single theater, in the geographical center of the United States (likely Kansas) that would show Apocalypse Now, and only Apocalypse Now. It would be specially tailored to the film, with 3D 70mm projectors, 5.1 surround sound, and the Sensurround system, which would vibrate the seats at the appropriate intervals. In his eyes, it would be "an event", and he likened it to travelling to Mount Rushmore. It was, incidentally, exactly the same idea which motivated Richard Wagner's Bayreuth Festival. Wagner's Parsifal was initially only to be shown in Bayreuth and Bayreuth too was chosen as the festival location because it is more or less in the heart of Germany. Considering that Wagner's music features so prominently in Apocalypse Now, Coppola may have been inspired by Wagner's example.

The original released version of the movie was just over two and a half hours long, and was a box-office success in the United States and overseas. It eventually made over 100 million dollars at the box office.

Coppola re-released the film in 2001 under the title Apocalypse Now Redux. The new print was supervised by Vittorio Storaro, who used a color process of his own invention to restore the film for release. Storaro has claimed that Apocalypse Now Redux looks better than the original release print of the film.

The catastrophic production of the film made it symbolic of the dangers of excessive directorial control over major productions. The shooting was said to have taken a toll on all involved, especially Coppola, both mentally and emotionally.


[edit] Controversy over the Killing of a Water Buffalo for the Film
A water buffalo was slaughtered with a machete for the climactic scene. It was in fact a real ritual performed by local natives, with Coppola and a film crew on the sidelines as honored guests. Although this was an American production subject to American animal cruelty laws, scenes like this filmed in the Philippines were not policed or monitored, and the American Humane Association gave the film an "unacceptable" rating.[3]


[edit] Responses
Apocalypse Now premiered in 1979 to mixed reviews and received polarized responses from audiences. It is said that it was as lauded as it was reviled. Many critics slammed the film, calling it overly pretentious, while others felt that it ended anticlimactically after a splendid first act.[citation needed]

Roger Ebert, who hailed it as the best film of 1979 and added it to his list of Great Movies, stated:

Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover.

Today, the film is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. It is on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list at number 28. Kilgore's quote "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" was number 12 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list. In 2002, Sight and Sound magazine polled several critics to name the best film of the last 25 years and Apocalypse Now was named number one. It was also listed as the second best war film by viewers on Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films, and ranked number 1 on Channel 4's 50 Films To See Before You Die.

BBC listed this speech as the most famous movie speech, in a poll of viewers.

You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

This is the speech where the famous "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like...victory" originates. (BBC News)


[edit] Home video release aspect ratio issues
The first home video releases of Apocalypse Now were pan-and-scan versions of the original 35 mm Technovision anamorphic 2.35:1 print, and the closing credits, white on black background, were presented in compressed 1.33:1 full-frame format to allow all credit information to be seen on standard televisions. The first letterboxed appearance (on laserdisc on 12-29-1991) cropped the film to a 2:1 aspect ratio (conforming to the Univisium spec created by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro), featuring a small degree of pan-and-scan processing - notably in the opening shots in Willard's hotel room, featuring a composite montage - at the insistence of Coppola and Storaro. Although the end credits, from a videotape source, not a film print, were still crushed for 1.33:1 and zoomed to fit the anamorphic video frame. All DVD releases have maintained this aspect ratio in anamorphic widescreen, but present the film without the end credits, which were treated as a separate feature. As a DVD extra, the footage of the explosion of the Kurtz compound was featured without text credits but included a commentary by director Coppola explaining the various endings based on how the film was screened.


[edit] Cast
Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard
Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz,
Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore, Cavalry battalion commander
Frederic Forrest as Engineman 2nd Class Jay "Chef" Hicks
Sam Bottoms as Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Lance B. Johnson
Laurence Fishburne as Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller
Albert Hall as Quartermaster Chief George Phillips, Navy boat commander
G. D. Spradlin as Lieutenant General Corman, military intelligence (G-2)
Harrison Ford as Colonel Lucas, aide to Corman
Dennis Hopper as American Photojournalist
Scott Glenn as Captain Richard M. Colby, previously assigned Willard's current mission
Bill Graham as Agent (announcer and in charge of Playmate's show)
Cynthia Wood as Playmate of the Year
Colleen Camp as Playmate, "Miss May"
Christian Marquand as Hubert de Marais (redux version)
Aurore Clément as Roxanne Sarraut-de Marais (redux version)
Roman Coppola as Francis de Marais (redux version)
Several other actors who were, or later became, prominent stars have minor roles in the movie including Harrison Ford, G.D. Spradlin, Scott Glenn, and R. Lee Ermey. Fishburne was only fourteen years old when shooting began in March 1976, and was credited as "Larry Fishburne." Another cast member with a future as a prominent actor and film director was Martin Sheen's eldest son, Emilio Estevez, who played a young soldier in the movie[citation needed]. Apocalypse Now took so long to finish that Fishburne was seventeen (the same age as his character) by the time of its release.


[edit] Awards
Wins

Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro)
Academy Award for Best Sound (Walter Murch, Mark Berger, Richard Beggs, Nathan Boxer)
Cannes Film Festival: Palme d'Or
Golden Globe Award for Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola)
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Duvall)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (Carmine Coppola & Francis Ford Coppola)
In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The movie poster art for Apocalypse Now is by Bob Peak, who is considered an influential artist in the world of movie posters.

Nominations

Academy Award for Best Picture
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor - (Robert Duvall)
Academy Award for Best Art Direction - Set Decoration (Angelo P. Graham, George R. Nelson and Dean Tavoularis)
Academy Award for Directing (Francis Ford Coppola)
Academy Award for Film Editing (Lisa Fruchtman, Gerald B. Greenberg, Richard Marks and Walter Murch)
Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Francis Ford Coppola & John Milius)
WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen (John Milius & Francis Ford Coppola)
Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture (Carmine Coppola & Francis Ford Coppola)

[edit] References
^ Peary, Gerald. Francis Ford Coppola, Interview with Gerald Peary. GeraldPeary.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
^ Heart of Darkness & Apocalypse Now: A comparative analysis of novella and film
^ Movie Review: Apocalypse Now. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.