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Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American drama 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 has gone insane. As Willard's journey upriver becomes increasingly surreal and bizarre, he begins to lose sight of his purpose in the jungle. The film has been read as a metaphor for the United States' war in Vietnam, but it can also be read 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, which drew elements from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899), and Herr's "Dispatches" (1977). It was also heavily influenced by 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]
SynopsisApocalypse Now has been released with several different endings and, more recently, in an extended version. Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
1979 theatrical releaseThe film, which opens with no title or credits, begins with the muffled sound of a helicopter and an image of napalm exploding in a tropical forest. As "The End" by The Doors plays, the scene shifts to a hotel room in Saigon, where a deeply troubled U.S. Army Captain, Benjamin Willard, is drinking alone. Despite Willard's psychological problems, intelligence officers send him on a mission deep into the remote Cambodian jungle to find a United States Army Special Forces Colonel who has gone out of control. Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a decorated officer, has gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and "terminate his command... with extreme prejudice." There, Willard learns that Kurtz has assumed the role of a warlord and is worshipped by the natives and his own loyal men. Another officer named Colby, sent earlier with the same orders, may have become one of his lieutenants. Image:Apocalype Now Huey.jpg The village attack scene in Apocalypse Now.
The PBR arrives at a Landing Zone (LZ) where Willard and the crew meet up with Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore, the eccentric commander of the "First of the Ninth, an old cavalry unit which had cashed in its horses for choppers and gone tear-assing around 'Nam" 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment (United States) (Air Cavalry), 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 Nung River is perfect for surfing, a factor which persuades him to capture it. Kilgore orders his men to 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 village. The scene, which uses 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: Image:Apocalypse Now Smell Like Victory.jpg "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 obsession with Kurtz deepens. Incidents on the journey include a stop at a USO outpost where GIs watch a show featuring three Playboy Playmates, a run-in with a tiger, an impromptu inspection of a Vietnamese sampan that leads to a massacre, a surreal stop at the last American outpost, and the deaths of both Clean and Chief Phillips. In addition, the further up the river and towards the front lines the PBR goes, the more anarchaic the situation becomes. At the start of the movie in Saigon, you would never know a war is taking place. The base where Willard receives his orders is a calm military installation. Kilgore is fighting in territory in which the United States and South Vietnamese still have a tremendous advantage in. Further up the river, however, the odds even out, and each encounter becomes more perilous. By the time the PBR reaches the actual front lines there is nothing but total chaos. Going ashore, Willard encounters a squad of soldiers guarding a bridge installation that is blown up by the NVA every night and rebuilt each day by the Americans. The entire squad is made of black men, as Willard is called the CO by a nameless black soldier because Willard was white. Most of the soldiers seem scared and confused; those that are not appear to be high on drugs. When Willard asks one of them if he knows where the CO (commanding officer) is, the grunt smiles and says "yeah" and then just walks away, clearly signaling that there is no commander giving orders that far up the river and that they have been abandoned by the US, set there to fight until death. This chapter shows the racist attitudes of the US Army during the Vietnam Conflict. Once past the front-lines, however, the PBR crew is surprised to find a sense of calm, almost like being in the eye of a hurricane. It is clear that even the NVA and VC don't dare venture near Kurtz's encampment, and an unnerving quiet descends over the rest of the journey (interspersed with the PBR being attacked by unseen assailants who throw sticks and a spear at the boat, killing Chief). Willard, Johnson, and Chef eventually arrive at Kurtz' compound. It is almost unimaginable: rotting bodies and the stench of blood and decay are everywhere, yet Kurtz's followers seem oblivious to the horrors around them. Willard is met by a burned-out hippie freelance photographer (Hopper) who defends Kurtz, arguing that he is a great man with profound philosophical insight. Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an air strike on the village if he does not return. Chef remains on the PBR while Johnson, who has been high on LSD for much of the second half of the movie, mingles with the natives, eventually just blending in with them. While Willard initially walks freely among Kurtz's men and followers, they eventually seize him and bring him to Kurtz. It is apparent that Kurtz fully expected someone like Willard to be sent again and he accuses him of being an assassin. Kurtz also lectures him on his bizarre theories of war, humanity, and civilization. Willard is imprisoned and bound uncomfortably in a bamboo tiger cage, and it is suggested that he has resigned himself to die in the airstrike that Chef should be calling in. That night, Kurtz comes to the still-bound Willard and places the severed head of Chef in his lap. At that point, Willard breaks down with the knowledge that he could be held and made to suffer by Kurtz forever. Soon thereafter something unexpected happens: Willard is released from the cage and brought back to Kurtz's temple. There he remains for days, still watched, but essentially unguarded. Willard sits and listens to Kurtz read poetry and speak of war like a disciple at the feet of the master. Previously in the movie, while on the river, we had been fed bits of pieces of information about Kurtz via the narration of a dosier on Kurtz provided by US Army Intelligence which was being read by Willard. The picture that emerged was of a brilliant soldier who was being groomed to be a general, or even higher, but who became mentally unbalanced and brutal. To this, we now add the cause of Kurtz's eventual break from reality: the nature of how the Vietnam conflict was fought (allowing political concerns to trump military decisions and knowingly allowing soldiers to die as a consequence) caused Kurtz to become disillusioned with the military. Kurtz reveals that months earlier, while he was still following orders, he had taken his battalion to a South Vietnamese village to inoculate the local children for Polio. Soon after they left, the battalion was called back by a crying old man from the village. What had happened was horrifying: the VC had come and cut off the arms of every child who had been inoculated. But after crying, Kurtz, already mentally unstable, finally broke. He admired the will and brutality of the VC troops and realized that the Americans could never win the war against this kind of enemy unless they became equally as brutal. Willard realizes that Kurtz is fully conscious of the horrors he had committed, and how horrible a person he himself has become. What Kurtz lacks, however, is the internal strength to stop himself. He had died inside long ago, and had just become an animal in the jungle like any other. Willard also comprehends that by telling him the story, Kurtz was asking Willard to kill him to end the psychotic violence and take his pain away. The finale involves juxtaposed scenes of a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo, while Willard kills Kurtz with a machete. Dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror... the horror," (a quote taken directly from Conrad's novella). Willard walks through the now-silent crowd of natives, all of whom know he has killed their "God" and who begin to kneel before him as Kurtz's replacement. The temptation for Willard to stay and be an absolute ruler must have been immense. However, instead he finds Johnson, who has since joined the natives, and boards the PBR. As they float away Kurtz's final words "The Horror, the horror" echo and the screen fades to black. Alternative endingsAt 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 airstrike on the compound. However, Coppola revised this ending because he believed it was too moralistic and predictable. 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 1979 70mm 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 have no credits, Coppola elected to show the credits superimposed over shots of Kurtz's base exploding (anamorphic 16mm 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 35mm 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 70mm 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 70mm 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 and jungle sounds. ReduxIn 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. These scenes were removed from the 1979 cut, which premiered at Cannes because its political critique of the French colonization of Vietnam was a taboo subject in France. 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. In the scenes, Hubert de Marais argues that French politicians sacrificed entire battalions at Dîen Bîen Phu, and tells Willard that the US had originally founded the Viet Minh to get the French out of Vietnam. Other added material includes extra combat footage before Willard meets Kilgore, a humorous scene in which Willard's team steals Kilgore's surfboard, 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. Parodies
AdaptationAlthough inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the film deviates extensively from its source material. The novel, 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 novel 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 novel, 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!" and his final lines "The horror! The horror!" are taken from Conrad's novel. Coppola argues that many episodes in the film—the spear and arrow attack on the boat, for example—respect the spirit of the novel 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. [1] Background and productionThe film was originally written in the late 1960s by John Milius, who would later direct films such as The Wind and the Lion and Red Dawn. 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. The film was shot in the Philippines (most notably the Pagsanjan River and Hidden Valley Springs) and the shoot has become 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 the assassin 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 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. Image:Brando apoc.jpg Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz Marlon Brando appeared on set massively overweight, despite his character's description as sick and emaciated. He refused to learn his lines and had not read the book Heart of Darkness as Coppola requested. 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 Eleanor Coppola's 1991 documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Coppola's marriage almost fell apart and the director suffered a nervous breakdown. The film took over a year to edit, mostly on state-of-the-art editing equipment purchased specifically for the production by Coppola. The initial rough cut was just over five 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. He also cropped the frame from the conventional 2.35:1 to 2.0:1 aspect ratio in order to improve detail by increasing vertical resolution.[2] Storaro has claimed that Apocalypse Now Redux looks better than the original release print of the film. The catastrophic production of the film unfortunately 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. To many cinephiles, Apocalypse Now is the last great film by a legendary director whose subsequent work has failed to live up to his initial promise. ControversyA water buffalo was partially decapitated and slaughtered with a machete for the climactic scene. It was in fact a real ritual performed by local natives, as Coppola felt that to film the ritual sacrifice would add depth and realism. Although this was an American production (ostensibly subject to American animal cruelty laws), scenes like this filmed in the Philippines were not policed or monitored. Still, after conducting an investigation, the American Humane Association gave the film an "unacceptable" rating.[2] ResponsesApocalypse 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:
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 1. The film is also ranked number 36 on IMDb's Top 250 movies list, with an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10. It was also listed as the second best war film by viewers on Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films. Home Video Release Aspect Ratio IssuesThe first home video releases of Apocalypse Now were pan-and-scan versions of the original 35mm 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 the 70mm release 2:1 aspect ratio, 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 cinematographer Vittorio 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. In popular cultureApocalypse Now has been heavily referenced and spoofed in various forms of popular media. Principal cast
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 Laurence Fishburne. Fishburne was only fourteen years old when shooting began in March 1976, and was credited as "Larry Fishburne." Apocalypse Now took so long to finish that Fishburne was seventeen (the same age as his character) by the time of its release. The director had to finance the film with his own money, which he earned from the blockbuster The Godfather films. Coppola's wife, Eleanor, chronicled the making of the film in the book Notes and in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. The documentary uses footage she shot during principal photography. Awards
Wins
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
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