'Apocalypse Now' movie review: Coppola's Vietnam-set take on Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola

Narration written by Michael Herr

Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness

Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, G.D. Spradlin

Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror.

Apocalypse Now, director Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic, is one of the greatest films ever made. Winner of the 1979 Palme d’ Or award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for Best Picture at the 1979 Academy Awards, Apocalypse Now was also a commercial success. During its original theatrical release in the summer of 1979, the film grossed approximately $150 million worldwide.

Screenwriter John Milius (Red Dawn) and Coppola (who self-financed the film) based Apocalypse Now on Joseph Conrad’s 1902 novella Heart of Darkness. To bring their story forward into the Vietnam War era, Milius and Coppola also referenced Dispatches, a non-fiction book by correspondent Michael Herr. Herr, who covered the war for Esquire magazine in the late 1960s, wrote the voiceover narration for Apocalypse Now.

(In an interview for the Full Disclosure Blu-ray release, Milius reveals that he came up with the title Apocalypse Now in the late 1960s as a parody of the hippie slogan “Nirvana Now.” Milius added a graphic design by tweaking the iconic peace sign to make it resemble a B-52 bomber.)

Apocalypse Now follows Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) on a perilous journey up the Nung River to kill Col. Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a Special Forces officer who has gone rogue and may be mentally unstable.

Willard is accompanied on his journey into Vietnam’s heart of darkness by the crew of a Navy riverine patrol boat (PBR) code named Street Gang. The PBR is commanded by Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) and is crewed by Jay “Chef” Hicks (Frederic Forrest), Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), and Tyrone “Clean” Miller (Laurence Fishbourne).

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?

Lance: What?

Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. a

[kneels]

Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 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…

[sniffing, pondering]

Kilgore: …victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

[suddenly walks off]

Willard and the Street Gang crew slowly make their way upriver aboard the PBR. At different points of the perilous trek, they meet Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) and his Air Cavalry battalion; a bevy of Playboy Playmates (Cynthia Wood, Colleen Camp, and Linda Carpenter); and a manic freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper) who worships the god-like Col. Kurtz.

Willard: [voice-over] How many people had I already killed? There were those six that I knew about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?

My Take

Unlike Oliver Stone’s semi-autobiographical Platoon (1986), Apocalypse Now does not presume to portray the Vietnam War in a realistic way. As originally envisioned by John Milius, it is a loose and modernized adaptation of Heart of Darkness, a novella set in late 19^th Century Africa that delves into the horrors of European colonialism on that tragic continent.

And yet, even though its tale of Capt. Willard’s odyssey to find Col. Kurtz in his jungle fastness is fiction, Apocalypse Now is an unflinching look at America’s lost crusade in Vietnam and the U.S. way of waging war in the modern era.

Thematically, Milius and Coppola are not reinventing the wheel. Like all the great war movies (including Saving Private Ryan and Platoon), Apocalypse Now’s message is clearly “War is hell.” Like political and financial power, war has a corrosive effect on those who are caught up in it. The Vietnam conflict, with all its complexities and moral ambiguities, eats away at the protagonists’ souls. It seduces some men into becoming war-loving addicts like Lt. Col. Kilgore, and destroys intelligent, decent ones like Willard and Kurtz.

Apocalypse Now has several key sequences that illustrate the seductive-yet-toxic effects of war. The most prominent one is the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene. Here, Col, Kilgore’s air cavalry troops – who are escorting Willard and the PBR to the mouth of the Nung River  -  carry out a helicopter assault on a village controlled by the Vietcong.

Ostensibly, the raid is intended to allow the PBR past “Charlie’s Point” so Willard can carry out his top secret mission. In reality, Kilgore wants to pacify the area because the local water conditions are ideal for his non-military passion: surfing. 

In this classic battle sequence, Coppola illustrates combat’s awful-yet-majestic juxtaposition of visceral excitement and horror. We are entranced, even exhilarated by the images of Kilgore’s fleet of airborne Huey and LOACH helicopters flying over the South China Sea and the beach at Charlie’s Point. As shot by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene is almost sensual in its depiction of American gunships firing rockets and machine guns at the defending Vietcong.  We’re mesmerized by the spectacle, yet we wince in horror when we see the effects of this technological destruction on the Vietnamese in the village.

Later in the film, the PBR encounters a Vietnamese sampan heading downstream. Willard, whose priority is on his mission to find Kurtz and “terminate” his command, tells Chief Phillips to ignore it and move on.

The Chief, a by-the-book sailor, insists on stopping the sampan to conduct a routine search for hidden weapons and other contraband that may be used by the enemy. Tension levels are high on both craft; the Vietnamese family is afraid of the brusque Americans who boarded the sampan. The Americans, for their part, don’t know if the Vietnamese are friend or foe.

Suddenly, the sampan owners’ daughter makes a sudden dash toward the craft’s interior. A jumpy Mr. Clean fires his machine gun into the sampan because he thinks the girl is going for a weapon. The girl and her father are killed instantly, the mother is seriously wounded, and the Americans in the boarding party are scared witless.

They’re also horrified when they discover that the little girl was not grabbing a hidden pistol or a grenade; she was just trying to protect her puppy.

Worse still, when Chief Phillips tells Willard that the mother is badly wounded but can be saved if the PBR takes her to an aid station, the MACV-SOG captain pulls out his .45 and kills the woman. 

Nothing must get in the way of Willard’s mission, not even for humanitarian purposes.  

Unlike most movies, Apocalypse Now doesn’t have a conventional narrative structure. Its main story – Willard’s journey up the river  - is punctuated by brief explosions of violence such as Kilgore’s raid or the sampan massacre. Surreal and as enigmatic as the Great Sphinx, Apocalypse Now refuses to tie up its plot neatly and in an easy-to-digest fashion. Like the conflict it depicts, it has a messy, morally ambiguous ending, for lack of a better term.   

 Apocalypse Now is a monument to the enduring power of film as a storytelling medium. Its spectacular visuals have not lost their power to shock and awe audiences, and the performances by Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, and Dennis Hopper continue to enthrall those of us who join Coppola’s epic trek into the Southeast Asian jungle.

Blu-ray Specifications

Video

• Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (17.99 Mbps)
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio

• English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)

Subtitles

• English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Discs

• 50GB Blu-ray Disc
• Two-disc set (2 BDs)

Packaging

• Slipcover in original pressing

Playback

• Region free