Francis Coppola's grandiose, overtly metaphysical 1979 film about the Vietnam war, culled indirectly from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Michael Herr's Dispatches, took 238 days to shoot and cost more than double its original budget.
During filming, Martin Sheen had a heart attack and Coppola contemplated suicide. By the end, nearly everyone was either sick or exhausted. That is how some masterpieces are made.
This doesn't mean that the film isn't flawed.
Marlon Brando's looming Colonel Kurtz, waging a private war from a Cambodian temple near the Vietnam frontier, whom Sheen has been sent to eliminate "with extreme prejudice", is as difficult to comprehend as his better turn in The Godfather. For that, he stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool - here, there was no such excuse.
Also, the representation of the Vietnam war seems less than accurate with more hindsight.
But forget all that, and remember Conrad's own description of his book. It applies almost exactly to the film: "The sombre theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own. A continued vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and dwell in the ear after the last note had been struck." Undoubtedly it is one of the best films about war ever made.
Apocalypse Now
Cert: 15
