APOCALYPSE NOW: Final Cut 4K Blu-ray (American Zoetrope/UA, 1979) Lionsgate

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) is a movie that could never be today; in as much as its’ infamous and meticulously documented folly of director-driven obsession and near-death of its star, Martin Sheen (who suffered a heart attack) would be enough for any nervous studio exec to pull the plug and send everyone home for good. Two mitigating factors prevented the cancellation of Coppola’s shoot; the first, Coppola’s grand and devouring mania to will his vision into existence beyond all comprehension for his own self-preservation. Second, that the film was being funded by United Artists – a production house catering to independent film makers in an unobtrusive way, giving them full authority and autonomy to make whatever movies they so desired.  In the past UA’s good faith policy had been extremely well-placed, its lucrative alliances with such heavy hitters as Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Albert R. Broccoli marking an enviable win-win situation for all concerned. However, in the mid-1970s, such blind allegiances began to test the patience of all concerned – and more importantly, at least from UA’s perspective, strain their coffers to the point where it began to impact their ability to continue to do business as usual as a viable alternative - apart from the more stringent dictates of other corporate-owned studios. Add to the mix the 1978 departure of UA’s guiding force, Arthur B. Krim, with a mass exodus of UA’s top-flight talent (who followed Krim to Orion Pictures) after a particularly nasty split with its parent company, Transamerica. UA was left with a middling roster of executives who, fearful of making a misstep, ultimately brought about the ruination of the company by allowing its status quo ‘don’t ask, don’t interfere’ policy to foster movies of quality that nevertheless were more costly than the company was ultimately capable of producing. 

Apocalypse Now is frequently cited as one of the most intense and genuine movies ever made about the Vietnam conflict; a moniker it justly deserves. But even before cameras began to roll, a snafu with film maker, Carroll Ballard resulted in a lawsuit over the rights to produce it. In retrospect, it proved a very bad omen of things to come. With a script by Coppola and John Milius drawing its central themes from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now remains an arguably honest, exceptionally bleak and very foreboding entertainment. But behind the scenes, Coppola encountered a journey more arduous and self-destructive than perhaps any put forth on film; one that threatened to destroy all of the cache he had built up as one of Hollywood’s premiere movers and shakers on his two previous Oscar-winning efforts for Paramount: The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974).  Indeed, Marlon Brando - a beloved of Coppola’s, (though not his first choice to play Kurtz) - was of no help to the director on his outing, arriving on set morbidly obese and flubbing his lines so often that Coppola was forced to patch together his performance in the editing room during post production. To minimize Brando's girth on set, Coppola shot another actor from behind in long shot and focused primarily on Brando's face; his body draped in black and often barely lit or emerging from the shadows. For years, the character of Kurtz was thought to be based on Tony Poe; a Paramilitary officer with a morose thirst for the more extreme brutalities of combat. Coppola however, has always suggested the character was based on Col. Robert Rheault whose 1969 arrest over the murder of a double agent had garnered considerable press.

As production in Manila progressed at an excruciatingly glacial pace, Coppola was faced with a natural disaster - a typhoon that decimated several large sets already constructed for the film. Six weeks behind and $2 million over budget, arguably Apocalypse Now's greatest impediment became Coppola himself. Unable to reconcile the footage already photographed with a screenplay that was forever changing in his mind, Coppola wrote and rewrote entire sequences, shooting to excess, only to excise much of it in his final cut. After principle photography wrapped, Coppola informed editor, Walter Murch he had a mere four months to assemble the sound elements for the film; an insurmountable task given that sound libraries in Hollywood back then contained virtually no convincing audio effects for mechanized weaponry used during the Vietnam War. Aside: what Murch would achieve, apart from being a minor miracle, basically rewrote the history of stereophonic film recording up till that point, and, introduced modern cinema goers to the age of Dolby.

After cajoling UA to postpone the movie’s debut from May to October of 1978, Coppola was still not ready for a premiere by December of that year. In April 1979, Coppola elected to screen a three hour 'work print' of Apocalypse Now for audiences at Canne. This proved a disaster, capped off by film critic, Rona Barrett's snap assessment, labeling the movie "a disappointing failure." Regrettably, this negative publicity would continue to dog Apocalypse Now to its official premiere in August of 1979. Despite an impressive $150 million as its worldwide gross, the pall from the experience of making – then, remaking - Apocalypse Now had physically and emotionally exhausted Coppola and all but crippled his ability to procure future financing as an independent in Hollywood. Where only two years earlier Coppola had been the fair-haired heir apparent who could have written his own blank check and aspired to make any movie of his own heart’s desire, he had suddenly and spectacularly fallen into the category of the industry’s red-headed stepchild; an opinion and a stigma that continued to linger; all but cemented in perpetuity with 1982’s cataclysmic failure of One From the Heart.  On Oscar night, Apocalypse Now won only two statuettes, each in relatively 'minor' categories for cinematography and sound editing.

Arguably, Apocalypse Now was the wrong movie for its time; the Vietnam conflict having ended a mere four short years before the movie’s debut – a grace period in which the ruinous and ongoing psychological consequences of returning soldiers, virtually ignored for their contributions abroad and worse, publicly spat on in their own native soil as perceived war mongers and baby-killers (when, in fact, most had honorably served their country with valor, justice and distinction, under the most onerous of wartime conditions); these truths remained a travesty obfuscated by the hippie counterculture, and something of an embarrassment to the United States government who could in no way delineate a clear-cut victory from all the shell-shock and disbelief overshadowing the South East Asian conflict. But these were precisely the realities Coppola had sought to bring forth from the national blind-sighted obscurity with an even more frank and unvarnished spectacle meant to humanize the inhumanity of it all.

Arguably, Apocalypse Now played more like a bucket of salt poured into this still very raw and gaping wound; the pall of its own lengthy and extremely difficult incubation leading the critical charge and backlash from the critics. Further still, perhaps America was not ready to face the realities of war or simply felt they had been brutalized enough in their popular entertainments with the release of Michael Cimino’s Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter and Hal Ashby’s Coming Home (both released in 1978).  Whatever the reason, Coppola’s movie became one of the scapegoats for putting a period to the era of director-driven ‘auteur’ movie-making; the final stake being driven into its heart by Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980 – and the albatross that shuddered the venerable UA for good). However, as is often the case, time does very strange things to cinema art, and Apocalypse Now is today regarded as perhaps the exemplar of a certain kind of commando film-making that never abbreviates its verisimilitude regarding the Vietnam War; its fictionalized narrative, somehow revealing far more lasting truths than either of its aforementioned competitors. Viewed today, Coppola’s movie is indeed a startling artistic achievement with arguably no rivals - then or now - to match its oppressively genuine vision. Coppola’s self-destructiveness, his total immersion in the project to the point of almost losing his way and, perhaps, his sanity, has yielded to a shockingly genuine masterwork that burrows deep into our collective consciousness. The picture is void of melodrama; the behind-the-scenes chaos, somehow, permeating in ways unattainable through art for art’s sake alone. In effect, Coppola, Sheen and the rest of the cast and crew have gone through their own trial by fire, the ravages endured leaving behind indelible and permanent scars on the makeup of their characters – and ‘character’ and, in fact, ingrained into the very fiber of the movie itself.   

Plot wise: in 1969, Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), an emotionally barren, psychologically scarred Vietnam vet, is hired by Lt. General Corman (G. D. Spradlin) and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford) to make his pilgrimage on the Nung River in Cambodia in search of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a highly decorated Special Forces operative feared to have gone rogue. It is an assassin's haj, fraught with danger on all sides and the very real possibility Willard will not survive his ordeal. Willard is informed Kurtz is insane and currently in command of a legion of psychologically unhinged followers, programmed to obey his commands with implicit abandonment. These claims are supported by disturbing radio broadcasts made by Kurtz himself. Aboard the Navy patrol boat Riverine with Commander George Phillips (Albert Hall), Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms), Tyrone Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and Jay Hicks (Frederic Forrest), Willard rendezvous with an Air Cavalry commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall). At the mouth of the river, Willard, Kilgore and his troops are feebly ambushed by the Viet Cong and shortly thereafter decimated. In the resulting carnage and decimation of a nearby village, Kilgore utters the film's most oft quoted line; "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... Smells like, victory" as he recalls an earlier battle. From here, the Riverine navigates increasingly more treacherous waters with Willard's own silent obsession to apprehend Kurtz growing ominous and self-destructive. The Riverine encounters a sampan in their midst, the crew – having been frazzled to the point of nervous breakdowns - blindly opening fire and slaughtering all aboard, only to reveal the vessel as civilian. Discovering that one of the wounded - a young girl - is still alive, Hicks demands she be taken immediately for medical attention, whereupon Willard quietly shoots the girl dead; thereby alienating himself from the rest of his men. In effect, Coppola is drawing a parallel between Willard’s own psychological implosion and that of the mysterious Kurtz whom we have yet to discover, but will shortly meet.

Further upstream, the Riverine encounters utter chaos at the Do Long Bridge, the last U.S. outpost on the river. A North Vietnamese attack has left the remaining U.S. troops stationed there without leadership. Willard learns that an Army Captain was sent earlier to find Kurtz but has since vanished without a trace. Meanwhile, aboard the Riverine, Lance pops open a purple smoke grenade that attracts enemy fire. In the resulting chaos, several of Willard's men are killed and Phillips, wounded by a spear through his chest, attempts to murder Willard by drawing him onto its protruding tip. Willard confides the real purpose of his journey to Lance and Hicks and the three men agree to see the mission through. As they draw closer to Kurtz's compound, even they are shocked by the sight of a coastline strewn in butchered bodies. Willard orders Hicks to launch an airstrike if he and Lance do not return. But only a short way into the forest, Willard and Lance are met by a manic photographer (Dennis Hopper) who attempts to explain Kurtz's greatness; a stark assumption irreconcilable with the many bodies and dismembered heads encountered along the road to a nearby Buddhist temple where Kurtz currently resides. Bound and brought before Kurtz, Willard is given a crash philosophical treatise on the war in a hauntingly bloodless, bone-chillingly effective monotone monologue by Kurtz that culminates with Hicks' murder aboard the Riverine; his severed head dropped into Willard's lap by Kurtz. Sometime later, a weary villager frees Willard from his restraints and gives him a machete. Entering Kurtz's chamber, Willard slaughters his captor before dropping the weapon at his feet. The villagers allow Lance and Willard to leave the stronghold; the pair sailing into a very uncertain future.

Viewed today, Apocalypse Now remains a very sobering entertainment; dark and evocative of the precepts in Joseph Conrad's novel while infusing the basic story with deeper, and then more timely meaning, that in retrospect continues to ring with ominous truth. In 2001, Coppola released a 'redux' version of his masterwork into theaters and then on home video, incorporating an additional 49 minutes. Back in 1979, UA had balked at the already lengthy run time, forcing Coppola to make further trims to Apocalypse Now’s general release. Now, the film has been reassembled once more, with Coppola tweaking the footage a little further still.  Back in early 2017, American Zoetrope archivist, James Mockoski approached Coppola with the high concept for a ‘new’ Apocalypse Now home video experience; a laborious frame-by-frame, and minute-by-minute re-inspection of surviving original elements, heartily augmented by the ever-evolving and advanced digital technologies at their disposal. “I didn’t intend to make a new Apocalypse Now,” Coppola has admitted, “…but I felt that this being longer than one and shorter than the other was the right blend.  I always felt that the first version was too shortened…and the other version was…well, maybe we shouldn’t have put everything back in. A movie is in service to a theme that runs through it, and I always felt that Redux never quite supported the theme of the film as fundamentally as I wanted.” And so, we have Apocalypse Now: Final Cut – initially pruned by some 14-minutes (then, a little bit more, to practically 20 minutes of the newly instated 49 minutes - now gone). The excisions are more ‘tweaks’ then outright ‘cuts’ and have managed to tighten the overall impact of the piece without discarding any of its ‘worthwhile’ entertainment value.  Apocalypse Now 3.0 will likely remain ‘the version’ of Coppola’s own dreams and nightmares; the hallucinogenic properties of the original cut, and the added pleasures to be derived by Coppola’s re-imagining of what was added to the ‘redux’ Blu-ray edition, creating a visceral home video experience in 4K.  

It’s safe to say Apocalypse Now in 4K has never looked more startling than it does now. Meticulous attention has been paid to this frame-by-frame restoration, utilizing the original camera negative for the very first time, and, with Dolby Vision HDR and Atmos to augment the experience. This set is a 6-disc affair – 2 in 4K, and 4 standard Blu-rays, all of it housed in some snappy packaging. To satisfy fans, the 4K discs feature all 3 versions of Apocalypse Now: the original 153 min. theatrical cut, the 206 min. ‘Redux’ special edition from 2006, and now, Coppola’s final word on the matter, running 183 minutes. All three editions have been afforded all of the bells and whistles of a superb digital restoration and never – but NEVER – has Apocalypse Now looked this good on home video before. Color grading is slightly altered from the previous Blu-ray release. If anything, the image is slightly warmer. But it’s the refinement of details that truly impresses – grain, resolved to a finite and precise rendering that is filmic beyond all expectation. So, kudos to Coppola and Lionsgate – the distributors here, for this. Aside: could we possibly hope for Coppola to work his magic on the execs at Paramount for a Godfather Trilogy 4K release of this magnitude? But I digress.  

In addition to Coppola’s audio commentary, there are two discs exclusively jam-packed with goodies: interviews with John Milius, Martin Sheen and Coppola, Fred Roos on casting the picture, The Mercury Theater on the Air: Heart of Darkness broadcast from November 6, 1938, The Hollow Men featurette, and lost and/or excised scenes. We also get the ‘Destruction of the Kurtz Compound’ sequence with an option for more commentary from Coppola. Featurettes on the 5.1 audio re-mix, the original sound design for the movie, the task of color balancing the movie – as a movie, and again, for home video, and, the arduous editing process follow. It should be pointed out – all of these extras were included in the ‘Redux’ Blu-ray edition. New to this 4K release: the Tribeca Film Festival Q&A with Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Soderbergh, plus never-before-seen B-Roll footage of cast and crew at work and at play. We also get Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the definitive look at the creation of this masterpiece, plus John Milius script excerpts with Coppola’s notes, a storyboard collection and photo archive, unit photography, and a host of teasers, trailers and radio and TV spots. Cumulatively, there are over 9 hours of extras to sift through at your leisure. Bottom line: one of the seminal movies from the 1970’s re-envisioned as one of the most anticipated ‘must have’ 4K Blu-ray releases of the year. Definitively, you need this one!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

5+