#43 - Apocalypse Now (1979)

I'm not a huge fan of big, epic war films. Honestly, I don't find the concept of war that exciting and I really don't know why does it fascinate so many people. Apocalypse Now is widely regarded as one of the best war films ever, so I figured if one of these films was going to get me interested, it was this one. And when it comes to action and visual effects, it is a cream of the crop film. I just have a couple of problems with everything else.

Set during the Vietnam War, you have Martin Sheen playing captain Willard, on a mission to kill the ex-colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) deep in the jungles of Cambodia, who has apparently gone insane and commands his troops into a neutral zone. What happens in between, which is most of the film, is what alomst killed the experience to me. I mean, it has a lot of memorable scenes, like the helicopters gunning down Vetnamese to Ride of the Valkyries, or the chaotic playboy show; it has lots of potential, but all of the scenes lack congruence. The whole thing is very disjointed.

       

One moment they are fighting a tiger and the next they tease a bunch of bikini-clad chicks. What?

That's my biggest complaint. The rest of the movie is very good. I really liked all the symbolism behind the film, particularly how every character embodies different aspects of war. Kurtz has very few screen time right at the end of the film but even then he is developed as Willard reads files on his target: he is a memorable representation of the madness behind war and how it comes from the dark side of human nature. And the more Willard learns about him, the more he starts to become the thing he has to hunt. Aside from Willard and Kurtz you have Robert Duvall as Lt. Kilgore, a fun loving but still twisted character I found very likeable and all the other characters in Willard's squad that are surprisingly fleshed out and further personify different aspects of war.

And the sound and visuals are great. The camera work is very impressive and most of the scenes are very well choreographed. Like I said, the scenes in the middle of the film may be disjointed but there's a lot of stuff going on from every direction. I have to give it a lot of credit for pulling all that off in a pre-CGI era, in fact, sometimes I feel like CGI sucks some of the magic out of the film (for instance, I like hand-drawn animation a lot more than computer animated films), so there's plenty here. And the sound direction is just as good: the soundtrack heightens the athmosphere and the sound effects are very realistic and fitting.

         

Look at that. You can't get more epic than this.

In the end, the characters. premise, themes and aestethics are great. I would have really liked this film if the events and the script were better organized and tied together, and the fact that I'm not very keen on war films, but what the heck. If you want to spend two and a half hours watching stuff getting blown up while having some heavy themes to go behind it, you will like it.