APOCALYPSE NOW: FINAL CUT
Another take on the ’Nam classic? What the Redux?
Apocalypse Now: Final cut 15 film extras 1979/2019 OUT 16 September DVD, BD, 4K Extras Introductions, Commentaries, Q&A, Making Of, Conversations, Interviews, Featurettes, Additional scenes, B-roll footage, Storyboards
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic is an ode to cinematic excess. Its stars – Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper – were the biggest actors’ actors of the age. The set-pieces are more like full-scale battle re-enactments. Its shoot nearly bankrupted its director and almost killed its leading man. And its ambitions signalled the beginning of the end for the ideals of ’70s New Hollywood.
When you’re making an operatic folly set in a world gone to hell, size matters. So it’s strange to see Coppola, a director known for his largesse, reining it in. Released in a three-disc package, this newly restored, 4K Final Cut runs to 183 minutes – that’s 20 minutes shorter than 2001’s Redux. Although at 30 minutes longer than the original, it’s a still a hell of a lot of film.
We begin, of course, with ‘The End’, a Doors-soundtracked dissolve from
the waiting jungle to the watchful eyes of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen, fantastic) as helicopters whir and napalm blooms. It’s the first tourde-force sequence in a film that’s full of them, the cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) and sound design (Walter Murch) combining to create something truly epic. As in the legendary ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’ sequence, the latter is enough to shatter your windows/ear-drums.
For his sins, Willard receives a mission: to travel by boat into Cambodia and assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando, believing his own hype), an American soldier who’s gone full Charles Manson in the jungle. Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart Of Darkness but set in 1969, when the countercultural dream was dying, it uses Vietnam as a metaphor for the inherent savagery of man, with a heady and hallucinatory quality that makes up for its many longueurs.
Even in its new form – which Coppola calls the “best version” – the film still meanders like the Nung River, and the reinstated plantation sequence (essentially a bunch of Frenchmen arguing for 20 minutes) kills the nightmarish narrative stone-dead. But the film retains a majesty and madness you can’t really put a time limit on. A shit-ton of extras, mostly repeats from earlier releases, includes new Coppola intros, a Q&A with Steven Soderbergh, and Eleanor Coppola’s seminal Making Of film Hearts Of Darkness, which documents the excesses in minute detail. Matt Glasby