Apocalypse Now: Final Cut. (15.)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper. 183 mins. Available on a 4 disc Blu-ray set. Details here
I don't quite know what Apocalypse Now is any more – 40 years on its relevance to Vietnam is fairly tentative – but I do know, with depressing certainty, that absolutely nothing released this year is going to have even half the impact that this has on a big screen. Or a little one.
During its lengthy production - it was more than three years between the start of shooting and its screening at the Cannes Film Festival - Coppola's Vietnam epic became known as Apocalypse When? Or Apocalypse Never. The version shown in Cannes in 1979 was unfinished and in some ways, the film has never been finished. Probably no film is ever really finished, not to the degree a book or painting is. At some point production costs dictate that a film be released and whatever you have then is what the public sees.
Sometimes though you may get a chance to come back and redo it, make the film you really intended. And maybe that film is not the film audience wanted, so this Final Cut is a corrective to the 202 minutes Redux version. It is Apocalypse Now Redux Reducted.
The first thing to say is that, in this age where no old film is allowed back on the big or small screen without a quick 4K hose down, they have really done a job on the restoration of this. A really, really good job. The soundtrack and the images have been remastered in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Coppola himself says n a filmed introduction that “it looks better than it's ever looked and sounds better than it's ever sounded.” I think it has always looked pretty fantastic on a big screen but the sound is remarkable. During the opening shot, as The Doors strike up This Is The End, the sound of a helicopter can be heard to your right and then flies right round behind your back till it is heard on your left. Best of all, you can hear every single line of dialogue. Even during the biggest battle scenes, with explosions and gunfire and helicopter rotors whirring, barely a line is lost.
So what has made the cut for Final Cut? Let me start by saying that I always liked the Redux, though many people got quite irate about it. An editor once harangued me for liking it, saying it destroyed the film's rhythm and he couldn't believe a man of Walter Mursch standing could've been a party to it. I feel Redux has two virtues. First, it's an opportunity to see all (or at least some) of the missing scenes that were cut for the original release. Second, it was an excuse to watch Apocalypse Now again, with the bonus of it being a bit different. And for me, that made it a worthwhile exercise.
But the Redux was always an indulgence and a bit too long. It didn't need the extra scenes. The Final Cut final score is you keep the extra footage from the conclusion of the Colonel Kilgore (Duvall) sequence, you lose the second Playboy Bunny sequences, but the French plantation sequence survives intact, which will be controversial. Personally, I miss the Bunnies, but I'm not surprised.
The French plantation sequence, where the boat lands and they get to bury their dead and have a good meal and Willard is part of a lengthy discussion about the history of Vietnam and Cambodia and the French presence there, wasn't much loved in Redux, because it seemed to slow the film down unnecessarily, just as they were about to finally reach Kurtz. I think it makes the Final Cut for two reasons. First in a film where the smoke machine got ample usage, the opening image where French soldiers appear out of parting mist is one of the best in the whole film. Secondly, it briefly makes the film seem grown-up, like it is actually about Vietnam and the war.
Is this the Final Cut, the version we will regard as definitive? Maybe, maybe not. I love the extra bits with Duvall's Kilgore and Willard stealing a surfboard. It's the kind of scene you hear has been cut and wonder how they could do that. I loved watching it, but is the film better for it? They are great scenes but without them the finals shot of Kilgore is his wistful, "Someday this war's gonna end," and it's surely a mistake to deliver a killer last line and then not leave the stage.
Forty years ago, the film met with a more measured response, with some disappointment that this spectacle didn't really have anything to say. That it doesn't have anything to say about the Vietnam conflict is the reason it has stood the test of time so fully. We'll never stop watching it and, in a digital seegeeyiy world, I don't think we'll ever stop being wowed by this undertaking. We're always going to need an Apocalypse every Now and again.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne and Dennis Hopper. 183 mins. Available on a 4 disc Blu-ray set. Details here
I don't quite know what Apocalypse Now is any more – 40 years on its relevance to Vietnam is fairly tentative – but I do know, with depressing certainty, that absolutely nothing released this year is going to have even half the impact that this has on a big screen. Or a little one.
During its lengthy production - it was more than three years between the start of shooting and its screening at the Cannes Film Festival - Coppola's Vietnam epic became known as Apocalypse When? Or Apocalypse Never. The version shown in Cannes in 1979 was unfinished and in some ways, the film has never been finished. Probably no film is ever really finished, not to the degree a book or painting is. At some point production costs dictate that a film be released and whatever you have then is what the public sees.
Sometimes though you may get a chance to come back and redo it, make the film you really intended. And maybe that film is not the film audience wanted, so this Final Cut is a corrective to the 202 minutes Redux version. It is Apocalypse Now Redux Reducted.
The first thing to say is that, in this age where no old film is allowed back on the big or small screen without a quick 4K hose down, they have really done a job on the restoration of this. A really, really good job. The soundtrack and the images have been remastered in Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Coppola himself says n a filmed introduction that “it looks better than it's ever looked and sounds better than it's ever sounded.” I think it has always looked pretty fantastic on a big screen but the sound is remarkable. During the opening shot, as The Doors strike up This Is The End, the sound of a helicopter can be heard to your right and then flies right round behind your back till it is heard on your left. Best of all, you can hear every single line of dialogue. Even during the biggest battle scenes, with explosions and gunfire and helicopter rotors whirring, barely a line is lost.
So what has made the cut for Final Cut? Let me start by saying that I always liked the Redux, though many people got quite irate about it. An editor once harangued me for liking it, saying it destroyed the film's rhythm and he couldn't believe a man of Walter Mursch standing could've been a party to it. I feel Redux has two virtues. First, it's an opportunity to see all (or at least some) of the missing scenes that were cut for the original release. Second, it was an excuse to watch Apocalypse Now again, with the bonus of it being a bit different. And for me, that made it a worthwhile exercise.
But the Redux was always an indulgence and a bit too long. It didn't need the extra scenes. The Final Cut final score is you keep the extra footage from the conclusion of the Colonel Kilgore (Duvall) sequence, you lose the second Playboy Bunny sequences, but the French plantation sequence survives intact, which will be controversial. Personally, I miss the Bunnies, but I'm not surprised.
The French plantation sequence, where the boat lands and they get to bury their dead and have a good meal and Willard is part of a lengthy discussion about the history of Vietnam and Cambodia and the French presence there, wasn't much loved in Redux, because it seemed to slow the film down unnecessarily, just as they were about to finally reach Kurtz. I think it makes the Final Cut for two reasons. First in a film where the smoke machine got ample usage, the opening image where French soldiers appear out of parting mist is one of the best in the whole film. Secondly, it briefly makes the film seem grown-up, like it is actually about Vietnam and the war.
Is this the Final Cut, the version we will regard as definitive? Maybe, maybe not. I love the extra bits with Duvall's Kilgore and Willard stealing a surfboard. It's the kind of scene you hear has been cut and wonder how they could do that. I loved watching it, but is the film better for it? They are great scenes but without them the finals shot of Kilgore is his wistful, "Someday this war's gonna end," and it's surely a mistake to deliver a killer last line and then not leave the stage.
Forty years ago, the film met with a more measured response, with some disappointment that this spectacle didn't really have anything to say. That it doesn't have anything to say about the Vietnam conflict is the reason it has stood the test of time so fully. We'll never stop watching it and, in a digital seegeeyiy world, I don't think we'll ever stop being wowed by this undertaking. We're always going to need an Apocalypse every Now and again.
