Apocalypse Now (Blu-ray)
Includes both the original 1979 theatrical version (153 mins) and the extended 2001 Redux Version (202 mins) of the Oscar-Winning Vietnam War Masterpiece
Nominated for eight Academy Awards, Francis Ford Coppola's stunning vision of the heart of darkness in all of us remains a classic and compelling Vietnam War epic. Martin Sheen stars as Army Captain Willard, a troubled man sent on a dangerous and mesmerizing odyssey into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade American colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has succumbed to the horrors of war and barricaded himself in a remote outpost.
Member Reviews
One of the best movies of the 70s - Superdave
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a guy goes upriver in Africa to find a white jungle trader, now sick. The corruption caused by illness parallels the corruption of the man's soul. It's a rumination on the nature of evil in men. But the movie doesn't really follow the plot of the book. The movie's other major conceptual influence was Dante's Inferno, an epic Italian poem in which the narrator is given a tour of Hell. Vietnam is presented in the movie like Dante's conception of Hell, and the illustrations of Hieronymous Bosch who created several famous paintings of Dante's vision. Nightmarish images of waste and the futility of life and wages of sin.
Images like that damaged helicopter hanging out of jungle tree are designed to resonate with the work of Dante and Bosch. It's not just a wrecked helo, it's an image of human failure and corruption. Anyway, Dante's work is episodic, as the narrator tours one area of Hell, then another with little or no connecting narrative thread. The movie is rather this way too. Then when the movie makes it to Marlon Brando's camp, it comes sharply back to Conrad's book, as Brando is Kurtz, Vietnam equivalent to the Brit trader in Heart of Darkness. Brando forces Willard to confront his ambivalence about the war. Is Kurtz himself evil, or just more in tune with an evil enterprise than they are? It's a story about war as a human activity, in which war takes on all aspects of the human experience. Exhilarating, horrifying, nightmarish, grotesque, elusive, unfair and above all illogical. Kilgore and Kurtz are clearly insane, but did the war make them that way or select them because they were that way? Willard is presented as the only rational man in an irrational situation and his inability to make sense of the experience is a key how the viewer should respond.
The original theatrical version had a couple of scenes missing - studio wanted them cut because the movie was running long. See the director's cut.Don't ignore the Blu-ray Bonus disc - Don_Orr
Like Disc 1, this is an exceptional package. The interviews Francis Coppolla conducts with John Milius (writer) and Martin Sheen (Willard) are worth the rental alone. Both took place in 2010. Both contain many anecdotes about the filming, the thought process that went into the story, the other actors, Coppolla himself, the origins with George Lucas, Brando's hatetred of Dennis Hopper, etc. Even Coppolla learned some things. The casting sessions were interesting with Nick Nolte and a fourteen year-old Lawrence Fishburne. The movie was a pioneer in the use of 5.1 sound and there is an interesting interview with the head of Dolby Labs which were just starting out at the time. Coppolla had the idea to show the movie exclusively in a specially constructed theatre in the geographical centre of the U.S. which had the audio & video capabilities which he felt were necessary. The audience would have to travel to the midwest to see the movie and it would run for 20 years at the same theatre. Actually Lucas had a similar idea with THX sound and Star Wars. If you love the movie, and who doesn't, you will love the extras. I didn't have time to watch them all, I'm going to buy the package anyway.
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One of the best movies of the 70s - Superdave
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a guy goes upriver in Africa to find a white jungle trader, now sick. The corruption caused by illness parallels the corruption of the man's soul. It's a rumination on the nature of evil in men. But the movie doesn't really ...Don't ignore the Blu-ray Bonus disc - Don_Orr
Like Disc 1, this is an exceptional package. The interviews Francis Coppolla conducts with John Milius (writer) and Martin Sheen (Willard) are worth the rental alone. Both took place in 2010. Both contain many anecdotes about the filming, the thought process ...