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When it comes to choosing the best film ever made, the only thing you're sure to end up with is a
headache.
However, if you're after the GREATEST film of all time then look no further. Sure Battleship Potempkin
& Ben Hur were epic & Star Wars was spellbinding but none reached the mythical heights of Apocalypse
Now. A tale of woe, darkness & disaster where fact and fiction actually met. Could Star Wars boast
lead heart attacks? A doom-laden production that endured hurricanes, floods and 2 yrs of utter disaster?
A cast that reads like a 'best of generation': Marlon Brando, Martin
Sheen, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne? An opening scene with real blood, sweat & tears?
A Hollywood legend whose attitude out-did any natural disaster; does Star Wars end with a real-life
sacred cow being slaughtered? And if this weren't enough a director that flirted with suicide, madness and
hasn't made a good film since? Okay - you can have that last bit.
This unrivalled epic of modern cinema began life as the demented child of the maniacal writer/director
John Milius, a legendary gung-ho spirit not only responsible for unleashing Schwarzenegger on the world
(in Conan the Barbarian) but for a film that rivals Apocalypse Now in terms of sheer beauty & poetic splendour,
the unrivalled (& tragically underrated) surf movie Big Wednesday. Milius had originally planned to
shoot it himself as a guerilla film - IN Vietnam WHILE the war was still raging. And so it was from
these provocative beginnings that the legend mushroomed.
The story is an old one by now yet the film remains a mindblowing piece of cinema from the Doors
soundtrack to its crisp cinematography to the haunting voiceover that still raises hairs on the
back of your neck 20 years later. The permeating madness saturates every inch of celluloid & beyond
from stage to screen, from Conrad's novel to 60's psychedelic hysteria to war itself; never has such
complexity been distilled so coherently into an investigation of insanity. Or rather sanity in an
insane world.
REDUX is a treat for those who never saw the film on the big screen & a delight for those
able to stomach this kind of grand cinematic indulgence. Duvall's charlie don't surf/napalm speech
hasn't lost any impact despite its place over the urinal, Brando remains an intriguing enigma and
Sheens's performance has only matured. Clocking in at just under 4 hours the
film is laced with extra material & while the footage is little improvement on the original cut,
it grants a further glimpse into the legend of Apocalypse Now and the characters slowly being
squeezed of their sanity. The extra scenes range from the comical - stealing Kilgore's surfboard, to
the disturbing - a further scene with the Playboy bunnies, now either shocked or drugged into sexual
submission. The oft-touted plantation scene is a longwinded diatribe on the politics of Vietnam &
French colonial role in SE Asia that comprehensively ruins the tempo of Willard's journey upstream
yet is interesting in its humanizing of Willard and glimpse inside his rabid mind.
By far the most interesting additions are to be found at Kurtz's compound where we find Marlon minus
the dark shadows (both visually & metaphorically), the extra footage tilting our perceptions of
his insanity somewhat.
REDUX is not an improvement on the original merely titillation for the connoisseur and a great
opportunity to see this classic (again) on the big screen.
RATING: (c)Limer 2002
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Apocalypse Now REDUX (Cinema: November 2001)
