Been a while. Bike accidents, vacations, life, etc.
Anyway, went to see Apocalypse Now (1979) the other day at Chicago’s Navy Pier IMAX, which, unlike the local multiplex version of the format (snarkily referred to as “LieMax”), happens to be the real deal (60’H x 86’W
screen, migraine-inducing sound capabilities, beer for sale, etc.).
Oh, wait…you didn’t know Apocalypse Now was back in theaters? Well, it was. For a couple days only. To promote a new edit—the third—by its director, Francis Ford Coppola, and its upcoming home video release in 4K HDR Blu-ray.
Sitting in those plush IMAX seats, watching this “Final Cut” unspool over three hours and three minutes, I got to thinking a) how pissed I was that the picture was often out of focus and b) deep thoughts about all things Apocalypse Now, which I’ll now share with you in a series of disorganized ramblings, some of which get pretty deep into the A/V nerd weeds…
2019 Final Cut vs. 2001 Redux Cut vs. 1979 Theatrical Cut
With over 200 days of principal photography yielding a million plus feet of footage, the editing of Apocalypse Now (henceforth referred to as AN) was nothing less than a monumental task, fully a two-year undertaking. By the film’s premiere in 1979, Coppola and his editor, Walter Murch (also the genius sound designer of the film), settled on a 153-minute version that played a little less surreal than some longer versions they’d compiled.
Twelve years later, the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse had fans salivating over some of the excised footage, heretofore only rumored, specifically a glimpse of the long (and very expensive) sequence set at a French-owned rubber plantation about midway through the film.
Jump forward another 10 years and Coppola introduces to the 2001 Cannes Film Festival a completists dream: Apocalypse Now Redux, a version restoring 49 minutes of footage (including the French plantation scene), bringing the new running time to a whopping 202 minutes.
However, it seems Coppola wasn’t quite satisfied; while he liked much of the footage he re-inserted into Redux, he felt some of the additions screamed “kitchen sink.” Thus, this year (2019), he revisited the film one last time for it’s 40th anniversary, removing 20 minutes of the Redux footage to assemble a tighter 183-minute “Final” cut. (Which is what I saw in IMAX.)
Coppola certainly isn’t the first director to struggle editorial indecision. Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott went back to the editing bay numerous times on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner before finally locking down what they insist is their definitive cut. But where those two delivered what I strongly believe are the best versions of those films, I’m not willing to go there with AN Redux and Final Cut.
Sure, the re-insertion of the Plantation scene better communicates Coppola’s thesis that Capt. Willard and his boat mates are, in essence, traveling back in time (70s to the French Indochina 50s to the Stone Age) as they travel upriver in search of Kurtz. Sadly, though, the scene, for all its strengths (cinematography, the performance of Christian Marquand as the stubborn patriarch, the ghostly final image of a naked Aurore Clément pressed against a silk bed canopy) is mightily handicapped by overacting bit players, some on-the-nose metaphors (cracking the egg to demonstrate how the “yellow” remains when the “white” is removed) and some pretty ripe dialogue.
Other problems with the longer versions:
- Robert Duvall’s Col. Kilgore character playing more like a buffoon than an overzealous military man;
- a slapstick scene involving Lance (Sam Bottoms) and Willard (Martin Sheen) stealing Kilgore’s surfboard;
- and, most annoyingly, a reshuffling of the famous “Satisfaction” water-skiing scene, which now appears after the helicopter attack on the village and is prefaced by a goofy story related by Lawrence Fishburne’s Clean.
In the end, the AP extended cuts remind me of other ill-advised “director cuts” (Amadeus, Dances with Wolves and The Natural come right to mind) that, rather than improve the experience, ruin carefully wrought editorial and narrative rhythms and, consequently, some of the mystery of the shorter originals.
But what do I know, right?
Apocalypse Now Cinematography
Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s greatness was on full display on the gibungous IMAX screen (even though there was an annoying bright “EXIT” sign glowing off the lower left corner of the picture). Simply one of the all-time greats, Storaro’s filmography reads like an inventory of the Louvre’s Great Hall: The Conformist, The Last Tango in Paris, 1900, Reds, The Last Emperor, Dick Tracy, The Sheltering Sky, etc.
And while he made brilliant use of deeply saturated color and artificial light in AN…
…what stands out is his fearless use of blacks for narrative purposes, especially when we reach the moral rot that is Kurtz’ compound…
Our first introduction to Kurtz is a wonder in the art of withholding light to tell a story, in this case the fall of a once-celebrated military commander. Although we’ve seen Kurtz in archival military photographs, we have no idea what to expect when we finally come face to face with his apparent insanity. What’s revealed (and what’s not) is nothing less than the stuff of ogres and nightmares.
CFS’s Apocalypse Now Video Compulsion
Another things that struck me while viewing the film for maybe my 40th time (but first on the big screen due to being such a tender, wee lad upon its 1979 debut) is how each and every new/improved release of AN parallels both my burgeoning film snobbery/proper movie presentation insistence and the massive improvements to playback technology over the last 35-ish years, to the point where today’s home video presentation of AN (especially the Ultra HD Blu-ray dropping soon) very likely eclipses, in terms of A/V (but not overall impact) what was seen/heard in theaters back in 1979. (Assuming, of course, you have a pretty decent A/V setup.)
To illustrate, let’s end the post with a quick look at my (home video) history with the film and related (ill-advised) cash outlays…
Format One: VHS
Pan/scan version (absolute rubbish!)
Rented from…the late, great Sound Experience sometime in the mid-1980s
Played via…top-loading RCA videotape deck w/wired remote
Sound provided by…the tinny mono speaker on 19″ Panasonic TV
Cash outlay: $2.50
Format Two: VHS
Widescreen version! (Letterboxing being the only way a movie snob could enjoy Storaro’s immaculate Technovision 2.35:1 anamorphic compositions)
Purchased from…the late, great Coconuts Records in the early 1990s
Played via…front-loading JVC Hi-Fi videotape deck & 32″ Sony TV
Sound provided by…early Denon Pro Logic receiver (surround sound!)
Cash outlay: $35.00
Format Three: LaserDisc
The original film-snob video format, offering almost 2x the video resolution (425 horizontal lines of resolution vs. 240) of weak-ass VHS. Widescreen, of course!
Purchased from…the late, great Tower Records in 1997
Played via…Pioneer Elite Laserdisc player & 32″ Sony TV
Sound provided by…Denon AVR, which enabled the CFS to drive apartment neighbors insane with uncompressed gunshots, helicopter rotors and explosions issuing from the disc’s very early 5.1 Dolby Digital discrete surround soundtrack, which was remixed by the original genius sound designer of the film, Walter Murch.
Cash outlay: $50
Format Four: DVD
The format that killed laserdisc, featuring more resolution (480 vs. 425) for a slightly better picture. Cheaper than laserdisc, though, and much smaller, thus easier to store
Purchased from…the late, great Tower Records around the turn of the millennium
Played via…Pioneer Elite DVD player & 32″ Sony TV
Sound provided by…Denon AVR. Sadly, lossy DVD soundtracks weren’t quite as robust as their uncompressed rivals over in Laserdisc-land. But they could still play loud. Which wasn’t a problem for the neighbors—we now lived in a single-family home. Same can’t be said about wife, dog and first child, all of whom are now deaf. (Actually, the dog is dead.)
Cash outlay: $25
Format Five: DVD
Brand new edit of the film (discussed above). A must-have for nerdy AN completists
Purchased from…Best Buy in 2002
Played via…Pioneer Elite DVD player & 32″ Sony TV
Sound provided by…Denon AVR
Cash outlay: $20
Format Six: Blu-ray
The holy grail—finally a true HD (1080p) version of the film, with a video transfer supervised Coppola and a more robust DTS-MA (Master Audio, as in lossless.) Better yet, it included the 1979 original cut, Redux and Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the award-winning 1991 documentary of the fraught making of the film. Can’t get any better than this, right? (Wrong. See below.)
Purchased from…Amazon in 2010
Played via…Sony BD player & 42″ Panasonic Plasma TV
Sound provided by…Denon AVR with DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD (both lossless audio formats) capabilities.
Cash outlay: $30
Format Seven: Ultra HD Blu-ray
The final, final definitive edition (?), the picture farmed from the original camera negative and run through every audio and visual upgrade in the history of man.
(To be) Purchased from…Amazon on 8/27/19
Played via…Sony Ultra HD Blu-ray player & 65″ LG OLED TV, it of perfect blacks
Sound provided by…Denon AVR featuring Atmos surround sound
Cash outlay: $30
GRAND TOTAL cash outlay for Apocalypse Now (not including the laserdisc of the Hearts of Darkenss doc I bought back when): $192.50.
For one fuckin’ movie. This is a sickness, yes?
Keep me and my mania in your thoughts. Better yet, send me a check.