We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw
So says Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, reading Eliot in all his corpulent torpidity. Having ballooned to several hundred pounds and relegated to having his lines read to him through an earpiece, Brando the actor was already halfway down the hill of artistic merit. Coppola the director, on the other hand, was at his peak, never again achieving such a level of success. Before this film were the first two Godfather movies and The Conversation. After this would come Captain EO, The Godfather III, and Jack.
Apocalypse Now has some of the most invigorating scenes ever put down on film by an American director. It is hard to forget the beginning, swaying trees fill the screen, exploding to the sound of Jim Morrison telling us that this is the end. And who doesn’t know of Colonel Kilgore’s early morning Air Calvary attack on a Vietnamese village accompanied by “The Ride of the Valkyries?” No matter how perplexing, there is something fascinating about seeing characters recite Eliot or Kipling or invoking Conrad. Who would have thought film could be so literate? Opera and poetry in the same movie?try to make something like that nowadays.
This would have been Coppola’s legacy were it not for his ego. Brando’s first words in the film, “That’s my dream, my nightmare, crawling along the edge of a straight razor and surviving,” sum up my experience of the 53 additional minutes of footage that result in Apocalypse Now Redux. The first extended scene involves more of the USO Playboy Bunnies, and the second is the long awaited French plantation scene, in which Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) dines with French colonials and then beds the wife of the estate owner. Aside from providing audiences with several minutes of bare breasts, these scenes muddle any message the film may have attempted to convey concerning the futility of the war.
These two torturous set pieces divert the narrative away from the journey towards Kurtz, saddling the film with long stretches of time in which he is not even mentioned. Redux meanders and digresses much more than the story is meant to. Modeled after Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the film should move towards a confrontation between Willard and Kurtz, between the dual natures of man. While the original did not completely stick to this idea, this new version completely undermines the whole premise. When the two men finally meet, what should be the culmination of the preceding three hours turns out to be nothing more than an anti-climactic bust.
You will not be seeing a better film than the original should you catch Redux in the theaters. The only reason to pay $10 is to experience the phenomenal sound and picture quality that is unparalleled on any home entertainment system. Aside from that, you’ll only be satisfying the director’s inflated sense of importance regarding his work. The recent practice of theatrically re-releasing films with additional footage is an abuse of directorial power and an offense to audiences who shell out 10 spots for something they believe will be better than it actually is.
I will defer to the superior knowledge of anyone who can point out an example of a painter, composer or author who, unsatisfied with the first product, successfully changed his or her work to release it a second time. Such an act is an affront to the artistic process, yet passes by unmolested in the film industry. It seems to be a truth that humans, being imperfect, will create imperfect art. This realization allows us to accept the “flawed masterpiece,” a qualifier for classics in any medium. I’m sure Kurtz would instruct us of T.S. Eliot’s belief in perfect art being achieved solely in the realm of the divine. So, unless Francis Ford is claiming God-like powers these days, he should leave well enough alone. It is easy to understand the potential for a power trip inherent in the act of creation, but there is validity to the argument that states once you release your work to others, it is no longer yours.
So I suppose that this is a plea to Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and all those other West Coast geniuses of the late ‘70s. Stop this insane process! No more Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Director’s Cut, Return of the Jedi: Special Edition or The Godfather Sagas. I am a strong proponent for allowing people to see older movies on the big screen, because that is where they rightly belong. But no more of this extra footage nonsense?that’s what DVDs are for?to give viewers the choice of watching the stuff that was cut out for a reason. This practice only hinders the original creative process of talented filmmakers, a veritable apocalypse now for good movies. Upon walking out of Redux, I could only echo Colonel Kurtz’s sotto voce, “the horror, the horror.”
This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a?whisper
