DVD Review: Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Region 1)

DVD Review: Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, 2006, USA).

If anyone has been reading, sorry about the delay. I had a real hectic week at work last week and my PC's fucked so I am using my lovely girlfriend Donna's laptop. So... First film to watch totally with my new home cinema system (Samsung HT-Q20 if anyone is curious). hat better film to go with than the first film to use a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and arguably the best film of the 1970's, and in my opinion one of the best films ever made, Apocalypse Now.

Many have argued the 1970's was the most productive decade in American Cinema yet. Certainly the emphasise placed on the decade in my Film Studies course made me feel that this was the case to. The films of this decade are compelling evidence for this theory. George Lucas' debut THX-1138 was a haunting if not rather derivative science-fiction piece, Robert Altman's Mash was a biting satire dressed in the clothes of a fish out of water comedy which dared to take humour from places you could never expect before, Tobe Hooper took all of America's anxieites regarding Vietnam and the direction the country was taking and turned it into one of the most famous, and certainly most influential, horror films ever made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Don't get me started on this film, I'll be talking for decades). However, none of these films can hope to even come close to the viscreal, shocking, moving and to be honest just plain fucking incredible visual and aural experience which is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Based very loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now sounds simple on paper. A hardedned soldier, Captain Willard is given a confidential assignment; to go up river through Vietnam and into Cambodia to "terminate... with extreme prejudice" Col. Kurtz, a once-brilliant soldier who has now go mad and made a society for himself. To make this film as it sounds, and how one of the original writers John Milius would have made it if he had his way, you could have old Arnie go up river, blow up some Vietnamese soldiers, rescue a hot American girl on the way, have an overblown final showdown with Kurtz and walk off into the sunset (or perhaps SURVIVE A FUCKING NUCLEAR EXPLOSION like he does in Predator). What does happen is quite different. Martin Sheen plays Willard a man who though burnt out, just wants to fight. When he gets his mission he believes he is getting his chance. However, as he becomes sucked in to the world of Kurtz through the evidence given to him by his superiors, the more he seems to be drawn in. hile this is happening, he and the crew of the PBR Streetgang the boat he is being escorted on encounter a series of bizarre situations happening all the way up the river. Perhaps the most iconic of these is the sequence early in the film featuring Kilgore, a surf loving General who only agrees to take Willard where he is going ecause one of Willard's crew members Lance, is a famous surfer and the place they need to get to has good surf. Kilgore is quite a character. To paraphrase Willard in the film, he seems to have a light around him which you know will let him survive the war. And yet, he sends his men surfing in the middle of warzones and commits multiple atrocities during the famous Ride of the Valkyries sequence. And oh my that sequence! Exciting and yet rather disturbing I would argue it is the perfect distillation of the excitement you get from seeing violence on screen, the purging of the build up to it, and the horrific nature which you only really realise after you have clapped all the way through the sequence. Robert Duvall is incredible in this sequence, he displays the authoritative aspect you ould expect a man in his position ould have and yet in his recklessness and love of surfing, you can see a little boy who is itching to break out and at some moments does. This is best shown in the Redux cut in a sequence in which he goes looking for a surfboard which Lance stole. As he is looking for it, he shouts through his megaphone, "It was a good board Lance!", this bit cracks me up beyond belief but I can't really say why!
Marlon Brando. Fat, tempermental, demanding. One of the best actors who ever lived. These conflicting aspects are best seen in Apocalypse Now. Sticking largely to improvisitional dialogue, doing what he wants, he truly makes Kurtz his own, and you can see hy illard and Colby before him would want to stay with him. While it is fairly easy to tell that his scenes are really a "best-of" of what Coppola managed to film of Brando. Can't say much more than that.
The whole film, the music, the acting (Martin Sheen has an intensity which will forever be hard to rival), the iconic images, the editing everything about this film is grade-A stuff which considering the nature of the whole production is quite a feat indeed.
A word on the Redux cut. I'll echo what most say, not as good, doesn't flow (the plantation sequence stops the film dead in its tracks) and is far to overblown. It's great as a curio but you will only want to watch it once. Stick to what you know in this case.

Video: Best you will ever see it especially as a Region 2 edition will be hard to come by as the two versions are distributed by different companies (Pathe for the original cut, Miramax for Redux). This print has been remastered, barely any scratches, colours are great, thats about it.

Audio: Fucking spectacular. Watching this film with the whole 5.1 experience is a whole new ball game. Directional effects go all over the place yet the dialogue remains clear. The opening sequence alone is reference material for any AV enthusiast.

Extras: Yet to watch the commentaries, I will post my thoughts when I get round to it. The featurettes are all interesting enough, the birth of 5.1 sound one particularly so but the whole glaring omission of the documentary Hearts of Darkness, renders this Complete Dossier, incomplete and inadequate. They may be rights issues involved, I do not know, but I have been lucky enough to see this and it is a comprehensive and yet funny and insightful look into this modern classic. If this had come ith the package, you would never need another copy of Apocalypse Now ever again, this would be it.

One of the best DVD's of the year, doubt it will ever be released over here but go to www.playusa.com and get it for around a tenner. Worth every penny. Thanks as always for your time.