apocalypse now redux

[bluegreen17]

'we train young men to drop fire on people,but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene.'
-colonel kurtz in apocalypse now

colonel kurtz is allegedly the crazyman in this movie,but if you watch you may see that things are not always as they seem...hence,a revelation/apocalypse.

this weekend i watched this movie and had never seen it before. the video store only had the 'redux' version so i rented that. overall,from reviews i read on amazon pro and con (unfortunately there wasn't a review of it on hollywoodjesus.com which is a really cool site ) the added scenes did add something to the background of the story,but since it made it over three hours long,it's a good thing they were deleted from the theatrical version.

this movie blew me away.this sounds strange to say,but it was uplifting because i got a message from it. it's kind of hard to explain in words what i got from it. it has to do with yin and yang,with what happens when we repress or deny our dark side rather than acknowledge it in clear eyed fashion and CONSCIOUSLY decide how to deal with it,and with hypocrisy.it really is an apocalypse,which means 'revelation' and uncovering.
the ending was artistic,though brutal.
i think the songs were by the doors,though i didn't notice that in the credits. no one else sounds like them.it fitted perfectly. the score music was also excellent; mickey hart of the grateful dead had something to do with the percussion in it.

the movie was based on joseph conrad's 'hearts of darkness' which was set in colonial africa.i got a copy of the book at the library today and started reading it. i love how conrad writes. beautiful. so francis ford coppola updated the story and set it in vietnam in the late sixties.

an amazing,amazing movie. i think one has to psychologically prepare to watch this movie,but when you are ready to take this journey of the psyche,it's reward is great.

Comments

[allogenes.livejournal.com]

The original screenplay was done by John Milius, who was worried that the script would be changed too much by Coppola. Acc'd to people on the 'set' Coppola spent every night typing away on the revisions. When all was said and done Milius said the final product was very close to his original script, 'right down to the Doors on the soundtrack.' :-)

There are two *movies* called 'Hearts of Darkness' -- One was a documentary made by Coppola's wife *during* the shooting of Apocalypse Now. It is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Did you know that originally Harvey Keitel was to play Sheen's character? One day during filming he was sitting on a raft and its line broke and he floated out into a lake. The film crew left him there for a whole day--he got pissed off and left. Sheen took over, but was way too young and psychologically underdeveloped--he actually had a nervous breakdown during filming. Remember the scene with the mirror in the hotel room at the beginning? He was actually bleeding for real there--they took him to the hospital right afterward.

Don't even get me started on the rumors about the use of real dead bodies on the Kurtz set.

The other film called 'Hearts of Darkness' stars John Malkovitch as the Kurtz from Conrad's novel. It is not such a great film but seeing Conrad's novel done in the original form is interesting for comparison.

Weird Weird Weird... :-)

John Milius

BLOGNY

[scripty.livejournal.com]

I included some information and handy reference links about "Apocalypse Now" and links to the screenplay versions for the film, in my blog site, BLOGNY (http://blogny.blogspot.com), in case you're curious.

The scene in the hotel

[daneelthesane.livejournal.com]

Actually, my ex-wife was a movie trivia whiz (like, Beat the Geeks level of trivia knowledge), and she told me that the scene in the hotel when he cuts his hand and so on was during Sheen's time when he was in the habit of going on heroine and coke binges. He showed up, messed up pretty bad, and did not mean to cut his hand. Then, when he was freaking out and appears to have a heart attack,he really IS having a heart attack. Apparently, Copulla thought Sheen was just ad-libbing, and kept right on shooting.