Apocalypse Now
(1979/2001)
What was I thinking? Watching a 3½-hour movie when I had to get up at regular workday time so that I could work out before picking up my rental car for an errand-running, driving-to-movies day? The error! The error!
Even though the title above doesn't reflect it--because I think that's a silly word when used w/ gravity as Coppola does and can be carried off only with a touch of irony, the way Updike uses it--this is the 2001 director's reconstruction, including the slapstick theft of Colonel Kilgore's surfboard, the dreary second scene with the Playmates, and the very French scene at the French plantation, full of French politicophilosophical (do the French distinguish?) discourse and drug-laced French seduction. When I first and second saw this version, the first two restored sequences struck me as unnecessary and heavy-handed, especially the piling on of ridiculousness on the Duvall character, but I found the plantation scene intriguing and erotic. Well, I still find it erotic, but I'm pretty much ready to revert to the 1979 version--except I can't, 'cause it's not on the disc I have.
Still, it's one of the great shaggy dog stories of cinema history.
2 comments:
c'est vrai. a great movie despite apparently not having a script
hey, just give Dennis Hopper a joint and tell him to overact: when has that ever failed to work?
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