The horror

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

(1991)

Yeah, yeah, I really needed to use deaccession night to free some space on my DVR hard drive, but the problem is, Netflix won't stop sending me discs. I switched more than a week ago from 1-disc-at-a-time-unlimited to streaming only (same price, $7.99, so you can switch any time without paying more or having to wait 'til the end of a billing period), but since then they've twice sent me discs. And what am I gonna do, send 'em back unwatched? So it's theoretically a bonanza, as I'm getting twice the service I'm paying for, but practically speaking, it's not without its inconvenience--plus, I keep worrying that after the 10 days or whatever passes when I'm obliged to have returned the disc I'd just watched when I switched, they're going to try to charge me 20 bucks or whatever. As I've mentioned before, it's hard being me.

Anyway, life imitates art imitating madness in this documentary--much of the footage shot by Eleanor Coppola--on the making and near-unmaking of Apocalypse Now. It's mostly fascinating, but unsurprisingly, the most riveting section concerns the director's bout with despair over needing to film an ending that he has no clear plan for with an actor whose time on set is limited to 3 weeks (at $1 mil per), who doesn't understand who his character is supposed to be (in part because he has never read Heart of Darkness), and from whom, it develops, a performance can be coaxed only by allowing him to improvise on a series of thematic questions. If you take away nothing else from the film, you'll always be glad you've heard Brando say, "I swallowed a bug."

Oh, and it's also great fun to see little 4- and 6-year-old Sofia.