Apocalypse Now: Final Cut
APOCALYPSE NOW: FINAL CUT - Lionsgate
The debacle of a definitive edit for Apocalypse Now has raged on since its premiere at Cannes in 1979. A film that Coppola shot three films worth of footage for, it almost took the lives of three people during its production and took countless years of many crew members to create. This continuing battle of which edit is superior began when Coppola - amid financial bankruptcy with his studio American Zoetrope - had to cut down his film from two hundred and ten minutes to a far more readily available and audience-friendly one hundred and forty-seven minutes, cutting out massive chunks of material in the process. This decision recouped Coppola's debt and brought him back from the brink, both personally and financially.
Regardless, such success has not stopped Coppola in his tracks to restore his magnum opus. In 2001, Coppola and editor Walter Murch went back into the studio to craft Apocalypse Now: Redux, an ultimate edition of Coppola's film with a fully restored soundtrack and forty-nine minutes of never before seen material that beefed the running time to its original proposed length. It looked and sounded like perfection but ultimately broached the realm of a self-indulgent master going back to his filmography to reinvent the wheel, not so different to the likes of contemporary George Lucas with his Star Wars features. Excessive amounts of material involved, such as an infamously obtuse French plantation sequence, and methodical narration defined a film that was arguably already perfect.
Sixteen years later and in partnership with Lionsgate, Coppola has returned to his infamously chaotic film with Apocalypse Now: Final Cut for the fortieth anniversary of the initial release. This time around, Coppola, with a whole host of new editors, has trimmed the running time down by twenty minutes. This new rendition is a combination of both the theatrical cut and the redux version with a keen focus on retaining the atmosphere by adding the moment of character depth and backstory but a primary focus on pacing.
One thing Coppola has nailed is the pacing. For a three hour film, it is a breeze due to the fact the images are so defined in cinematic lore the viewer is engulfed in its prestigiousness. The problem has never been the footage, sound, or performances. They are as intense and unforgettable as they were forty years ago. They are defining moments of cinema history. The problem has always been in what order they should - or need - to be in, and in this now third translation Coppola still has yet to figure it all out.
On paper, more is always better: it adds scope, scale and unprecedented depth, but once the camera is finished rolling the film is unarmoured with excessive storylines and footage that drowns significant portions of the film. The infatuation with more is still found here with Coppola adamant the infamous French plantation scene is integral to the overall film. As time passes by, it becomes quite clear he may be right, but the last two versions of his film are inclined to show every second of it in all its antagonising slow glory. This will always be the main problem in Coppola's film; a scene so integral to the overarching feelings of Vietnam by its inhabitants, but one that painfully showcases such sentiments with its manner of inclusion, a feeling that defines Coppola's film in the grandest sense.
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is Francis Ford Coppola's defining rendition of his infamous and highly critically acclaimed film from 1979, that he described famously as, "My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam." It might not be for audiences or critics, but undeniably is the directors' conclusive vision. Although one cannot deny the feeling that the timely release of such a product may perhaps have something to do with Coppola's much-anticipated feature SCI-FI epic Megalopolis finally being green-lit after two decades in development hell, but it may just be pure coincidence. Moreover, Coppola's film is in the greatest of words "a monster". It is a monster in pacing, scope, design, performances, and, of course, running time. However, for a film aptly titled Apocalypse Now, would the audience have it any other way? Coppola certainly does not think so, and perhaps it is time the audience should be on the same page.
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is released in select theatres August 13, 2019
