Tonight, while watching "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" about the filming of "Apocalypse Now", I watched the laborious undertaking of the making of that monumental cinematic experience from 1979. It took me back - naturally - to the first screening of the film as seen on opening weekend... the film opens with no credits... there are scenes of a jungle encampment going up in flames... eventually, helicopters crossing paths... and a narration, "Saigon... my God, I'm still in Saigon". And so began a story where the protagonist traveled up-river to meet the antagonist (Kurtz) in a fight to the death. It was a Greek Tragedy writ large. I pondered that film for many days, trying to understand what was going on in the filmmaker's head, and it hit me... I understood the story - and it *WAS* from Greek Mythology... only not from the 'Odyssey' (or the 'Idiocy' as Mr. Coppola refers to it)... but a completely DIFFERENT tragic Greek figure.
Since that original premiere, the film's opening was changed, and over the years the film has been edited, and tweaked here and there - much like his friend George Lucas tweaked the original "Star Wars" as early as 1978 to change the sounds of 'radio chatter' during the death star battle - including the insertion of the 'French Plantation' sequence. [A sequence that should have remained on the cutting room floor - it added nothing to moving the story forward... a.k.a. "up-the-river"... IMHO]
But in watching Hearts of Darkness, it became clear to me *WHY* he kept tweaking the film: he didn't realize what he had created because he was TOO CLOSE TO THE PROJECT!! Could it be that even today - 2009 - *HE* doesn't realize the underlying mythos that brought the story together - if only subliminally - and why it resonated then, and continues to resonate with movie goers today, even though the story line seemed somewhat random, and non-linear?
It wasn't clear to me until my second viewing of the film... and during the sequence when Martin Sheen said, "My God... I'm Still in Saigon..." I GRABBED the arms of the seat, and audibly GASPED (there suddenly wasn't enough air in the theater - I'm sure to the dismay of my fellow theater goers). Captain Willard - Martin Sheen... was a modern day SISYPHUS!!! Only instead of rolling a stone forever up the mountain, he was forever caught in a time loop riding a riverboat up the river to his mortal combat confrontation with Marlon Brando - who would probably demand another million dollars from Coppola for each subsequent trip up-the-river, in the endless progression of this Moebius strip of a movie...
It was just like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album released the same year... very faintly in the opening moments of that seminal album, a voice can be heard saying... "...re we came in?", and at the end of the 4th side of the album, in the LAST MOMENTS... the same voice can be heard faintly saying, "Isn't this whe...", and the music loops, and loops, ad infinitum. (Side 4:"Isn't this whe... re we came in?": Side 1)
But in watching "Hearts of Darkness", it occurs to me that perhaps Mr. Coppola has never made the connection... is that possible? Was he so intimately close to the material that he didn't see the over-arcing mythological tale woven within the 'Odyssey' like narrative?
Mr. Coppola, sir: it works because it is a modern day 'Tale of Sisyphus', with Captain Willard caught in the hell that is his never ending journey up-the-river that even now is being played out on DVD, and DVR players in living rooms and home theaters around the world - technologies that weren't even dreamt of in the days when the story was first captured on celluloid.
Thank you for giving us this gift of your blood, sweat, and creative tears.
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Confession here: just like Brando, (and I'm not speaking of the Green Beret 'Jungle Survival Guide' of Dennis Hopper here...) I've never read *The Book* (i.e. 'Heart of Darkness')
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