I’ve been going through IMDB’s list of the best movies ever, driven by the conviction that I need to consume the best movies and music my planet has to offer. As a self-proclaimed cinephile, it's been quite the experience as I move back and forth through time, from the black and white beauty that is 12 angry men to the 21st century oedipal tale re-imagined that is Oldboy. Over the last weekend, I watched 8 movies — all fantastic pieces of art and cinema and every one of these movies has left an indelible mark on me in some way or another.
Late last night, I got to Apocalypse Now (1979)
How do you describe a perfect film?
To me, it’s one that doesn't just change the characters, it changes you. It stays with you, cuddles you under the sheets as you drag them over yourself at night, and hangs above your head when you have breakfast with the family. Francis Ford Coppola created a masterpiece that managed to juxtapose the horrors of war with striking visual elements that culminate in a cathartic expression that feels…earned. As you follow the path taken by Captain Willard and face the absurd as he does, Mr Coppola doesn’t have to explain his anti-war stance. He doesn’t tell you what to believe. He’s like the seances of old; he shows, through the flames, the past-future and invites you to draw meaning via narrative and symbolism. It’s breathtaking.
As usual, after its conclusion, I started to read about the movie. Apparently, it was a clusterfuck of clusterfucks. The lead character — Martin Sheen was second choice, after the first choice was fired after barely a month of shooting. Mr Sheen (Charlie Sheen’s dad and utmost carbon copy) was suffering from alcoholism and later had a heart attack on set.
Half the crew were high on cocaine to keep up with living in the Philippines.
A typhoon flew in and damaged all their equipment once.
The antagonist, the late great Marlon Brando showed up fat, refused to memorize his lines, and had to be shot in darkness to cover up for it. He also had a huge blowout with one of the coked-out actors and refused to act together, so they had to shoot their scenes separately.
The helicopters they used for the Ride of the Valkyries scene belonged to the Philippines army and they often collected them back to fight a real-life war that was ongoing.
The crew’s entire weekly paycheck went missing.
The cadavers they used for the harrowing hole that was the antagonist's lair was actually real dead bodies supplied by a grave robber, meaning Olopa once showed up and kobad everybody.
And a host of many more clusterfucks.
In fact, Mr Coppola himself, riding the coattails of his Godfather masterpiece, threatened to commit suicide after the shoot extended for 200 more days and he found himself millions of dollars in debt. (His investors promptly took out life insurance on him because, well capitalism).
Now regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, which itself is a re-telling of the atrocities perpetrated by the Belgian free state, tells me three things:
- To create the chaos that was the Vietnam war, the creative process became chaos personified. It's just like that Old Nietzsche saying: When you stare into the abyss, it stares back.
- Even when one hones their talent till they are the top 1% of the top 1%, uncertainty, and chaos are never really far away. The best work of your life might be wrapped in a shit sandwich embalmed within a crap lunch as you dine with the devil.
- There’s a way you can combine elements from other great or even greater artists than yourself to give rise to something more than a sum of its parts. Apocalypse Now can be decoded on a visual, anthropological, philosophical, or even mythical sense and this spectrum of meaning is what makes a masterpiece for me. When there are layers upon layers to unveil, a piece of art transcends good to great. How can one can achieve that? E says it's by conscious consumption of the greats. I like that answer.
