“Apocalypse Now: Final Cut” (Berkeley)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

History will no doubt call Apocalypse Now, which brilliantly transposes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness on Vietnam, the most astute, acute portrait of Americans at war in the post–World War II period. Francis Ford Coppola said his aim was “to create a film experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam War.” For David Fear of Rolling Stone, this version, prepared for the film’s fortieth anniversary, “is, in terms of storytelling and scope, a completely different trip up the river, through your acid-fried skull, and into the heart of darkness. . . . [T]his Apocalypse Now retains the center-can’t-hold insanity of its onscreen journey (and the offscreen legend of behind-the-scenes creative mayhem) that has always made this movie feel like a singular cinematic fever dream.” Coppola himself revealed, “I didn’t intend to make a new version . . . but I felt that this being longer than one and shorter than the other was the perfect blend.”

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