Apocalypse Now: Final Cut

A grand spectacle in which Coppola combines the horror of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with a still palpable memory of the Vietnam War. Disturbing reports reach the American army about colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has gone completely rogue deep in the Cambodian jungle and may be losing his mind. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission to investigate the matter and put an end to the insubordinate officer’s actions – even if that means eliminating him. Coppola’s film is not merely a narrative, but a trance-like, hypnotic meditation on war, violence, and madness, as well as on a culture that normalizes, and even glorifies, monstrous crimes when committed in the name of progress or patriotism. Much of the credit goes to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (known for The Conformist and The Spider’s Stratagem), who portrayed the invasion of Vietnam as America’s bad trip – one that forces the nation to confront its darkest nightmares – through hallucinatory, color-saturated, smoke-filled frames. Let the measure of the film’s greatness be the fact that, despite being unfinished, it won – though not without controversy – the Palme d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. At our festival, we present the Final Cut version, restored from the original negatives, and created to mark the film’s 40th anniversary.