film club: Hearts of Darkness - The Making of Apocalypse Now

Wow.  If you haven't seen Apocalypse Now, its one of those epic, awesome and horrifying films about the Vietnam War.  Its awesome and horrifying not just because of the war, but because of how it effected people.  How people essentially went mad and found themselves in situations where their humanity and sense of right and wrong were not civilised but brutal, animal and mad.  Its what happens when we lose civilisation.  And if you know the book on which it was based, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, it is a film of of a man's journey into the unknown of himself, to face the horror of his own darkness.  Basically a man travels up the river and the further he goes into the 'heart of darkness' the uncivilised, jungle, the further up river he goes, the more he loses his grip on reality and in the end he faces his own insanity. 

So the actual film is based on that, and this incredible documentary is about the making of this film.  Which is just such a journey for the film makers.  It goes way over budget, way over time,  The actors are on drugs, or nearly dying from heart attacks, the star will not be fillmed, they lose sight of the script. The further they go up the river the madder it gets. It shows how much of the script was improvised, partly on purpose partly out of necessity. How some of that actiing, is no such thing.  They really are insane, terrified and losing their minds.   And the fears and lofty goals of chasing the artistic need to create something authentic and true and deeply meaningful.

We do know that this was achieved, in the end. And it is one of the most memorable, shocking and visceral films I have ever seen.  And this documentary about the making of it, just makes it even more so.  An absolute stonker of a film about the film making process as an art form.  A film about risking EVERYTHING to pursue ART.

We were struck by the empassioned speech given by Coppola about his greatest fear as a film maker is to make a pretentious film, and yet the urge to aspire to high ideals of creating something truly, real, transformative, human, amazing, is pretentious in itself.   The risk of failure is so high so the fear gets bigger and bigger.  And the only way to proceed is to decide you JUST DON"T CARE whether you are being pretentious or not and make it anyway. 


It Inspired us to choose a right proper ART film for the next film club film.  We are going hard core.  The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman.  A film makers film.   Inspirational to many.  Iconic.  We are taking it on.  Bring it!