Apocalypse Now (1979)

The term "apocalypse" gets bandied about with such reckless abandon nowadays (especially on such disaster prone cable channels like History) that its meaning has become obscured under the weight of end of the world prophecies and similar doomsdaying. The original Greek word Apokálypsis means simply "revelation" or "lifting of the veil." In John's Book of Revelation which closes the Bible in a flurry of beasts, whores and other foreboding images, the unveiling is meant to reveal in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ is the one true and only Messiah. But millenia of prophecy often took a more behavioral approach to revelation, relying on such daily (or nightly as it were) activities as dreaming as offering a gateway beyond the veil into a world of meaning that is only tangentially available to us in our waking lives. There is probably no finer example on film of the surreal dream state than Francis Ford Coppola's staggering 1979 achievement Apocalypse Now, a film which took the amazing conceit of transferring Joseph Conrad's disturbing novella Heart of Darkness, originally set in Africa in the 19th century, into the wilds of the Vietnam War. The film was an infamously troubled production which led to the near mental collapse of Coppola (as is documented in the fascinating Hearts of Darkness, included on the third Blu-ray of this impressive new set), taking years out of the lives of most everyone involved. Amazingly enough, against all odds, Apocalypse Now turned out not to be the 1979 version of 1980's grandest of all film debacles, Heaven's Gate. Coppola, fighting the extremely negative press that was being generated as the film supposedly spun out of control, decided to screen an unfinished version at Cannes that year, and it improbably took home the Palme d'Or. When the finished version was finally released, it was greeted more or less unanimously as one of the greatest film masterpieces of its era. This stunning new Blu-ray presentation proves that Apocalypse Now was and continues to be one of the most penetrating and unsettling depictions of both war and insanity ever captured on film, a trancelike two and a half to over three hours (depending on which version you watch) that seeps beneath the conscious mind and delivers a staggering blow to the collective Id that is visceral and unforgettable.

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