Apocalypse Now

Years and years from now, when Coppola’s budget and his problems have long been forgotten, “Apocalypse” will still stand, I think, as a grand and grave and insanely inspired gesture of filmmaking.

It's precisely in the last 25 minutes that Apocalypse Now dissolves into gibberish. I've seen the film three times with two different endings, and neither ending has been satisfactory. That's because the problem with the picture isn't at its very end.

Some critics fault Coppola for not delivering a seamless, flawless film. But this is to misperceive and misread the film in a crucial way. The film by definition couldn't be flawless. It attempts too much.

Coppola has used the Hollywood genius, which is for films of action and adventure, and built into it something for which Hollywood usually has small talent, namely a philosophical meditation.

Some ultimate and flawless perfection may have been missed. But as a noble use of the medium and as a timeless expression of a national anguish, it towers over anything that has been attempted by an American film maker in a very long time.

Apocalypse Now is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty. It is not so much an epic account of a grueling war as an incongruous, extravagant monument to artistic self-defeat.

It’s an enthralling, powerful miracle of a movie.

Though as high art this movie may have its problems, it is a complete movie, a huge piece of work that is at once a technical masterpiece and a thing of lyrical, lethal beauty. This will be the film to see in 1979.

Decompression [after leaving the theater] takes a long time. You're still submerged for quite a while in its climate of oppressive sin and maddened dissolution... The parking lot doesn't seem quite like a parking lot.

Francis Ford Coppola has made a magnificent movie -- not necessarily apocalyptic, but definitely a humane exploration of a most inhumane topic.