Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray] Review

We watched Francis Ford Coppola's passion project Apocalypse Now (1979) last night in Cinema History class. I had seen the movie once before in 2002. The thing about this movie is that it's definately an "auteur" adult film. The first time I watched it was on my old 27 Sony Trinitron TV, so I didn't get the full movie experience like I did last night in Collins College's movie theater. The sound was absolutely incredible! I can't remember why I was drawn to watching this movie the first time...other than the obvious "everbody said I should" excuse. Of course I've been fascinated with war movies since high school and especially since Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line in the late 90s. What striked me last night about Apocalypse Now was how much more accessible the movie was to me upon a second viewing. I think watching this movie for the first time, it was hard for me to really get it because it is very "abstract". But then all of the great movies in my opinion are a bit abstract. That's what makes them stand up over time and allows one to watch them again and again...you get something new just about every time.

But the thought that really came to me during this viewing last night was that I didn't really enjoy or appreciate this movie as much the first time I saw it. I watched it, thought it was decent, and moved on. It didn't really strike me as a masterpiece of filmmaking. But last night I really saw the greatness in this movie and its concepts. Now maybe my movie appreciation is greater now that I'm moving into the art and business of making films. But it's not just that. I think more and more now that movies are something like any adult acquired taste. I don't think anyone is born loving wine or liquor or beer...it's a taste you acquire and learn to appreciate as an adult. And movies to me seem to be something that you appreciate the subtleties of more and more as you mature. I think you just have to be at a certain place in you life's journey in order to really even understand some movies...like Apocalypse Now. When you're younger and you don't yet have certain life experiences, it's harder to understand and appreciate more sophisticated movies like Apocalypse Now. Whereas something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Transformers can be appreciate by kids, young adults, and grown adults. I loved the fun of Star Wars when I was a kid. I then appreciated it for its movie making as a young adult. And now I get the more spiritual and moral values of the movie. Combine all of those things and you have a masterpiece movie that you can watch over and over throughout your life.

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray] Overview

Francis Ford Coppola's timeless classic comes to Blu-ray for the first time!

This 2-Film Set includes Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux, presented in stunning new HD transfers supervised by Francis Ford Coppola - and in their original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratios. With over 9 hours of bonus features, including new interviews with Coppola, Martin Sheen and screenwriter John Milius.

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray] Specifications

In the tradition of such obsessively driven directors as Erich von Stroheim and Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola approached the production of Apocalypse Now as if it were his own epic mission into the heart of darkness. On location in the storm-ravaged Philippines, he quite literally went mad as the project threatened to devour him in a vortex of creative despair, but from this insanity came one of the greatest films ever made. It began as a John Milius screenplay, transposing Joseph Conrad's classic story "Heart of Darkness" into the horrors of the Vietnam War, following a battle-weary Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a secret upriver mission to find and execute the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has reverted to a state of murderous and mystical insanity. The journey is fraught with danger involving wartime action on epic and intimate scales. One measure of the film's awesome visceral impact is the number of sequences, images, and lines of dialogue that have literally burned themselves into our cinematic consciousness, from the Wagnerian strike of helicopter gunships on a Vietnamese village to the brutal murder of stowaways on a peasant sampan and the unflinching fearlessness of the surfing warrior Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who speaks lovingly of "the smell of napalm in the morning." Like Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this film is the product of genius cast into a pit of hell and emerging, phoenix-like, in triumph. Coppola's obsession (effectively detailed in the riveting documentary Hearts of Darkness, directed by Coppola's wife, Eleanor) informs every scene and every frame, and the result is a film for the ages. --Jeff Shannon

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