Apocalypse Now: Redux

Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now: Redux

I saw Apocalypse Now when it first came out and also a few times since then. This was my first viewing of Francis Ford Coppola's Redux version. It's funny to me that then as now, Coppola seems to want to make this film to be about Vietnam. During filming, he referred to this movie as not being about Vietnam but rather "It is Vietnam." With Redux, he's included some additional scenes. For the most part, I think they are seamless improvements. The French Plantation; however, is his final attempt to make this film to be about Vietnam. It tosses in some needless history about the French colonial period. Whatever.

To me, Apocalypse Now works much more successfully as a film about the war experience. It shows the realities of war to expose all of us to that which we would not otherwise consider in our normal daily lives. This is "the horror."

It fails as an attempt to "be Vietnam" because there aren't any Vietnamese characters that actually speak. There is nothing to explain what is going on in their country that has caused us to be there in the first place. By painting the Vietnamese as voiceless, nameless entities, he sets up an examination of war as a dehumanizing event. In that sense, it succeeds.

But there should be no mistaking this film as being about Vietnam when it's about the horror of reality.