fMdAY, AUGUST 3, 2001 Sljc ^'cur Hork Siwes CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK A scene from ^'Apocalypse Now . Aching Heart Redux," rqissing -i from the original. ^ OfDarkness • --^ By A. O.SCOTT rnr.^i one OfApocalypsethe scenesNow,"that haveCaptainbeenWillardadded to(MartinFrancisSheen)Ford smokes opium with a French widow (Aurore ClemenfJ who J^gleuTel^rnhhrubber plantation. As Willardgrandeurfallsof herintofamily'sa glassv-evedremote huSn^ disrobes,France'sthe,doomedwomancolonialtalks adventureabout her JSftwo of you,: she says, *one that lovesof humanahdbrietfiatnature. "Therekills'''''are toree hours that make up "ApocalypsetimeNowto timeRedux''over Ehethe The UnSdlfS°" A that opens today ramSi f ^ u general who sends Willard upriver into t fmd the mysterious Colonel Kurtz muses on the rules^S "•""" ^"""Praent lhat Kurtz AmericaAmtril photographer,>, playedmcarnate,by Dennishe encountersHopper, awhomanicin structs him mthe basics of "dialectic logic": "You either love someone or you hate them." : The movie itself —shot over 16 months in the PhilioDines in circumstances by now as myth-shrouded as the storyft^tSls^ IS similarly bifurcated, split between its immediate historical ^'etnam War, and a grand, murky ambition to plumb the metaphysical heart of darkness. Whether it succeeds Continued onPage 23 American Zoeirope/.Miramax Films 111^ Coppola's AchingHeart of Darkness ^ofiimedFi' WeekendPage1 oneither level has been a subject of debate at least since the film was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival 22yeans ago. Is "Apocalypse Now" a great Vietnammovie? Is it a worthy l' adaptation of "Heart of Darkness," the Joseph Conrad novella that Is Its H| putative source? Does Its attempt to H fuse 19th-century literature and 20th- century history hold together or fly ~ apart at the seams? Curiously, the passage of time has ^ rendered these questions moot. Or to ^ put it another way, "Apocalypse Now," in spite of its limitedperspec- tlve on Vietnam, its churning, term- BS paperish exploration of Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, is Martin Sheen in Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now Redux." a great movie. It grows richer an^., stranger with each viewing, and the attention fora wounded child, is per- didied in the jungle — encounter restoration of scenes left in the cut- haps amore fitting personification of KKurtz's welcoming party of painted ting room two decades ago has only the contradictions of Vietnam thantribespeople tr in dugout canoes, the added to its sublimity. KuKurtz himself. "TImovie has attained a sense of com "Apocalypse Now Redux" arrives Itj is never^quite clear what the p]pletion. (This of course ispartof the in this slack seasonto remind us of a mad colonel is doing in his teeming pipoint: in Mr. Coppola's conception of lost era of visionary cinema, a time fief, other thanreading "The Golden the story we have journeyed back of creative self-confidence that fre- Bough" and "From Ritual to Ro- ward in time to arrive at the primal quently flirted with hubris, but also a mance," books ofspeculative anthro- sceneofg, prehistory.) Thedrama has time of risk taking and high serious- pology from whose pages he seems ended,andwhatg Mr.Brandosupplies ness.The artistic vision ondisplaym to have sprung. is commentary. "Apocalypse Now" — the divine ,Conrad's Kurtz, a Belgian ivory In one of the added scenes he sits madness that inspired Mr. Coppola trader in the Congo, made a little inleaf-dappled sunshine, surrounded to risk his heal^, his sanity, his moresense: his barbarism revealed by children, reading articles from fortuneandthe well-being ofhiscast, the essential brutality of a colonial . Time magazine to Mr. Sheen, who crewandfamily - isultimately less enterprise based on subjugatipn and lies^ semiconscious in a tomblike cell. impressive, and less important to the conquest. But the American efrand Thisis^ moVe apt, andwittier,ihan his film's durable power, than the art in Southeast Asia was different. recitation of "The Hollow Men," but itself.And while the film may. have. been Whenw the head ofthe Frenchplanta- Mr. Brando's arch performance per tion — who may himself, like the sonifies^ the poem's invocation of the apotheosis (and also the catas- "widow, be a ghost - declares that ; trophe) of American auteurism — "shape without form, gesture with the Americans are fighting for the out motion.V' the notion that a movie is above all biggest nothing in history," he is But how else could it end? It is the personal statement of itsdirector asserting not only thewar'sultimate —theachievement is notMr. Coppo- futility' but also its origins in an ab- :fruitless and arrogant to second- la's alone. Thescript,which he wrote straction, an idea. •guess "Apocalypse Now," especially with John Milius, is a succession of And one of the reasons "Apoca after Mr. Coppola,-with the help of vivid Dantesque vignettes that or- lypse Now" has outlasted the other Mr. Murch and the encouragement ganize the absurdity, the cruelty and Vietnam• movies of its moment of Miramax, has so brilliantly sec-- thehallucinatory randomness ofjun- rial Ashby's "Coming Home" _^id ond-guessed himself. It is worth see ele combat into a compact, episodic Michael Cimino's "Deer Hunter' ing now, in aform closer to definitive nightmare epic. With the exception is,J paradoxically enough, thatit cap than previous versions, and itwill be of Michael Herr's uneven, self-con- tures the moralconfusion ofthe war worth seeing 22 years from now, sciously literary voice-over narra- witliout trying toresolve it within the. , when its lucidity and murk will re tion, the story isembedded, and em melodramatic conventions of the solve in new ways for new eyes. To bodied, in sounds and images: in war-movie genre. Instead, Mr. Cop paraphrase Che Guevara on the sub Dean Tavoularis's production de pola paints tableaus of agonizing am ject of Vietnam, there are two, three, sign, Vittorio Storaro's cinematogra biguity: the accidental massacre of many Apocalypses. phy, Walter Murch's sound, and the |a family aboard a sampan, which voices and faces of its cast. ;Willard concludes by shooting a i Thecurrent vogue fordigitally en- wounded civilian in the head; the hanced, computer-generated special: bartering, ina newly added scene, of effects in live-action movies, andfori helicopter fuel for sexual favors jumpy, gestural editing, has lulled us. from Playboy bunnies on a U.s.u. into a pixelated, hyperactive slum; tour; and the acid-trip inferno of the ber. "Apocalypse Now Redux ' ]olts[ Do Long bridge. us awake. The sequence in whichI Where does it all lead? The main Willard and his crew encounter a surfing-obsessed, Wagner-drunk airr criticism of "Apocalypse Now" B which thenew version does not quite cavalry commander named Kilgoref dispel, is that itfalls apart atthe end, (Robert Duvall) could stand by itselfa with the arrival of Marlon Brando as one of the best war movies ever, ae and the apparent departure of the rigorously choreographed spectacleV screenplay. In the long final mon- ofchaos and mayheminwhich everye tage, you can feel the tight weave of line of dialogue is audible amid the story, theme, soiind andvision come gunfire and chopper blades, > unraveled, as artifice compensates To see the real helicopters swoop ing through actual space and explodi- for the faltering of artistry. The dis- ing on the ground, to watch the vil,1- appointment ofthe final 45 minutes lagers scrambling to avoid death:h or so — which now, happily, is a from above is, in the summer of smaller proportion of the whole -- "Pearl Harbor," to feel a rush of comes not from its confusion but nostalgia mixed in with terror andid from its superfluity. exhilaration. The old, cumbersomele By thetimeWillard and hissurviv- analog machinery, thehandicraft of ing crew —two other white men, the cutting andsplicingwhat the camerara two African-Americans (Laurence has captured, impart a clarity andid Fishburne and Albert Hall) having precision that the new technology has yet to match. • "If that's the way Kilgore fought thewar, I began towonder whatthey had against Kurtz." Willard muses as he chugs toward his rendezvous with a man the military has, in its wisdom, judged to be insane. And Kilgore, who can strafe a hamlet in his quest for a good wave, strew playing cards across the corpses and then stop everything to find medical.