The classic war movie that gave Robert Ebert “real chills”
If there was ever a person you could bank on to deliver a fair and well-considered review of a movie, then it would probably have been Roger Ebert. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times for most of his professional life, Ebert established himself as a master of film criticism, and his reviews stand up in their quality even today.
What was most impressive about Ebert’s writing was that it showed that he possessed a deep understanding of the intricacies of filmmaking as well as the philosophical meaning of the narrative arts, but also that he was capable of writing in an entertaining manner that didn’t alienate a wider readership from difficult terminology.
In that light, Ebert’s views are always a good measure of the kinds of films that we should be watching or not watching. Frequently, Ebert had dismissed a film as a bad work of art, but he had equally spoken highly of his favourite works of cinema, most notably a classic from Francis Ford Coppola, which he admitted gave him a strange sensation every time he saw it.
Writing in a 2012 piece on the greatest movies ever made, Ebert said of Coppola’s legendary 1979 epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, “[This] is a film which still causes real, not figurative, chills to run along my spine, and it is certainly the bravest and most ambitious fruit of Coppola’s genius,” quite the turn of phrase.
Loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, Coppola took the late 19th-century action of the Congo to the Vietnam War and told of a US Army Captain played by Martin Sheen, who is given a secret mission to assassinate a renegade Colonel played by Marlon Brando who is himself presumed to have gone insane.
Also starring Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford, Apocalypse Now became one of the greatest war movies ever made, earning a healthy box office and winning two Academy Awards as well at the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and all despite having one of the most troubled productions in the history of cinema.
Ebert had returned to Apocalypse Now on many occasions to consider its impact on the cinematic medium, and in his original review, the critic had written, Apocalypse Now is a good and important film – a masterpiece, I believe. 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.”
Indeed, despite the problems that Coppola faced on set—running well over budget and facing a number of issues like sickness and poor weather—the truth is that his Vietnam War film is considered today a work of ingenious filmmaking, the kind of which the director hasn’t really managed to top or even match since its release in 1979.
In the original review and his 20 year anniversary version, Ebert had spoken of Coppola’s dissatisfaction with the way the film had ended. Still, the critic continued to usher the message that, “Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul,” which is just about highest praise that Coppola could have ever wished for.
