A fascinating and gripping glimpse into the concentric circles of Coppola's mind, his actual materiality as a human being, his family, his money, the 1970s "Movie Brats", the 1970s writ large and America's views on its colonial adventures.
And yet… And yet there is something not quite right about what's going on under the surface. Is it because it is too hagiographical of its subject? In the first instance, there is little critical interrogation of Coppola's own remarks. If it is indeed a sincere statement that "this film is Vietnam" and that, by direct contextual implication, its production mirrored America's invasion of Vietnam, then surely that's a bad thing, Francis? It's not that Coppola-as-director embodies the Kurtz character, but rather that he's represented by Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, albeit substituting surfing with cakes for the crew and the smell of napalm with that of nitrate.
Separate to this, you need not be a post-auteur film theorist to know that this macho style of filmmaking is personally problematic and artistically limiting, notwithstanding Coppola's own hope that "one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart", which will represent a new form of democratisation of cinema.
Narrative-wise, it is also a little exploitative. The reputation of Apocalypse Now secure beyond all possible critical and popular re-evaluation, Hearts of Darkness can play up the slightly hollow drama of "we didn't know how it would turn out!" and "it so nearly fell apart completely!", safe in the viewer's paratextual knowledge that everything would turn out just fine.
There also feels like a strategic candidness. For all its insights into the filming process, Hearts of Darkness is unfortunately not especially interested in exploring what aspects of Apocalypse Now's production actually led to it becoming great cinema. Coppola's wresting of the soul surely doesn't make Apocalypse Now a better film simply as a fact of that effort? The notion of the struggling artist striving to achieve or express something in the face of difficulty or resistance is typical of late 18th and early 19th-century Romanticism, and it seems that we can't shake our addiction to it. Indeed, what makes Apocalypse Now such a great film cannot be because its production was so difficult, its financing always in question, its director so dictatorial, and its stars unreliable in one way or another. Many, if not most, failed films share those properties. Indeed, although I have yet to see it, Dr. Moreau has all of these aspects, yet it is an utter failure.
This documentary only compounds and intensifies a refusal to deal with Vietnam that existed in embryo even in Coppola’s film. The only chance Apocalypse Now had to succeed commercially was if it pleased everyone — hawks, doves, and everybody in between. Somehow it achieved that, not merely confirming everyone’s prejudices about the war simultaneously but also convincing members of each faction that it was speaking only to them.[…]
What, you may ask, does any of this have to do with Vietnam? Of course the Philippines and Vietnam are both in Southeast Asia. But let’s suppose that North Vietnam had invaded the United States in the midst of a civil war. How would we feel if a Vietnamese filmmaker proceeded to Mexico to make a film about our war and wound up shooting a bullfight he happened to visit as a potent example of the activities of typical U.S. savages? And what if he then declared to the press, “My film is not about the United States. It is the United States. It’s what it was really like . . . it was crazy”?
Synopsis: A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.