The story goes that Francis Ford Coppola didn't have an ending to ' Apocalypse Now ' that he liked, and one ending which writer John Milius offered saw Brando's deranged Col. Kurtz convincing Sheen's shell-shocked assassin Willard to stay and repel a US attack on his compound. Both Kurtz and Willard would die, guns blazing, in an orgy of violence and pyrotechnics. This ending, however, was not put on screen. Two endings were eventually shown on screen, both with distinct and explicit meanings and executions.
The first saw Willard leave the compound in silence with Lance on their boat, as Kurtz's followers calmly throw down their weapons. We see the boat slip away into the night, with a stone idol's face superimposed over the image as it eventually fades to black and credits.
Another ending, one that was included in the 35mm wide release version of 'Apocalypse Now', saw the same thing happen, except the credits show Kurtz's compound exploding in flames after an airstrike is called in, all set to the ominous electric tones of Carmine Coppola's score. Coppola, however, soon got wind that people were interpreting this ending to mean that Willard had called in the airstrike and effectively murdered Kurtz's followers as he left.
To that end, Coppola ordered the 35mm prints to be returned, and the credits ran out over a black screen, yet this ending persisted on throughout the '80s and even made it on a LaserDisc release.
For all this, however, Coppola said the explosions were intended to be a postscript to the story, and was merely added because he felt the images were visually striking. But after Kurtz is dead and has spoken his last words—"The horror…the horror…"—what's Willard going to do? Are Kurtz's followers going to kill Willard? It turns out that they aren't.
They just look at him, kneel, put down their weapons, and let him walk through. They're acknowledging him as the new god, and that could be his new mission, if he chooses to accept it.
He didn't go through all that trouble to kill Kurtz only to take Kurtz's place and start the whole thing over again. Then the government would have to send someone to assassinate him. And the movie was already way over budget. Willard takes the strung-out Lance by the hand and guides him out of the tribe. As they head down to the boat and hop on board, we hear Kurtz's last words, "The horror…the horror…," again. In some cuts, the film fades to black. Apocalypse Now, like so many national myths, showcases the intimate connection between the establishment of order and the violence upon which that order is founded.
The film is indeed self-consciously mythic, and with its transcendent imagery, it enters the cosmic realm. Captain Willard is an enigmatic hero, and we need the narration written by Dispatches author Michael Herr to help us know him.
Surely the man has his dark side: he kills a wounded Vietnamese woman and hacks Colonel Kurtz to death. But by the end, Willard retains enough of his soul to protect the innocent, childlike Lance Sam Bottoms , and here we see that the human connection endures. Apocalypse Now does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.
We all but participate in the strange water skiing and surfing obsessions and the hallucinatory Playboy Bunny show. We take macabre pleasure at witnessing the chaos at Do Long bridge. The epic scale of the picture pre-CGI, of course does not cease to astound. That much, at least, was celebrated back in , but to me this is damning with faint praise.
Too often a logistical achievement is confused with artistic excellence. So when the last act came, some considered it a letdown. Coppola chose to show Kurtz as a god who has cast himself into the underworld, wrestling with the gravest of ethical dilemmas.
A work without flaws is a work without ambition. Apocalypse Now functions in the same way, its makers committed to a rare and glorious vision. Take a look at the landscape since this film was released: How many have even tried something this monumental? It may well be the last of its breed, and for this reason, among many others, I regard Francis Ford Coppola as a national treasure. There are many pretenders. Francis Ford Coppola went out and did it. He gave us a work that lives and breathes still, its vitality an enduring force.
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