The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Apocalypse Now
35
Boyle: [As Coppola] “I’ll do it again, and I’ll have all the creative control
and do it even better!” No wonder he felt he could do anything.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about performances. There’s Brando,
Sheen, Dennis Hopper. And if you look really closely, there’s a cameo
of post–Star Wars Harrison Ford. And if you look really, really close,
his nametag says “G. Lucas.”
Boyle: Does it really?
As you’d expect, they’re all fantastic. I don’t think Martin Sheen has ever
been better. The big one, of course, is Brando—with Brando’s presence at the
end. I do remember very vividly experiencing that the first time I saw the
film. And when you read later on what a mess it was, that does teach you a lot
about how you can pull something out of mistakes or just total errors—the
way the film allows you to make something great of out something which is
a catastrophe. The power of the film leads to him. It’s breathtaking, really. I
just felt . . . kind of breathless. You don’t feel like you can take it in.
As you said, the momentum of the film leads to Brando. He’s like Orson
Welles and The Third Man. He’s the boogieman in the background, and
when you finally get to him, he can cash in on it with just a glance.
Boyle: Some people say it’s a hit-or-miss film. Apocalypse Now and Then,
they call it, don’t they? That it’s great and awful. I love that entire sequence
with Brando, personally, with Sheen hunting him down.
Mark Caro, a writer at the Chicago Tribune, told me how this film
made him believe that a movie can still have huge flaws and still be a
four-star film.
Boyle: Yeah, that’s the whole point of it, why it defies categorization, because
it is deeply, deeply flawed and that’s its nature. They’ve gone on to perfect
films since then. There are perfect films, but I wouldn’t nominate them as my
favorite film of all time. This would be it for me.
How is it flawed then, even if we love it for those flaws?
Boyle: Well, people say it’s deeply dissatisfying—the conclusion of the
film is deeply dissatisfying, that this hocus-pocus philosophy at the end is