Day 20: Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now | 1979 | USA | Francis Ford Coppola

8.9 / 10




I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

   Apocalypse Now ranks, for me, together with Full Metal Jacket, the top 2 of war films of all times. Like the Kubrick's creation it's an informative psychological war film and picks no side.

   It's very intense, hallucinogenic and physically and psychologically exhausting. From the very beginning we can see the damage the war did to the protagonist. We can feel how months in the jungle drove him to insanity. He wasn't meant to be there but he no longer belongs back home, and he knows that.

   The devastating perspective of the Vietnam war wakes up hatred and frustration. By the end of the film I was as emotionally exhausted as the characters in the film.

   This is not a story about the ending, It's all about the journey. And I believe that Marlon Brando's performance has been overrated. I do agree that it contemplates the best intro and ending of the story of cinema.