FRAMED BY W. DART

Rip It Up, Issue 32, 1 March 1980, Page 13

FRAMED BY W. DART

William Dart

Appocalypse Now Director: Francis Ford Coppola Coppola’s film certainly has had its share of publicity. It has been a long time getting to us (the first U.S. release date was April 1977 it finally appeared in August 1979). It was extremely expensive to mount (S3O million was quoted) and boasted the legendary Brando on its cast list, playing Colonel Kurtz, the focal point of the film, and the object of Martin Sheen’.s assasination pilgrimage. The film has a strong literary background. Director Coppola and screenwriter John Milius have reworked Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness into the context of the Vietnam conflict. The parallels between the book and film are many and varied, ranging from such minor details as the shower of arrows which hit the ship just before it arrives at Kurtz’s compound, to the final words which both Coppola’s and Conrad’s Kurtz utter (“The horror; the horror”). In view of the controversial ending of the film, it is worth noting that Coppola did at one time consider following Conrad's model and have the Martin Sheen character visit Kurtz’s widow back in the United States. The film is essentially a mood piece, a giant expressionist canvas on film. This is evident from the very first scene with Martin Sheen in his Saigon hotel room, a brooding montage of facial close-ups, electric ceiling fans, balletic sequences and violence. Once Sheen is on his way, a voice-over narrative gives the film an elusive quality not unlike a Raymond Chandler detective novel. Apart from the boat journey up river to Cambodia, there are two major 'events’ in the film. The first is the helicopter raid on a Vietnamese village to the music of Wagner, engineered by Robert Duvall who looks like a vision from a John Ford movie with a surfing fetish a parallel madness to that of Colonel Kurtz. The last quarter of the movie concerns Kurtz: a weighty, measured performance by Brando, at the head of his little Montagnard empire, quoting T.S. Eliot and waiting for the inevitable end. The question is whether this portion of the film is a satisfactory development from what precedes it. Is it a massive miscalculation? Should Coppola have filmed an

epilogue with Kurtz’s widow, instead of the spectacular ■ destruction of Kurtz’s empire which is shown over the end titles? . . Twelve years ago, Kubrick’s 2001 was equally controversial in a similar manner, but both films are thought-provoking works. It would be nice to describe 2001 as a film about the future, and Apocalypse Now is a slice of past history, but there Is an uncomfortable ; feeling that, Coppola's vision could also have some futuristic elements in it. Just A Gigolo Director: David Hemmings * What a confused piece this is! Despite quite lavish mounting and a promising subject (decadent Berlin in the 20s), David Hemmings’ film doesn’t quite make it. Even the casting coup of the decade (David Bowie, Kim Novak and a heavily-veiled Marlene Dietrich) fails to excite. Characters are sketchily presented and the tone of the film wavers all over the place, the worst miscalculation being a graveyard scamper. After a fine debut in Noeg’s Man Who Fell To Earth, Bowie needs to choose his celluloid projects a little more carefully. More American Graffitti Director: Bill Norton Further adventures in a mid-60s time warp with those zany kids from the original American Graffiti. The film has little of the natural charm and flow of George Lucas’ original. What Norton has done is to juxtapose four different narratives scene by scene, producing a latter-day Intolerance in terms of pop chic. The adventures of Candy Clark amongst the hippy set are filmed in unrelenting split-screen process, the Cindy Williams/Ron Howard escapade with student politics is highly unconvincing to say the least, and Charles Martin Smith’s Vietnamese episode would almost work if it didn’t try to hard to be funny. Hair Director: Milos Forman Forman’s filming of Hair has come in for a good deal of criticism. It poses considerable problems. It is now a period piece flower power, hippies and “counter-culture” now seem terribly quaint and touching. The film has been straitjacketed into some semblance of a plot to aid audience comprehension, a plot which gets uncomfortably heavy-handed in the last five minutes of the film. But the performances are fresh and energetic, Twyla Sharp has provided some exhilerating choreography here and there and, above all, there is Galt Mac Dermot’s fine score, as fresh as it ever was. My favourite number? Probably "Black Boys/White Boys",with the girls’ vocals wittily juxtaposed with those of the army recruiting board.