Lionsgate Limited
Let me start by saying that I consider Apocalypse Now to be a dark but engrossing masterpiece of filmmaking.
There are several different edits out there and I would honestly apply that to all of them. That said, the finished product also shows the obsessive tendencies of director Francis Ford Coppola.
When any sane person would have cut their losses and run screaming after all the disasters that beset the filming right from the beginning, Coppola pressed on, driving his actors and crew like the madman the story is about!
It’s that story, Coppola’s behind the scenes story of shooting in the Philippines, that’s covered in Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.
Far from your typical “Making of” documentary, it can be seen, in a way, almost as a remake of its parent picture, only with the great director himself as the insane Colonel Kurtz. As Coppola himself realizes in the vintage interview footage that opens this film, “There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.”
We’re told that principal photography on Apocalypse Now, at first planned as a four-month shoot, took 238 days and that the director’s wife Eleanor kept a diary and shot documentary footage and even private conversations every step of the way. That all becomes part of this documentary now. It’s not the simple publicity documentary she had planned, although much of her lackluster narration is still present, additional interviews were shot and edited into the original footage over the years, including one with Eleanor.
It is fascinating to see the earlier footage, including an interview with 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne in his first picture. Dennis Hopper is shown in both old and new interview footage, critiquing his earlier self.
The early optimism and determinism of Francis, himself, though, is what imprints on the viewer. Everyone from Orson Welles to George Lucas had attempted to film a version of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness and abandoned the idea. Coppola, as he tells us himself here, is not the type to give up.
Only a week into what immediately turns out to be a taxing production, he makes the decision to replace leading man Harvey Keitel. Although he questioned whether he was right for the part, Martin Sheen signed on for the lead, his biggest role after about 15 years of acting.
John Milius, who had written the Apocalypse Now script for Lucas, is given numerous soundbites, as are some of the actors including Sheen, Fishburne, Frederic Forrest, and Robert Duvall (who steals my favorite scene in the main film). In the end, though, it’s Francis Ford Coppola, himself a charismatic, larger-than-life character with a great voice, who steals this show, whether in seventies footage or in later interview footage.
We watch his slow descent into fatalism. Typhoons, local wars, drugs and alcohol, animals, Sheen’s near-fatal heart attack, and Milius’s own dark memories of the real Vietnam, all color Apocalypse Now, and, as such, Hearts of Darkness, as well.
Marlon Brando, at the time probably considered the best actor working, was almost always a problematic performer, and those problems also color this documentary. Francis says, “He’s like a force of his own.”
In Apocalypse Now, the whole point of the story is for Sheen’s character to find and kill Brando’s character. The point of Hearts of Darkness is for Francis to survive the making of Apocalypse Now. When Brando shows up, near the end of shooting and near the end of this documentary, the whole vibe instantly changes, and Coppola’s frustrations reach a dangerous peak. He’s literally suicidal…and yet he still goes on.
This latest release is subtitled, The Art of Eleanor Coppola, and includes both a 4K and Blu-ray copy of the film with commentary by the Coppolas, a previously released making of featurette and a new featurette profiling Eleanor Coppola herself.
It’s the third disc in this set that really sets it apart. It contains a number of short films all created by Eleanor Coppola including:
- A Visit to China’s Miao Country (1996) (HD; 36:29)
- Circle of Memory (HD; 7:50)
- Coda – Eleanor Coppola Introduction (HD; 1:43)
- Coda: Thirty Years Later (2007) (HD; 1:03:00)
- Making of Marie Antoinette (2007) (HD; 25:58)
- Francis Ford Coppola Directs The Rainmaker (2007) (HD; 27:07)
- On the Set of CQ (2002) (HD; 10:02)
- Making of The Virgin Suicides (1998) (HD; 30:37)
- Peeling a Potato is a Work of Art (1976) (HD; 00:33)
- Victorian House (1976) (HD; 3:06)
- Joyce Goldstein (1976) (HD; 1:03)
- Refrigerator (1976) (HD; 00:32)
- Hearts of Darkness Trailer (2025) (HD; 1:04)
- Original 1979 Apocalypse Now Trailer (HD; 3:56)
All three discs are housed in a special-edition art book from Joseph Logan Design, the design team behind Sofia Coppola’s Archive book. The photo book features archival photography from the Coppola family, new photography from Eleanor Coppola’s short films, and her own behind-the-scenes footage from Hearts of Darkness, The Virgin Suicides, and Marie Antoinette.
Hearts of Darkness: The Art of Eleanor Coppola may have been planned as a simple Making Of short film, which the studios often made back in the day for major releases, but in the time it took to be completed, it became something more, not just a defining journey for Francis Ford Coppola, but also as this set demonstrates, a tribute to the great Eleanor Coppola as well.
Booksteve recommends.
