Robert Duvall missed out on his chance to play Haven Hamilton in Robert Altman’s Nashville but 8 years later, he gave a performance as a country musician that would him his only Oscar.
This is from 1983’s Tender Mercies.
Robert Duvall, RIP
Tag Archives: Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall, RIP
Salud, you glorious actor.
I knew this day was going to come because he was only 5 years away from 100 but still, it breaks my heart.
Rest in peace, Robert Duvall.
In my opinion, Robert Duvall was the best of American actors to come to prominence during the 60s and 70s, someone who was consistently great, who could move you to tears or make you laugh, someone who was just as good at being a villain as he was at being a hero. It’s hard not to think of a single movie that was not improved by the presence of Robert Duvall.
He was the original Boo Radley and, though he was only in To Kill A Mockingbird for a few minutes, his performance was unforgettable. He captured both the shyness and the compassion of an outcast with a good heart.
In M*A*S*H, he was Major Frank Burns, the dangerously incompetent doctor who drove Bud Cort to tears, got punched out be Elliott Gould, and eventually tried to kill Donald Sutherland. Burns was the perfect villain and Duvall wisely didn’t play the role for laughs.
In the original Godfather novel, Tom Hagen was described as being bland and colorless. In the films, Duvall transformed him into one of the most vibrant characters in the entire saga. During the first film, when he asks Michael “why am I out?,” he breaks your heart. When Michael snaps at him in the sequel, you realize that Michael is losing the one person who still cares about him. His absence in Godfather Part III is so deeply felt that it makes you realize that Robert Duvall was just as important to the saga as Pacino, Caan, Brando, and the rest.
(Robert Duvall had previously worked with Brando in The Chase and, on the set of The Godfather, he was one of the few actors who could call Marlon out. Once, when Marlon was holding up filming with a hundred nit-picky questions, Duvall said, “Don’t worry, Marlon, we don’t have anywhere to be either.” Marlon laughed and shot the scene.)
In Apocalypse Now, Duvall delivery of one line — “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” — summed up everything that the film had to say about war.
In Tender Mercies, he gave one of the most honest performances that I’ve ever seen and he won a deserved Oscar. Tender Mercies is one of the great Texas films and that’s largely due to Robert Duvall.
In the miniseries Lonesome Dove, he made you laugh, he made you cry, he made you believe that he had stepped out of the Old West, and he made it all look easy.
With The Apostle, he proved himself to be as strong a director as an actor. He crafted one of the best American films about religion to come out in the 90s and he gave a fearless performance that should have won him a second Oscar.
Even in a seriously flawed film like The Judge, he could hold your attention like few other actors.
Robert Duvall was born in California, raised in Maryland, and began his career in New York and yet somehow, he was one of the most authentic Southerners that I’ve ever seen on screen. Down in my part of the world, we considered him to be something of an honorary Texan. By most reports, he had the fiercely independent but generous spirit that defines the best of the Southwest. When he was a struggling actor, his roommates were Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. His best friend was James Caan. He knew and worked with the best actors and directors of the past 60 years.
He was a truly one of the greats. He may be gone but his performances will live forever.
A Late Tribute To Bud Cort
Bud Cort died on February 11th, at the age of 77. He was a beloved character actor, one who had a real skill for bringing eccentric characters to life. He became a star briefly with films like Brewster McCloud and especially Harold and Maude but Hollywood never really knew what to do with him. After he was nearly killed in a car accident in 1979, his momentum stalled. Smart directors still cast him because he always gave good performances but he spent most of his career in small roles. (In Heat, he was the obnoxious restaurant manager who drove Dennis Haysbert back into a life of crime.)
When Cort died, most of the stories focused on his performance in Harold and Maude. That was understandable. That said, I’ve always been touched by Cort’s performance in 1970’s MASH and I wanted to take a moment to just express how wonderful I thought he was in the role of Private Boone.
Though he had previously appeared in two earlier films, Cort got an “introducing” credit for his role in MASH. He played Boone, a usually quiet corpsman who speaks with a slight stutter. When a patient in Post-Op develops complications, Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) tells Boone to get a cardiac needle. Boone obviously isn’t sure what Burns needs but Burns snaps at him to get it. When Boone comes back with a needle, the patient has already died. Burns calls Boone an idiot for getting the wrong needle. Burns offers to get a nurse. “It’s too late, Boone,” Burns says, motioning at the dead man, “you killed him.” Burns walks away as Boone, a look of shock on his face, tries not to cry.
And I have to admit that I want to cry with him. It’s one of the more shocking scenes in Altman’s film and it works because of not only Robert Duvall’s memorably nasty turn as Burns but also Bud Cort’s emotional vulnerability of Boone. Boone, who is in Korea because he was drafted, has not only seen a man die but he’s been told that he’s responsible. With just the slightly cocking of his head and the sniffling of a young man who doesn’t want to cry on duty, Bud Cort shows us just how devastated Boone is.
And, of course, Boone was not responsible. Trapper John (Elliott Gould) takes one look at the patient’s chart and sees that it was Burns’s own incompetence that is to blame. When Trapper punches out Burns, it’s a cathartic moment. The only thing you regret is that Boone wasn’t in the room to see it.
That was Bud Cort’s big moment in MASH, though he appears throughout the film. Indeed, if you watch carefully, there’s a subplot in which Boone starts dating one of the nurses and eventually becomes much more confident in himself. We don’t know much about Boone but we do see that he’s become a member of the gang. Unlike Burns or David Arkin’s Sgt. Vollmer, Boone is accepted by the inhabitants of the Swamp.
He even gets to attend the mock suicide of Painless.. Reportedly, Boone’s line of “You’re throwing away your whole education,” was improvised on the spot by Bud Cort.
Ah, Bud Cort. Rest in peace, you wonderful actor.
Film Review: The Eagle Has Landed (dir by John Sturges)
The 1976 film, The Eagle Has Landed, takes place during World War II.
The year is 1943 and, with the war turning against Germany, Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence, in a chilling turn) orders Colonel Max Radl (Robert Duvall) to come up with a plan to kidnap Winston Churchill. When Radl learns that Churchill is scheduled to visit a small, coastal British village, he recruits a cynical member of the IRA, Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), to travel to the village and make contact with a Nazi sleeper agent, Joanna Grey (Jean Marsh). While Devlin sets up the operation in Britain and falls in love with Molly Prior (Jenny Agutter), Radl recruits disillusioned Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) to lead the mission to kidnap Churchill.
At first the village is welcoming to Steiner and his men, who are disguised as being Polish paratroopers. However, it doesn’t take long for the plan to fall apart. Soon, Steiner and his men are holding the villagers hostage in a church while battling a group of American soldiers led by the incompetent Colonel Clarence Pitts (Larry Hagman) and Captain Harry Clark (Treat Williams). Meanwhile, in Germany, Radl learns that Hitler did not actually authorize the mission to kidnap Churchill and that he has been set up as the scapegoat in case the mission fails.
The Eagle Has Landed can seem like a bit of an odd film. For a film that was released in the same year as Network, All The President’s Men, and Taxi Driver, The Eagle Has Landed feels rather old-fashioned and almost quaint in its storytelling. This was the final film to be directed by John Sturges, a director who started his career in the 1940s and whose best-known films included The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Sturges’s direction is efficient but not at all flashy. (It’s a film that feel like its very much a product of the mid-60s as opposed to the mid-70s.) The story plays out at a deliberate pace, one that leaves no doubt that the film was based on a novel. In fact, it sometimes feels as if the film itself should have chapter headings. The film holds your interest but it’s hard not to feel that a film that should have been an epic action film has instead been turned into something far less ambitious.
Sturges works with an ensemble cast, with no one member of the cast really dominating over the other. (I guess if the film has a main character, it would be Donald Sutherland’s Liam Devlin but, for all the time that’s devoted to him, he actually doesn’t do that much once the action starts.) The cast is full of good actors, though a few of them are miscast. Neither Michael Caine nor Robert Duvall make much of attempt to sound German. As a member of the IRA, Donald Sutherland sounds as Canadian as ever. Fortunately, Caine, Duvall, and Sutherland are all strong-enough actors that they can make an impression even with somewhat distracting accents. Treat Williams is a bit bland as the heroic American but Larry Hagman generates a few chuckles as Williams’s amazingly dumb commanding officer. The important thing is that ensemble is strong enough to hold the viewer’s attention.
The Eagle Has Landed is an old-fashioned but still entertaining film. The actors are fun to watch, the action scenes are fairly exciting, and it ends with a clever twist, one that was apparently historically accurate. It’s a well-done historical melodrama, even if it’s never quite as epic as it aspires to be.
Film Review: Tomorrow (dir by Joseph Anthony)
1972’s Tomorrow opens up in rural Mississippi, in the early 40s. A man is on trial for shooting another man. The majority of the juror wants to acquit the shooter because it’s generally agreed that the victim was a no-account, someone who was never going to amount to anything and who the entire country is better off without. Only one juror votes to convict, a quiet and stoic-looking farmer named Fenty (Robert Duvall). Fenty refuses to go into much detail about why he’s voted to convict. Despite the efforts of the other jurors, Fenty refuses to change his vote and the end result is a hung jury.
The film flashes twenty years, to show why Fenty eventually voted the way that he did. Even in the past, Fenty is quiet and shy, a farmer who also works as a caretaker at another property that is several miles away. He walks to and from his home. Even on Christmas Eve, he says that he plans to walk the 30 miles back to his farm and then, on the day after Christmas, the 30 miles back to his caretaking job. Fenty is someone who keeps to himself, answering most questions with just a few words and revealing little about how he feels about anything.
When Fenty comes across a sickly and pregnant drifter named Sarah Eubanks (Olga Bellin), he takes her into his farm and he nurses her back to health. The film examines the bond that forms between Fenty and Sarah, two people who have been judged by society to be of little significance. It’s not an easy life but Fenty endures. Fenty’s decision to take in Sarah is a decision that will ultimately lead to Fenty’s guilty vote at the trial many years later.
Tomorrow is a film that is not as well-known as it should be. Adapted by Horton Foote from a William Faulkner short story, the black-and-white film is one that demands a little patience. Audiences looking for an immediate pay-off will be disappointed but those willing to give the film time to tell its story will be rewarded. The action unfolds at a gradual but deliberate pace, one that will seem familiar to anyone who has spent any time in the rural South. The film allows the audience the time to get to know both Fenty and Sarah and to truly understand the world in which the live. In the end, when the film’s narrator comes to realize that Fenty is not an insignificant bystander but instead a man of strong character and morals, the audience won’t be surprised because the audience already knows. Fenty has proven himself to the viewer.
Robert Duvall has described Tomorrow as being his favorite of the many films in which he’s appeared. (The film came out the same year that Duvall co-starred in The Godfather.) Indeed, Duvall does give one of his best performances as the quiet but strong Fenty. In many ways, the performance feels as if its descended from his film debut as Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird. Duvall gives an excellent performance as a man who can hide his emotions but not his decency. Tomorrow is a film that requires patience but which still deserves to be better known.
Film Review: The Revolutionary (dir by Paul Williams)
1970’s The Revolutionary tells the story of a young man named A (Jon Voight).
When we first meet him, A is a college student who lives in the industrial town of Axton. A comes from a wealthy family but he chooses to live in a tiny and quite frankly repellent apartment. He has a girlfriend named Ann (Collin Wilcox). A and Ann don’t really seem to have much of a relationship. “We should make love,” A says in a flat tone of voice. Ann is willing to show her emotions while the self-serious A goes through life with everything under wraps. Ann and A are both members of a radical political group. The group spends a lot of time talking and discussing theory but they don’t really do much else.
A grows frustrated with the group. He gets a job at a factory, where he falls under the sway of a communist named Despard (Robert Duvall). Despard is a bit more active than A’s former comrades. Despard, for instance, is willing to call a general strike but, when that strike still fails, A, along with Despard and everyone else involved, goes underground. Suspended from the university, he soon finds himself being drafted into the Army. His father asks A if he wants to be drafted. A questions why only the poor should be drafted. His father looks at A as if he’s hopelessly naive and his father might be right.
A continues to wander around Axton in an idealistic daze, trying to get people to read the flyers that he spends his time passing out. Things change when A meets Leonard II (Seymour Cassel), a radical who recruits A into an apparent suicide mission….
The Revolutionary took me by surprise. On the one hand, it’s definitely very much a political film. The movie agrees with A’s politics. But, at the same time, the film is also willing to be critical of A and his self-righteous view of the world. One gets the feeling that A’s politics have less to do with sincere belief and more to do with his own need to be a part of something. Up until the film’s final few minute, A is something of a passive character, following orders until he’s finally forced to decide for himself what his next move is going to be. A’s father thinks he’s a fool. Despard views him as being an interloper. Even Leonard II seems to largely view A as being a pawn. A wanders through Axton, trying to find his place in the chaos of the times.
It’s not a perfect film, of course. The pace is way too slow. Referring to the lead character only as “A” is one of those 70s things that feels embarrassingly cutesy today. As was the case with many counterculture films of the early 70s, the film’s visuals often mistake graininess with authenticity. Seriously, this film features some of the ugliest production design that I’ve ever seen. But for every scene that doesn’t work or that plays out too slow, there’s one that’s surprisingly powerful, like when an army of heavily armored policemen break up a demonstration. The film itself is full of talented actors. Seymour Cassel is both charismatic and kind of frightening as the unstable Leonard II. Jon Voight and Robert Duvall are both totally convincing as the leftist revolutionary and his communist mentor. (In real life, of course, Voight and Duvall would become two of Hollywood’s most prominent Republicans.) In The Revolutionary, Duvall brings a certain working class machismo to the role of Despard and Voight does a good job of capturing both A’s intelligence and his growing detachment. A can be a frustrating and passive character but Voight holds the viewer’s interest.
The film works because it doesn’t try to turn A into some sort of hero. In the end, A is just a confused soul trying to figure out what his place is in a rapidly changing world. Thanks to the performance of Voight, Duvall, and Cassel, it’s a far more effective film than it perhaps has any right to be.
Film Review: The Rain People (dir by Francis Ford Coppola)
1969’s The Rain People tells the story of Natalie Ravenna (Shirley Knight), a Long Island housewife who, one morning, sneaks out of her house, gets in her station wagon, and leaves. She later calls her husband Vinny from a pay phone and she tells him that she’s pregnant. Vinny is overjoyed. Natalie, however, says that she needs time on her own.
Natalie keeps driving. In West Virginia, she comes upon a young man named Jimmy Kligannon (James Caan). She picks him up looking for a one-night stand but she changes her mind when she discover that Jimmy is a former college football player who, due to an injury on the field, has been left with severe brain damage. The college paid Jimmy off with a thousand dollars. The job that Jimmy had waiting for him disappears. Jimmy’s ex-girlfriend (Laura Crews) cruelly says that she wants nothing more to do with him. Natalie finds herself traveling with the child-like Jimmy, always trying to find a safe place to leave him but never quite being able to bring herself to do so.
Jimmy is not the only man that Natalie meets as she drives across the country. Eventually, she is stopped by Gordon (Robert Duvall), a highway motorcycle cop who gives her a speeding ticket and then invites her back to the trailer that he shares with his young daughter. (Gordon’s house previously burned down.) Natalie follows Gordon back to his trailer, where the film’s final tragic act plays out.
The Rain People was the fourth film to be directed Francis Ford Coppola. Stung by the critical and commercial failure of the big-budget musical Finian’s Rainbow, Coppola made a much more personal and low-key film with The Rain People. While the critics appreciated The Rain People, audiences stayed away from the rather downbeat film. Legendary producer Robert Evans often claimed that, when Coppola was first mentioned as a director for The Godfather, he replied, “His last movie was The Rain People, which got rained one.” Whether that’s true or not, it is generally acknowledged that the commercial failure of The Rain People set back Coppola’s directing career. (Indeed, at the time that The Godfather went into production, Coppola was better-known as a screenwriter than a director.) Of course, it was also on The Rain People that Coppola first worked with James Caan and Robert Duvall. (Duvall, who was Caan’s roommate, was a last-second replacement for Rip Torn.) Both Caan and Duvall would appear in The Godfather, as Sonny Corleone and Tom Hagen respectively. Both would be Oscar-nominated for their performances. (It would be Caan’s only Oscar nomination, which is amazing when you consider how many good performances James Caan gave over the course of his career.)
As for The Rain People, it may have been “rained on” but it’s still an excellent film. Shirley Knight, Robert Duvall, and James Caan all give excellent performances and, despite a few arty flashbacks, Coppola’s direction gives them room to gradually reveal their characters to us. The film sympathizes with Knight’s search for identity without ever idealizing her journey. (She’s not always nice to Jimmy and Jimmy isn’t always easy to travel with.) As for Caan and Duvall, they both epitomize two different types of men. Caan is needy but innocent, a former jock transformed into a lost giant. As for Duvall, he makes Gordon into a character who, at first, charms us and that later terrifies us. Gordon could have been a one-dimensional villain but Duvall makes him into someone who, in his way, is just as lost as Natalie and Jimmy.
The Rain People is a good film. It’s also a very sad film. It made my cry but that’s okay. It earned the tears.
Song of the Day: Theme From The Godfather by Nino Rota
Today, the Shattered Lens observes the birthdays of two great actors, Robert Duvall and the much-missed Diane Keaton.
Along with being two of America’s best actors, Duvall and Keaton also co-starred in the first two Godfather films. They didn’t share many scenes in the second film (though there was at least one Duvall/Keaton scene that was filmed but not included in the final film) but, in the first film, they have a memorable moment in which Keaton (as Kay) visits the Corleone compound while the Corleones are in the middle of a gang war, and asks Duvall’s Tom Hagen to send a letter to Michael in Sicily. Hagen explains that he can’t do that because that would serve as evidence that he knew where Michael was. When Kay notices a car that has obviously been bombed, Tom blandly replies, “Oh, that was an accident. Luckily, no one was hurt!”
In honor of these two amazing performers and my favorite movie of all time, today’s song of the day is Nino Rota’s theme from The Godfather.
4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Robert Duvall Edition
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we celebrate the 95th birthday of Robert Duvall! Robert Duvall is rightly known as one of America’s greatest actors but he’s also directed a few films as well. Today, in honor of Mr. Duvall’s birthday, it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Robert Duvall Films
Angelo, My Love (1983, dir by Robert Duvall, DP: Joseph Friedman)
The Apostle (1997, dir by Robert Duvall, DP: Barry Markowitz)
Assassination Tango (2002, dir by Robert Duvall, DP: Felix Monti)
Wild Horses (2015, dir by Robert Duvall, DP: Barry Markowitz)
Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Apocalypse Now (dir by Francis Ford Coppola)
1979’s Apocalypse Now reimagines the Vietnam War as pop art.
Jim Morrison sings The End in the background as slow-motion helicopters pass in front of a lush jungle. The jungle erupts into flame while in a dingy hotel room, Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) gets drunks, practices his karate moves, and smashes a mirror before collapsing to the floor in tears. The next morning, the hung-over and bandaged Willard ends up at a U.S. military base where he has a nice lunch with Lt. General Corman (G.D. Spradlin) and Col. Lucas (Harrison Ford) and a nearly silent man wearing an undone tie. Willard is asked if it’s true that he assassinated an enemy colonel. Willard replies that he did not and that the operation was classified, proving that he can both lie and follow military protocol. Willard is told that a Col. Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) has gone rogue and his mission is to go into Cambodia and terminate his command with “extreme” prejudice. It’s a famous scene that features G.D. Spradlin delivering a brilliant monologue about good and evil and yet it’s often missed that Willard is getting his orders from Roger Corman and George Lucas.
(Roger Corman was the mentor of director Francis Ford Coppola while the pre-Star Wars George Lucas was Coppola’s business partner. Indeed, Apocalypse Now was originally somewhat improbably planned to be a George Lucas film.)
Up the river, Willard heads on a patrol boat that is populated with characters who could have come out of an old World War II service drama. Chief (Albert Hall) is tough and no-nonsense. Lance (Sam Bottoms) is the goofy comic relief who likes to surf. Clean (Laurence Fishburne) is the kid who is obviously doomed from the minute we first see him. Chef (Fredric Forrest) is the overage, tightly-wound soldier who just wants to find mangoes in the jungle and who worries that, if he dies in a bad place, his soul won’t be able to find Heaven. The Rolling Stones are heard on the boat’s radio. Soldiers on the other patrol boats moon the boat and toss incendiary devices on the roof. It’s like a frat prank war in the middle of a war.
Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) is a badass calvary officer whose helicopter raids are legendary amongst the enemy and a dedicated surfer who tries to turn every night into the equivalent of an AIP Beach Party film. He’s a brilliant warrior who speaks with Malibu accent (“Charlie don’t surf!”) and who doesn’t flinch when a bomb goes off near him. “I love the smell a napalm in the morning,” he says and, for a few moments, you really wish the film would just abandon Willard so we could spend more time with Kilgore. “Some day this war is going to end,” he says with a reassuring nod, showing a non-neurotic attitude that is the opposite of Kurtz’s. Willard says that he could tell Kilgore was going to get through the war without even a scratch and it’s true. Kilgore doesn’t try to rationalize or understand things. He just accepts the reality and adjusts. He’s a true surfer.
The film grows progressively more surreal the closer the boat heads up the river and gets closer to Cambodia. A USO show turns violent as soldiers go crazy at the sight of the Playboy Bunnies, dressed in denim outfits and cowboy hats and twirling cap guns like the love interest in a John Wayne western. A visit to a bridge that is built every day and blown up every night is a neon-lit, beautiful nightmare. Who’s the commanding officer? No one knows and no one cares.
The closer Willard gets to Kurtz, the stranger the world gets. Fog covers the jungles. A tiger leaps out of nowhere. Dennis Hopper shows up as a photojournalist who rambles as if Billy from Easy Rider headed over to Vietnam instead of going to Mardi Gras. Scott Glenn stands silently in front of a temple, surrounded by dead bodies that feel as if they could have been brought over from an Italian cannibal film. Kurtz, when he shows up, is an overweight, bald behemoth who talks in riddles and who hardly seem to be the fearsome warrior that he’s been described as being. “The horror, the horror,” he says at one point in one of the few moments that links Apocalypse Now to its inspiration, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Directed by near-communist Francis Ford Coppola and written by the unapologetically right-wing John Milius, Apocalypse Now is actually less about the reality of Vietnam and more about how the images of the war shaped pop culture the world over. It’s a reminder that Vietnam was known for being the first television war and that counterculture was not just made up of dropouts but also of writers, actors, and directors. Kurtz may say that Willard’s been sent by grocery store clerks but actually, he’s been sent by the B-movie producers who first employed and mentored the directors and the actors who would eventually become the mainstays of the New Hollywood. The film subverts many classic war film cliches but, at the same time, it stays true to others. Clean dying while listening to a tape recording of his mother telling him not to get shot and to come home safe is the type of manipulative, heart-tugging moment that could have appeared in any number of World War II-era films. And while Coppola has always said the film was meant to be anti-war, Col. Kilgore remains the most compelling character. Most viewers would probably happily ride along with Kilgore while he flies over Vietnam and plays Wagner. The striking images of Vietnam — the jungle, the explosions, the helicopters flying through the air — stay in the mind far more than the piles of dead bodies that appear in the background.
It’s a big, messy, and ultimately overwhelming film and, while watching it, it’s hard not to get the feeling that Coppola wasn’t totally sure what he was really trying to say. It’s a glorious mess, full of stunning visuals, haunting music, and perhaps the best performance of Robert Duvall’s legendary career. The film is too touched with genius to not be watchable but how one reacts overall to the film will probably depend on which version you see.
The original version, which was released in 1979 and was nominated for Best Picture, is relentless with its emphasis on getting up the river and finding Kurtz. Willard obsesses on Kurtz and really doesn’t have much to do with the other people on the boat. It gives the story some much-needed narrative momentum but it also makes Kurtz into such a legendary badass that it’s hard not to be disappointed when Willard actually meets him. You’re left to wonder how, if Kurtz has been living in the jungle and fighting a brutal and never-ending guerilla war against the communists, he’s managed to gain so much weight. Brando, who reportedly showed up on set unprepared and spent days improvising dialogue, gives a bizarre performance and it’s hard to view the Kurtz we meet as being the Kurtz we’ve heard about. As strong as the film is, it’s hard not to be let down by who Kurtz ultimately turns out to be.
In 2001 and 2019, Coppola released two more versions of the film, Redux and The Final Cut. These versions re-inserted a good deal of footage that was edited out of the original cut. Most of that footage deals with Willard dealing with the crew on the boat and it’s easy to see why it was cut. The scenes of Willard bonding with the crew feel out of character for both Willard and the rest of the crew. A scene where Willard arranges for Clean, Lance, and Chef to spend time with the Playboy bunnies seems to go on forever and features some truly unfortunate acting. Worst of all, Redux totally ruins Kilgore’s “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” monologue by having Willard suddenly steal his surf board. Again, it’s out of character for Willard and it actually feels a bit disrespectful to Duvall’s performance to suddenly turn Kilgore into a buffoon.
But then there are moments that do work. I actually like the lengthy French Plantation scene. By the time Willard, Lance, and Chef stumble into the plantation, the journey upriver has gotten so surreal that it makes a strange sort of sense that they would run into a large French family arguing politics while a clown tries to keep everyone distracted. The new versions of the film are undeniably disjointed but they also shift the focus off of finding Kurtz and place it more on Willard discovering how weird things are getting in Vietnam. As such, it’s less of a disappointment when Kurtz actually shows up. Much as with the French Plantation scene, the journey has become so weird that Kurtz being overweight and pretentious feels somehow appropriate.
What all the versions of the film have in common is that they’re all essentially a neon-lit dream of pop cultural horror. Is Apocalypse Now a horror film? Critic Kim Newman argued that it owed a lot to the genre. Certainly, that’s the case when Willard reaches the temple and finds himself surrounded by corpses and and detached heads. Even before that, though, there are elements of horror. The enemy is always unseen in the jungle and, when they attack, they do so quickly and without mercy. In a scene that could almost have come from a Herzog film, the boat is attacked with toy arrows until suddenly, out of nowhere, someone throws a very real spear. Until he’s revealed, Kurtz is a ghostly figure and Willard is the witch hunter, sent to root him out of his lair and set his followers on fire. If the post-60s American horror genre was shaped by the images coming out of Vietnam then Apocalypse Now definitely deserves to be considered, at the very least, horror-adjacent.
Apocalypse Now was controversial when it was released. (It’s troubled production had been the talk of Hollywood for years before Coppola finally finished his film.) It was nominated for Best Picture but lost to the far more conventional Kramer vs Kramer. Robert Duvall was the film’s sole acting nominee but he lost the award to Melvyn Douglas’s turn in Being There. Douglas was very good in Being There and I imagine giving him the Oscar was also seen as a way of honoring his entire career. That said, Duvall’s performance was amazing. In his relatively brief screen time, Duvall somehow managed to take over and ground one of the most unruly films ever made. The Oscar definitely should have gone to him.
As for the film itself, all three versions, flaws and all, are classics. It’s a film that proves that genius can be found in even the messiest of productions.
Through the Shattered Lens 