Apocalypse Now is one of, if not the greatest war movies ever made. I can’t remember when I first watched it. I was probably in high school or maybe college. I do remember watching it again off an old VHS tape. I had taped it off TCM or HBO or some such cable channel.

It is weird to think about that now when streaming video is so prevalent. When you can watch nearly anything you want at any time you want. But back then you watched whatever TV wanted you to watch when they wanted you to watch it. You could record live TV and watch the program later, but that wasn’t the norm. People like me used to collect VHS tapes and record movies. I developed a pretty good library that way.

Whenever there wasn’t anything interesting on television I’d pull out a VHS tape and watch a movie. It took a long time to build a collection back then. I think I started collecting tapes in high school but didn’t get serious about it until college. With a small collection, I found myself watching a lot of the same movies over and over again. My favorite movies I’d watch three or four times a year. As my collection grew those viewings became a little more spaced out.

I have this vague memory of putting on Apocalypse Now one Saturday afternoon. It was an old tape and not that great of quality. I always thought it was a great film, but I seldom watched it. I’d say I’d only seen it two, maybe three times before this weekend. It is long, and meditative so I probably never felt in the mood.

In 2001 Coppola re-edited the film, adding some 49 minutes to its already long run-time. He called this version Redux. That’s what I watched this weekend.

What I found striking is how easily I was able to instinctively know what new scenes were added in. It wasn’t that the quality of those scenes was bad. There aren’t any visual clues that those moments were new. Sometimes when an old scene is added to a movie you can tell because the quality of the image is bad. But not here. It all looks amazing.

I just knew. Intuitively. Even though I hadn’t seen the film in two decades I somehow understood I hadn’t seen those moments before. This film is just part of my cinematic knowledge. It helps that nearly every scene in the movie is utterly iconic. Even if you’ve never watched the film, you probably know about large chunks of it.

There are two major scenes added in – an additional one with the Playboy Bunnies and another long one on a French plantation. In my opinion neither really adds that much to the movie. Both of them slow things down, disturbing the flow of the film. The French plantation scene is interesting, the things they discuss are worth watching, but again it slows things down just as things are heating up.

The scene with the Playmates is not particularly interesting at all. Apparently, Coppola wasn’t originally able to shoot all of that scene that he wanted due to bad weather, but he was able to edit enough of it together to put it in this recut.

I’m sure there are small moments added to already existing scenes that I didn’t notice were new, but I find it fascinating that I automatically knew those long scenes were new to me.

Coppola had originally wanted to adapt Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, into a Vietnam parable as far back as 1967. He hired John Milius to write a script and wanted George Lucas of all people to direct. But no studio was willing to fund a Vietnam movie while the war was still raging and the movie was scrapped.

Coppola then made The Godfather and The Godfather II both of which were huge critical and financial successes. This offered him the clout and money to make his Vietnam movie.

It was a famously troubled shoot. Coppola wound up putting most of his own money into the film. The filming shooting schedule ballooned from several weeks to well over 200 days. Actor Harvey Keitel, who was set to play the lead role, Captain Willard, was fired after the first week of shooting. The man who replaced him, Martin Sheen, had a heart attack in the middle of making the film and nearly died. Storms destroyed sets. The Philippines government, with whom Coppola had made a deal with the overuse of some helicopters were constantly interfering. And Marlon Brando, who was paid 3 Million dollars for three weeks worth of work showed up overweight and unprepared.

Eleanor Coppola shot documentary footage through the entire process which was later turned into the film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. I watched that this weekend as well. It isn’t as great as I was hoping. The main problem is that I’ve heard most of the stories before so it doesn’t present anything new. It is fascinating to see all of the behind-the-scenes footage.

Despite all those troubles Apocalypse Now still stands as a towering achievement. I’ve never been a soldier. I’ve never gone to war. But if anything is capable of showing us the truth behind the line “War is Hell” Apocalypse Now is it.

I realize I’ve just written some 900 words on a movie and said nary a word about the actual plot.

The plot involves Captain Captain Williard who is tasked with sneaking into Cambodia to find Colonel Kurtz (Brando) a well-respected and decorated officer who has gone completely insane, and terminate him with “extreme prejudice.”

He takes several other soldiers on a small boat up the Nùng River through Vietnam into Cambodia and the heart of darkness. Along the way, he runs into a wild variety of people. This includes a helicopter assault unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who blasts “Ride of the Valkyries” through loudspeakers when he assaults a village, goes surfing even when the enemy is still attacking, and just loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

There are a couple of outposts with no commanding officer. The remaining soldiers keep on fighting, though haphazardly. One group continues to rebuild a bridge even though it is destroyed every other day. Playmates entertain a group of soldiers and are almost immediately overrun and mawed by the men, causing them to flee by helicopter. They are attacked by a tiger, children carrying hand grenades, and natives armed with nothing but spears and arrows.

And then they arrive at Kurtz compound. It is literally littered with the bodies of his enemies. He has created an army out of local soldiers, natives, and his own company, all of whom consider him to be a god. Dennis Hopper plays a spaced-out photojournalist who decides Willard should be the man to explain the majesty of who Kurtz has become.

Willard’s missing is to kill Kurtz because he’s become insane, but what he comes to realize, is that this war has made everyone stark raving mad.

All of this is put together by an amazing cast, top-tier directing by Coppola, and award-winning cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. Though the film is full of incredible action it is meditative, philosophical and one of the most beautiful films of all time.