View attachment 302621 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626 ____________________
View attachment 302627 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626 View attachment 302626
Having just revisited both versions on the screen - I can say, without reservation, that the redux version damn near destroys the film.
As many have said before me, the French Plantation sequence remains (largely) pointless and brings the film to a
dead stop for nearly 25 minutes. It seems ironic given that in the interveneing years, most involved in the film have said that it really it isn't a film about Viet Nam (it is really the Conrad Book) - so the half hearted additional politicking seems cruelly shoehorned in -to absolutely no benefit to the journey of Willard and his crew. (The only possible reason for its inclusion (that I can fathom) is FFC wanting to get to the Opium smoking in the bedroom scene - as maybe another catalyst for Willard's mindset).
The additional (and
clearly rehearsal B Roll footage) of Brando's Kurtz blathering on for an additional 20 minutes in the final reel completely obliterates any "mythic" quality Kurtz had attained in our minds while we read the dossiers along with Willard heading upriver. He is reduced to just a fat, babbling man of no consequence, or mystery at all.
He sits and reads TIME magazine to Willard for 5 minutes. WHAAAAAT?!!!
(When the original Theatrical cut was released - people often compained of the brevity of Brando's role. "We see him for only 5 minutes after the huge buildup." For me, that works. It holds the mystery and Mystic quality. We don't grow to "know him".
He is supposed to be an enigma. Not a guy who reads you a passage from Time magazine, and then says "I'll see you around camp...").
The only thing the redux cut gave us, was a new Dye Transfer negative (which is gorgeous).
I will admit I am fine with the addition of the scene of the men and the Playboy bunny rendezvous in the Helicopters in exchange for diesel fuel. That seemed to fit as a bookend or resolution to the earlier scene of the Bunny USO show.
I still see the original cut as the one. Flawed though it is, it is still the masterpiece.
It has a
flow that is completely blown by the (unneeded) additions.
Coppola needs to stop tinkering (à la George Lucas) with his films. (He also recut and rearranged The Outsiders, and One From The Heart, among others).
With Apocalypse Now, he should have heeded his own words: "Never get off the boat."
but it just not have the thrill of the first movies 
