Review of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) by Ricardo O — 17 Mar 2011

Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a truly fascinating documentary that chronicles the making of Francis Ford Coppola's magnum opus, Apocalypse Now. It combines interviews filmed years later along with rare documentary footage and intimate audiotapes that Coppola's wife Eleanor Coppola had shot and recorded on the set of the production.

Problems start to pile up almost immediately after the cast and crew arrive in the Philippines. The production goes well overbudget as it continues for well over 200 days of shooting. The making of the film begins to resemble its subject as the Coppola's obsession in the jungle continues to grow.

Martin Sheen suffers a heart attack as well as a nervous breakdown. A typhoon destroys many of the film's sets, stopping the production for about three months. The film's backers, United Artists, threatens to pull the plug on the film.

The Philippine army constantly withdraws their helicopters during the shooting of one scene they can go fight a real war in the southern parts of the Philippine islands. Dennis Hopper, who is obviously on something can't remember his lines, Marlon Brando arrives heavily overweight, doesn't know his part because he didn't read the book, and causes the production to go slower because he constantly asks the director questions and improvises all of his lines making off with one million dollars a week.

These ramblings that Brando goes off on turn out to be some of the best moments in the documentary. The documentary goes into detail about all that was going wrong with the production, yet somehow the filmmakers miraculously pulled off making a film that has become a last piece of cinema.

Listening to the intimate conversations Coppola and his wife had about all of his doubts with how the film would end up as are incredibly insightful. This is an essential film to watch for those that are big fans of the movie itself or are really interested in the whole process of actually making a movie.

Like Les Blank's documentary, Burden Of Dreams, about the making of Werner Herzog's own epic film Fitzcarraldo, Hearts Of Darkness is a truly fascinating portrait at what those that make movies have to endure to make them.

Highly recommended viewing. 10/10.