Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

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⭐ 7.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

A documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now, I had seen clips of it on YouTube after watching Apocalypse Now and had been interested in watching the whole thing for a while. Then I realized that a Community episode was a homage to this documentary, and I felt even more inspired to watch it. Unfortunately, Abed was wrong. The documentary is not better than the movie.

It was very interesting for sure, and not surprising that such a wild movie had such a troubled production. Way over budget, and going way longer than scheduled, everyone working on the movie seemed to go as crazy as the people in the movie. Seriously, I am worried about the souls of some of the people involved in this movie, all losing their mind in the jungle.

The directors wife, Eleanor Coppola, recorded the footage and interviews for the documentary, and it was cool to see how their family all lived in the Philippines during the troubled production. It's too bad she is a robotic narrator, sapping all energy out of what should be an energetic documentary.

The best footage was an interview of Coppola, when he is convinced the movie is going to bomb (since he is actively rewriting it while they are filming), and he rants about walking the line between being passionate about creating art and being pretentious. He created the two best movies of all time and then the stakes got even higher, so he really comes off as a tortured genius.

All in all I enjoyed it, but mostly just for specific clips that I could have found on YouTube and quotes I could have found on Wikipedia.

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