"The End" Opening in "Apocalypse Now" (1979), directed by Francis Ford Coppola

After The Godfather yesterday, shall we do one last Coppola? Many minds will leap to the helicopter-attack sequence set to "Ride of the Valkyries," and followed by Robert Duvall's "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." But as that line suggests, the attack is also a generic pulverizing of the Natives, not much different from British massacres in 19th-century Africa or (indeed) the Belgians in the Congo, from which was born Conrad's novella "Heart of Darkness" -- the source of Apocalypse Now. For me, thinking back to seeing this R-rated movie in theatres as a 16-year-old (thanks for the company, Dad), it was the iconic opening sequence that resonated more than anything else. The Huey helicopters buzzing like giant wasps, as The Doors' "The End" unfolds (it will conclude in the murderous climactic scene), creates a hallucinatory feel like few other sequences in movies. Likewise, the segue from the sinister chuff-chuff of the helicopter rotors, to the fan in Martin Sheen's hotel room, is a marvelous flourish. Sheen plays Benjamin Willard, a special-ops assassin, and plays him with infamous intensity. For the final section of this sequence, where Willard is drunk out of his mind, smashing the mirror with his bare hand, and sitting bleeding and sobbing -- that was all real. Sheen, on the verge of a fullscale nervous breakdown from the stress of the shoot and Coppola's bullying, would go on to suffer a heart attack (at age 39). The finished film has always been a bit of a hodgepodge, accentuated by its various director's cuts and special editions. But there's no doubt it has several epic sequences, dazzling technical chops, and some fine supporting performances. And it gave rise to a great documentary, Eleanor Coppola's Hearts of Darkness, which profiled the Apocalypse production. It includes the clip linked below, in which Sheen and others recall his travails. And there's an interesting 1979 profile of Sheen at the time of the film's release, in Rolling Stone magazine.

Excerpt: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
(Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, 1991)

Article:
Martin Sheen: Heart of Darkness Heart of Gold

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