The greatest Special Feature is Coppola’s commentary track, which can be heard on both versions. He teaches a class in directing through his monologue by taking you back to the days on the set, explaining the vision he attempted contrasted with the realities of execution. He is extremely insightful, while at same time entertaining for the film fan as he namedrops famous filmmaker friends and discusses trivia about the film’s creation.
There are over 45 minutes of additional scenes, including the complete reading of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, a bizarre scene from the tribe at the end singing The Doorss “Light My Fire,” and 12 sequences of time-coded, raw footage that provide more about different characters and locations.
“The Post Production of Apocalypse Now” draws attention to the three-year journey of the third stage of the film’s creation. Under this heading are four featurettes compromised of new interviews and old, behind-the-scenes footage about the editing, the music, and the sound design, all of which are combined in the final mix.
With every viewing, it becomes harder to understand how Apocalypse Now lost Best Picture to Kramer vs. Kramer or how Coppola lost to Kramer’s Robert Benton in the directing and adapted screenplay category. The films are so different in size and scope that they are in different leagues. And I’m pretty sure Robert Duvall’s iconic performance as Kilgore comes to mind much quicker for filmgoers than that of the Best Supporting Actor winner, Melvyn Douglas from Being There. I have yet to hear anyone quote Douglas’ lines. The film was taken to Cannes in 1979 before it was completed and shared the prized Palme d’Or with Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum.
While Apocalypse Now - The Complete Dossier is a great set and well worth getting for fans of the movie, it will be considered incomplete by many because, disappointingly, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the documentary about the film’s creation, isn’t packaged in the set. To quote Kurtz, “The horror...the horror...”
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