Year: 1991
Director: Fax Bahr
Country: US
Language: English
Immediately after I saw Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam masterpiece I watched Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Like Burden of Dreams was for Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo or The Battle Over Citizen Kane was for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, Hearts of Darkness is an educational companion piece that helps the viewer not only understand Coppola's film & Coppola's mind, but the nature of film-making itself. Making a film is not easy, anybody who thinks it is will soon find themselves in much more that what they bargained for.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is an enticing and insightful documentary that shows the sensational events surrounding Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It features narration by Elanor Coppola, Francis' wife, as well as footage she secretly documented. We see the struggles and triumphs, the battles and the labors, the war that was about the creation of the film.
Many of the stories described in the film are quite astounding. They paid the great Marlon Brando one million dollars in advance to act in Francis' film only to find out that instead of the skinny actor Francis thought he would be; he was incredibly fat and didn't know any of his lines nor did he read the book of which the film was based on. The film was over-budget, over schedule and all the actors were on drugs. The lead actor Martin Sheen had a heart attack and nearly died one night, causing even more chaos during production. The making of the film about war became a war of itself. While Martin Sheen was bordering on the edge of madness on screen, Coppola was doing the same offscreen.
Hearts of Darkness is a decent documentary about one man's many sacrifices for his art.It is a film with a simple yet powerful message: Never give up. Even if times become extremely hard and you feel like you are struggling just to see the next day, don't give up. Keep on trying, keep on going no matter what because eventually your hard work will eventually pay off and things will get better. This film also shows that art is difficult, if you're writing a novel and expect it to be easy then you really need to think again.
In conclusion, Hearts of Darkness is a wonderful companion piece to Apocalypse Now if you watch the documentary shortly after the film. Otherwise I'm not sure Hearts of Darkness can stand well on its own.The message is quite powerful, though there are likely more messages from this film that I haven't see yet. 3.5/5
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