Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Directed by: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola
It's a documentary about the complications during the production of Apocalypse Now (1979) made by Francis Ford Coppola. This documentary portrays how intense and cathartic of an experience filmmaking can be, if you give it all you have. While watching this film, I was shocked to see the nightmare of experiences they were facing during the production - Marlon Brando who charges 1 million dollars per a week of shooting, comes to the location without reading the book, without getting into shape and Coppola has to make it work with whatever he has, he can't complain or play victim there - because it's his money, his reputation, his sanity and everything at stake. Making it work with what you have, anyone can do it but making it work without letting go of the intensity of the subject matter is what Coppola could do. He was saying all along 'It's not working, I'm going to go bankrupt - I might as well accept that the film is not working and face my worst fears' - I can only imagine how stronger his vision of the film would've been if he has managed to make this with all these challenges.
After watching this film, I realized the importance of aesthetics - in the modern world everything is so simplistic and function oriented, but in the pursuit of productivity and efficiency, we have forgot to create and appreciate beauty. As Coppola said in the ending, with the advent of technology everybody is making films, but all of that aesthetics and professionalism with which they made films, that is going to be an art which everyone won't be able to achieve. The saddest part is, even after making two Godfathers he couldn't make the film he wanted to make, the way he wanted to. Of course, when money is at stake then it's a hoopla of numbers, ROI, etc but I'm sure if it was today, Netflix would've happily backed him.
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