for your consideration

I hope that my last post about Apocalypse Now stirred your interest to watch or re-watch the nonpariel film about the U.S. debacle in Vietnam. After Turner Classic Movies ran it recently, it followed it with an American Film Institute tribute to its director Francis Ford Coppola and — to complete an epic evening — the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.

Hearts is based on home movies of Coppola his wife Eleanor shot when he was filming the war drama in the Philippines. The drama surrounding the main characters reflected the real life drama that plagued the director. He was immediately dissatisfied with Harvey Keitel in the main role, replacing him with Martin Sheen. Typhoon Olga destroyed most of the sets. A payroll was stolen. Marlon Brando arrived overweight and oppositional. Sheen had a heart attack. Parasites and illness wracked the cast. It was quickly over budget and behind production.

All this is intimately chronicled in the home movies. Eleanor, who died last year, turned them over to filmmakers Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper. They interviewed cast and crew and Eleanor joined them for editing. They debuted their collaboration at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

It won numerous awards, including two Emmys. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that all of the 32 critics rated it positively. The website lauded Eleanor’s “empathetic and frank point of view”. Gene Siskel called it the best movie of 1991.

It’s definitely worth your time.