Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

Dir: Eleanor Coppola, George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr

1991

****

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a great insight and document of one of the most notorious film shoots in the history of cinema. It exposes the madness and obsession throughout the history of the film's legend, from the people who wanted to make it, the crew that eventually made it and the cast who went mad and nearly died being part of it. Some of it I found exaggerated. When all your money is in a project that is rapidly falling apart, the safest way to get a return is to make sure people see the film by making it 'notorious' and that is exactly what Coppola did. This film exposes him as a great marketing man but a bad director. You have to wonder if it is the big budgets and great actors alone that have made his career and not necessarily his 'Artistic input'. I found him and his wife to be extremely annoying, naive and stupid throughout this documentary, Apocalypse Now is a great film but it's a shame it couldn't of happened to a nicer man. You have to question what it is to be a great director and would a great director have made such a film in such a disastrous way and could other directors work then have made just as good, if not a better job of it? Either way, this is essential viewing for anyone seeking a career in film making but as more of a how not to do it guide but then again, all you really need is a lot of luck and a lot of money, you don't even need a particularly original idea (see Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God), this film is proof of that. Fascinating watching all the same.