By Joshua Cornelius

Apocalypse Now is one of those films we’ve been knocking around since the inception of TFL.  On the surface it’s an obvious choice, but it’s also an exceedingly complex film by modern standards.  Your interpretation of Coppola’s Vietnam War “masterpiece” may be defined entirely by the cut of the film you saw.  My own first viewing was a pan and scan VHS copy from the video store I worked at.  The tape was beat to hell, and although my memories are fuzzy, I swear the film was edited for time.  It had that look of a film recorded off a sheet projecting a film in someone’s apartment.  Like a hastily duplicated home movie.  This served to only amplify the hallucinatory aspects of the film.  Coupled with the fact that I’d waited until the wee hours of the morning to start watching it, the film leaked into my dreams.  The film lingered there like a half forgotten memory for years.

Then Apocalypse Now: Redux was unleashed on the world and I found myself drawn back into the film.  For the record, Redux is now my preferred version of the film, though I can understand why anyone might prefer the more focused original or the extended work print of the film.  I compare the experience of the original versus extended cuts to viewing The Lord of the Rings films.  A few more characters, a bit more meandering and a bit more melodrama.  Rest assured, we will make our best efforts to address all version of the film this month for TFL.  We will also, of course, acknowledge the troubled production of the film and it’s parallels to Joseph Conrad’s novel.

On a more personal note, we have been experiencing a few technical difficulties that have made posting articles to TFL impossible.  While hosting should continue uninterrupted, hopefully these issues will have been remedied so we can keep posting up content all month long.

As always, we openly encourage your participation through articles, photos, art or any other piece of work you’d like to contribute.  You will retain full rights to your work!  Just click the ‘Submissions’ button at the top of our page.