Hearts of Darkness Review

Hearts of Darkness

By: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Copola

The title of the film for this review is “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse”. This documentary was written and directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and Eleanor Copola. The documentary was made to show the magic and madness of making the film “Apocalypse Now” which was directed by Francis Ford Copola, Eleanor’s husband. This film explores everything that went into the making of academy award winning, “Apocalypse Now”. It shows everything from minor inconveniences like going over production time, to real disasters like Martin Sheen having a heart attack or Copola considering suicide. This film is structured in chronological order and this helps to emphasize how crucial things were when they went wrong. We all know now that “Apocalypse Now” went on to win two Oscars, but this film tries to show what it was like to feel almost certain failure and showing it in chronological order helps to build up all the different problems.

This documentary was an expository documentary. There were many different aspects of expository documentaries that were used in this film. The film was from the perspective of Eleanor Copola. She shot hours of footage during the production of “Apocalypse Now”, then many years later, with the help of Fax and George, made it into a documentary. Some of the things that they added later which made it an expository documentary were, lots of narration, archival footage and interviews.

I thought this film had many strengths. Since we are enrolled in a media studies class, we are all generally interested in Media. One thing I really like about the movie was that it gave great insight into how movies are made and what a complex and frustrating process it can be. It was also pretty entertaining and it made me want to see “Apocalypse Now”. One of the scenes I found particularly interesting was the one with Willard (Martin Sheen) in the hotel room. The clips it showed from this scene were very intense and Sheen wasn’t really following any script. The line between actor and character was broken many times during the film and this is one of the scenes were Sheen and Willard are pretty much the same person and the amount of actual acting is at a minimum. I also enjoyed the scenes with Copola and Dennis Hopper. Hopper has no idea what is going on and isn’t making any sense at all. Copola is trying to explain what he needs to do in the scene but Dennis isn’t even hearing what he is saying. These scenes demonstrate one of the many trials that Copola and all filmmakers have to deal with while making a film.

I thought the film was great, but it did have a few weaknesses. One of its problems that most documentaries share is that it is not extremely entertaining, however entertainment is not the main goal of a documentary. Documentaries set out to inform, teach or express and “Hearts of Darkness” definitely accomplished that. Also, there may have been too many clips from the actual movie. Eleanor apparently shot hours and hours of footage so there must have been many important clips that were not included. However, many of the clips were there for good reason, to show what the film ended up as even with everything that went wrong so that was necessary. They also added to the entertainment factor, which isn’t necessary, but it doesn’t hurt.

The movie “Hearts of Darkness was very good and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has seen “Apocalypse Now”, or is interested in the film industry.