I’ve just seen the new long version of AN and was amazed how dull it became after the 53 new minuttes. The movie became over 3 hours long. :mad:
Much fuzz about nothing is a sentense that comes to my mind.
The restored footage includes the French plantation scenes with Aurore Clement and Christian Marquand, as well as scenes from the crew meeting the Playmates later on. (dull, dull dull) Stik to the short version instead.
I suspect that this release was only ade to earn more money.
The Star Wars triology and the Exorcist had some new stuff that was worth to see, but that was not the case with AN. Infact, it made the movie worse.
What do you dopers mean about this ?
I’ve got to agree that I don’t think added footage added anything to the movie.
My impression after seeing it was that there was definitely a reason why said footage was initially left out of the movie.
Some things shouldn’t be messed with.
No, the footage doesn’t add to much to the movie, that is why it was removed in the first place.
However, I was impressed by the way it fit seamlessly into the film. And, for some reason, the French Plantation scene is one that developed almost mythical status.
The best thing to do is consider Redux the directors cut of the movie. Watch other directors cuts and they mostly add footage that was cut to trim running time. Very rarely does the directors cut change the movie in a substantial way (obvious case is the DC of Blade Runner).
Well, I liked seeing Willard steal Kilgore’s surf board; after all, he’s on an important mission, and all Kilgore is interested in is surfing, so it’s fun to see him get some kind of revenge. Also, it’s the only moment in the film where he does anything to endear himself to the crew of the boat taking him toward Kurtz.
The playmate sequence is interesting in a bizarre, funny kind of way, and it’s the first sign of Lance turning from clean-cut surfer dude into the silent face-painting phantom he becomes by the film’s end.
The French plantation scene is also interesting. It’s as if we’ve left present times behind and gone into the past, into recent history, a sort of stop on the way to the primeval encounter with Kurtz.
Having said all this in favor of the new footage, I have to admit that none of it was absolutely crucial. Its presence now reminds you that you could see and understand the film without it, and for the most part it doesn’t really “inform” the rest of the film; that is, it doens’t increase your understanding of what you saw before. In other words, you don’t interpret the old footage in a new way, based on having seen the new footage.
I think the new footage seriously undermines Willard’s character and makes an already overrated movie demonstrably worse. All I kept thinking was–Doesn’t he have a job to do? But Willard stealing the surfboard is totally out-of-character, as is proposing to whore out the Playmates. Is this what a Special Forces/Secret Ops guy would do on such a dangerous mission? In the original, Willard serves as a stark contrast to all the screw-ups and whack-job soldiers portrayed–here he’s no better than anyone else, so why should I care about him? The Playmate scene struck me as particularly gratuitous; the point he makes humorously during the stageshow disaster he hammers away at again with this ugly scene. I liked the fact that Kilgore & the Playmates entered in & out of Willard’s existence, but he didn’t care about either of them because he’s focused single-mindedly on his task. Cool and professional, not impulsive and immature. Coppola also makes his point quite fittingly in his portrayal of Kilgore; it shows a certain insecurity that he has to “take the piss” out of him by restating the obvious (that’s he’s a jingoistic loon w/twisted priorities).
The French plantation is interesting in some of the political talk, but it goes on way too long, and shows that Coppola may have pulled the film off as allegory, but the nitty-gritty of politics isn’t his strong suit (or at least he can’t demonstrate why this scene should matter). By this point, you couldn’t blame the viewer for forgetting why Willard was out there in the first place. The mounting tension building through the film has been defused. The funeral scene is nice, though, and the entire sequence is quite strikingly lit.
The sequence that makes the biggest impression is Brando’s with the Time magazine. That works well, but it’s hard to tell how that impacts things as a whole because we’re well into Hour #3 by this point and are just waiting for the gaseous thing to end. Walter Murch has few equals in the industry, but it’s a shame he wasted so much time and effort on such an ill-conceived project.