It's safe to assume that the US military wasn't about to rush out and offer Francis Ford Coppola their full support when he set out to make Apocalypse Now, his epic masterpiece about the insanity of war and the dehumanization of man in combat. Pentagon approval and assistance, after all, demands that the military is not portrayed in a negative light. Loosely based on Joseph Conrad's incredible book, Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now follows Captain Benjamin Willard (an excellent performance from Martin Sheen) as he travels into the depths of the jungle to track down a renegade special forces colonel, Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando). A film which has achieved legendary status not least because the shoot was as metaphorically grueling as the Vietnam War itself, Coppola depicts war as a near-hallucinatory nightmare, while Kurtz's descent into madness is delivered in one of the most powerful performances of Marlon Brando's illustrious career. It's worth noting that there is something of a debate over whether or not Apocalypse Now is an anti-war film or a pro-war film - advocates of both positions ironically tend to cite the same reason to justify their position: the film's depiction of the brutality of war and the destruction of nature a condemnation of warfare or a celebration of American supremacy, depending on your view. Coppola leaned towards the anti-war perspective then took it a step further, describing it as "anti-life".
