4. "The horror... the horror." - Apocalypse Now
In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola followed up his first two Godfather films and the Conversation with his version of Joseph Conrad's war epic Heart of Darkness. Delving into madness himself, Coppola concocted a movie shoot so intense that Martin Sheen literally had a heart attack. Coppola's wife later made a documentary, Hearts of Darkness, recounting the journey to complete this film. In Apocalypse Now, fat-Brando made his debut. Playing the mad Colonel Kurtz, Brando is filmed mostly in the shadows as he mumbles his dictums on life and war, and as The Doors play in the background and a water buffalo is violently slaughtered, so too is Kurtz stabbed to death by the assassin hands of Martin Sheen's Benjamin Willard. Bleeding on the ground, Kurtz whispers in a gruff voice "the horror... the horror". The true meaning behind these words are enigmatic and vague; perhaps he is repenting for his own deeds, maybe they are response to what Willard himself has wrought, or perhaps something even more complex. Maybe it was at how much weight he'd put on since his Godfather II cameo.