Fifth about The Seventh

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse: this documentary, by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and Eleanor Coppola, chronicles the notoriously hard shoot of Apocalypse Now. It had it all: a tough-to-crack source material, enormous production in a foreign country, civil war, difficult actors, health issues, and substantial financial risks, among (many) other things. And still, due to Francis Ford Coppola’s uncompromising respect for his creative view, the film is, to this day, considered a success. Why? Well, this documentary sadly doesn’t go into how such an apparent failure turned around; watching the trainwreck, in any case, is entertaining, despite being only half the story. The film has superb access to what transpired during the shootings, as Eleanor Coppola was hired to do the making-of of her husband’s film. Editors Michael Greer and Jay Miracle stitch it all into a fun, detailed, and well-paced narrative.

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