02.12.20 | Apocalypse Now

After directing the Godfather sagas, Francis Coppola found himself with the freedom to plumb the depths of America’s soul through his creation of an immersive, experiential film that explored Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to depict our adventure in Vietnam as a descent into primal madness. With indelible performances by Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper and Martin Sheen, stunning and surreal imagery by Vittoria Storaro and a sweeping, powerful score, Coppola’s haunting, hallucinatory epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.

Synopsis: In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.