13 August, 2019 6.45 p.m.
Forty years after its original release, audiences will get the chance to experience Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, a never-before-seen and newly restored cut of Coppola’s spectacular cinematic masterpiece in a way which the director believes “looks better than it has ever looked and sounds better than it has ever sounded”.
In Joseph Conrad’s novella ‘Heart of Darkness’, a ship captain leads an expedition up the Congo River to find ivory trader Kurtz, who has established himself like a god. In Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola transplants that story to the Vietnam War – where US Army Cpt. Willard must travel into the heart of the jungle to ‘terminate’ a once celebrated colonel who has become a dangerously lethal presence within a local tribe. As Willard travels further into the depths of the Vietnamese jungle he begins to submerge himself wholly into the insanity of war, revealing the fractured psychosis of the conflict.
This is the first time the original negative has ever been scanned, and over 11 months and 2,700 hours were spent on cleaning and restoring the film’s 300,173 frames. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is Coppola’s most complete version of his multi-awarded classic – a haunting journey into madness that fascinated generations of movie lovers and now feels even more monumentally alive than ever before. The Apocalypse Now: Final Cut restoration has been brought to life through ultra-vivid picture quality with Dolby Vision®, delivering spectacular colours never before seen on a screen, with highlights that are up to 40 times brighter, and blacks that are 10 times darker.
Followed by a filmed conversation (47m) with Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Soderbergh recorded at the premiere at The Tribeca Film Festival in April 2019.
GFT 12 Rose Street, Ge 6RB
Publisher of Pat's Guide to Glasgow West End; the community guide to the West End of Glasgow. Fiction and non-fiction writer.
