Made from footage shot by Eleanor Coppola, and spliced together with contemporary interviews conducted by directors Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, Hearts of Darkness is one of the great films about filmmaking, and an astonishing, behind the scenes account of how Francis Ford Coppola travelled to the brink of ruin and madness to make his landmark Vietnam film Apocalypse Now.
Coppola began to film Apocalypse Now in February 1976. After 238 days in the jungle, filming was complete, and millions of dollars had been spent on a film that many speculated would never be finished.
Beset by civil war, casting changes and near tragedies – Martin Sheen, who had replaced Harvey Keitel in the film, had a near-fatal heart attack on set – and the difficult behaviour of Marlon Brando, by the time the shoot had come to an end, the cast and crew had all gone “a bit insane”.
Coppola’s wife Eleanor documented the entire shoot, capturing one of the most ambitious films ever made spiralling out of control during production. Perhaps the most revealing glimpse of a filmmaker’s pursuit of a maverick vision ever recorded, Hearts of Darkness is an astonishing watch.