I’ve come to noticed that documentaries often become victims of their own notoriety. The elevator pitch of the movie is so intriguing that the truth of the movie ends up a little disappointing. Catfish created a new lexicon for the internet age with its crazy story proving that you never know who you are talking to on the internet. Then I watched the movie and realized that the story was more sad than sensational. Blackfish became infamous as a takedown of Sea World, then I couldn’t even finish the movie because of how lopsided the story telling was. Super-Size Me was a lot tamer than it sounded. Murderball wasn’t as brutal as it was billed. I’m sure if I ever watch the Fyre Fest docs, I’ll be disappointed by the difference between their reputation and actuality.
That’s where I am with Hearts of Darkness as well. It’s a very famous documentary. Its story of a film production gone mad has seeped into the fabric of Apocalypse Now more than any other troubled production. I’ve seen parodies of it on things like Documentary Now! and Community. So, when I finally got to the real documentary, it was a little underwhelming. It was all familiar already. Ironically, the very reputation this movie created made Hearts of Darkness feel like some late-era mythmaking of Apocalypse Now. Like, I found myself thinking “Do I really need to see another account of how hard the production of Apocalypse Now was?”, fully aware of the irony of thinking that about the film that was the original account of it.
Hearts of Darkness is good and probably better the less you already know about how Apocalypse Now was made. It’s nice to get confirmation that most of those scenes were as awful to film as they looked. And it’s Exhibit A in my often-repeated thought “It’s a minor miracle that any movie can get made and even be functional”.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment