HEARTS OF DARKNESS arrives in 4K

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Review by John Larkin

HEARTS OF DARKNESS has always struck me as one of the most vivid and unsettling behind the scenes portraits ever made about the creation of a film. What continues to fascinate me is that although I admire APOCALYPSE NOW and respect its place in cinema history, it has never been one of my personal favorites. I rarely feel the urge to revisit it. Yet HEARTS OF DARKNESS is something I can return to again and again. It has an energy that feels almost avant garde, a swirling blend of journalistic observation, artistic chaos and psychological unraveling. There is a slightly pretentious current running through it that somehow makes the entire experience even more compelling to watch, because Coppola is reaching for something enormous and you sense both the brilliance and the madness in that pursuit.

The foundation of the documentary comes from the footage and audio Eleanor Coppola shot in the Philippines during the production. She had a rare kind of access. She recorded private conversations, arguments, breakdowns and moments of raw confession, often capturing Coppola at a time when the film seemed to be slipping out of his control. Years later, all of this material was handed to filmmakers George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr, who shaped it into a feature length documentary that would not be released until 1991. Their work frames the descent of the APOCALYPSE NOW shoot not as a typical making of, but as an emotional chronicle of a director wrestling with ambition, ego, nature and his own limits.

The legendary stories are all here. The production battered by typhoons, Martin Sheen’s heart attack, Marlon Brando arriving unprepared and overweight, Dennis Hopper’s drug fueled mania, the massive sets being destroyed and rebuilt, the budget spiraling into something nightmarish. What the documentary captures is not a set of anecdotes, but the feeling of a creative vision becoming too large and too unwieldy to be controlled. Coppola’s own statement, recorded mid production, sums up the emotional stakes. They were deep in the jungle, with too much money and too much equipment, and little by little they went insane. That sense of collapse and resurrection is what gives HEARTS OF DARKNESS its lasting power.

Watching it today, the film feels even more relevant because it shows the unpolished truth behind a masterpiece. It is not concerned with legacy or mythology. It simply presents what happened, and the footage is so immediate and so unfiltered that it becomes almost hypnotic. There is something strangely relatable in Coppola’s spiraling monologues and confessions, because they reveal the cost and desperation that often sit beneath great art. This is why the documentary has a rewatchability factor that the feature itself does not always have for me. It exposes the human machinery behind the myth.

The new 4K release from Lionsgate gives the documentary the best presentation it has ever had on home video. The transfer respects the nature of the material. The footage shot by Eleanor Coppola still retains the grain, texture and immediacy of late 1970s documentary film, but the image is cleaner and more stable, with better color fidelity and a noticeable reduction in noise and compression compared to previous releases. The interviews and later material benefit most, taking on a clarity that allows the narrative to unfold more smoothly. Even the archival sections that inevitably show their age feel more cohesive in this restoration. The sound mix remains simple, focused on dialogue and ambient audio, which suits the raw, confessional tone of the piece. It is not a flashy upgrade, but it is an elegant and respectful one that honors the documentary’s origin.

There is an additional layer of irony and fascination in the inclusion of a new “making of” feature within this release, because what we have is a making-of documentary that now includes its own making-of. The 4K edition features “THE MAKING OF HEARTS OF DARKNESS,” a newly produced segment directed by Derrick Scocchera that explores the creation of the documentary itself, interviewing Coppola and others about how the original footage was assembled, shaped and released. This meta-documentary angle invites us not only into the chaos of the APOCALYPSE NOW production but into the chaos of chronicling that chaos. It adds depth to the experience by showing how the making of HEARTS OF DARKNESS itself became an act of curation, reflection and myth-making.

Ultimately, HEARTS OF DARKNESS earns its reputation because it is more than a companion piece to APOCALYPSE NOW. It stands on its own as a riveting work about the chaos of creation and the psychological toll of chasing perfection. The new 4K release only strengthens its value by presenting the material with renewed clarity and care. For anyone who cares about filmmaking, film history or the strange alchemy that happens when vision, ambition and catastrophe collide, this release is essential viewing.