The best action in Apocalypse Now took place when Willard stepped out of the boat. Photograph: Kobal
My Blueberry Nights was promoted as the first "American" feature from the esteemed Chinese filmmaker, Wong Kar-wai. It was an entirely American production, featuring, for whatever reason, the acting debut of the American singer-songwriter, Norah Jones. It was also a road movie - the genre being an American cinematic staple. However, like many other road movies, My Blueberry Nights isn't very good. Kar-wai seemed to cave to Yankee peer pressure on that one.
Not all road movies, of course, end up in a ditch. Midnight Run, for example, is a first-rate commercial comedy, if that's what you're after, and Stranger Than Paradise, among several others, is a perennial hipster favorite. But road movies hang on the flimsiest of narrative structures, and it's easy for even a talented director to screw one up.
In a nutshell, road movies consist of one or more protagonists who take a long journey in a vehicle of some sort, and experience a series of revelations during the pit stops. Script problems arise when the stretches between the pit stops become redundant, or, perish the thought, plain old boring.
Actually, I think the ultimate road movie - the one that obliterates its dull stretches with properly mind-blowing pit stops - doesn't contain a road at all. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now has all the hallmarks of this type of film, it just takes place on a river.
Think about it. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) hops on that battered patrol boat and makes his way up the river, intoning over-the-top expository narration and reading declassified documents the entire way. Sure, the electronic score is eerie enough, and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is consistently breathtaking. But Sheen might as well be reading a road map and eating cheese puffs for all the genuine interest these portions of the film generate. The real fun happens when he gets out of the boat.
An awe-inspiring helicopter attack, surrealistic explosions, a hungry tiger lunging at Willard - these are the reasons we watch Apocalypse Now. Coppola worried when he was making the film that the set pieces would overwhelm everything else he shot, but that was when he was still aiming for a coherent metaphysical statement. In the end, he just proved that road pictures sometimes happen when you're busy making other plans. And that's not always a bad thing.
