--- title: "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" year: 1991 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 86 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-17T04:57:40.062778+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T04:58:36.192057+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) Directed by Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola · 1h 36m · MPA R · Documentary **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 86 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* A man spends a year in the jungle finding out whether he is a genius, and his wife records the answer > Eleanor Coppola’s footage and secret tapes of her husband make this the making-of documentary every other is measured against. The later interviews around them are ordinary, and the film takes Coppola at his own valuation more often than it should. ## Synopsis In May 1979 Francis Ford Coppola faces the press at Cannes and tells them his new film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam. Hearts of Darkness then goes back to the Philippines in 1976 to show what he meant. Coppola arrives to shoot *Apocalypse Now* from a script by John Milius, a project George Lucas was once meant to direct. His wife Eleanor Coppola brings a 16mm camera and a tape recorder to document the production. Within weeks the leading man, Harvey Keitel, is sacked and replaced by Martin Sheen; a typhoon flattens the sets; helicopters lent by the Philippine army are called away mid-take to fight a war of their own. Eleanor keeps filming, and at night she keeps recording. ## Review In May 1979 Francis Ford Coppola stood in front of the press at Cannes and told them his film was not about Vietnam; it was Vietnam. *Hearts of Darkness* starts there and then goes back three years to the Philippines to show what he meant by it. His wife Eleanor went out to the shoot with a 16mm camera and a tape recorder. She filmed the sets, the crew and the weather, and, without telling him, she recorded her husband talking late at night. George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr, who wrote the documentary and directed it with Eleanor Coppola, took that material and sat the survivors down for new interviews; Jay Miracle and Michael Greer, the editors, cut the two together. It is the best film of its kind we know of, and most of the credit belongs to a woman who was not supposed to be making a film at all. What went wrong is now a well-worn story, and the documentary tells it in order. Harvey Keitel was cast as Willard, sacked after a few weeks and replaced by Martin Sheen. A typhoon destroyed the sets. The helicopters had been lent by the Philippine government, which kept calling them away mid-take to fight rebels in the hills. Marlon Brando arrived heavy, unprepared and expensive. Sheen had a heart attack. Miracle and Greer cut Eleanor’s grainy footage against the finished shots from [*Apocalypse Now*](https://film.one/film/apocalypse-now), so that you see the same helicopters as a shambles on a muddy beach and then, seconds later, as the shot Coppola was after. It is a plain editing idea and it works every time. The tapes are the reason to see it. On them Coppola, alone with his wife, says the film is bad, that he has no ending, that he is going to be ruined. He had put up his own money. In the daytime footage he is the general, in a bush hat, shouting at extras; on the cassette he is a man who has run out of ideas and knows it. We were more moved than we expected to be by a voice on a tape, and the reason is Eleanor. She is sitting beside him, she agrees with him, and she does not switch the machine off. Nobody on screen asks her why she left the tape running, and the film is better for not answering. The scene we could not shake is Sheen’s. It is his birthday, he is drunk, the set is a hotel bedroom dressed as Saigon, and he is meant to be improvising a breakdown. He hits a mirror and cuts his hand open, and Coppola keeps the camera running. We watched a man bleed for a director and felt, for a minute, that we should not have been watching either. The documentary knows this is its strongest card and lays it down without comment. The new interviews are less than the old footage. John Milius, George Lucas, Vittorio Storaro, Dean Tavoularis, Fred Roos, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall and Laurence Fishburne are shot plainly against dark backgrounds by four credited cinematographers, Igor Meglic, Shana Hagan, Steven Wacks and Larry Carney, and nothing about the framing stays with you. Milius is the best value; he wrote the script and still talks like the boy who wrote it. Lucas was once meant to direct the thing and got out, and you can hear how glad he is. Fishburne, a teenager on the shoot, is the only one who talks about it as fun. Todd Boekelheide’s music is a low electronic hum that tells you when to feel dread, and the footage had already told you. The film’s real weakness is that it likes Coppola too much. It shows him nearly wrecking himself and several other people and then lets the older, calmer Coppola have the last word on what it all meant. A harder film would have asked Sheen a harder question, or asked Eleanor one. Hickenlooper and Bahr are admirers, and 96 minutes of admiration is a little much even for this subject. Set against Les Blank’s *Burden of Dreams* (1982), which watched Werner Herzog fail in a different jungle, this is the more thrilling film and the less honest one. Watch it after *Apocalypse Now*, not before; the footage means nothing until you have seen what it became. And turn the sound up for the tapes, which are quiet, and which are the point. *Fi1m score 84, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews lean strongly favourable, and most critics place it in the front rank of making-of documentaries, with several putting it at the head of the field. The praise clusters on Eleanor Coppola’s footage and the audio recordings she made on set, which critics say show a director stripped of his defences and full of self-doubt, and on the scale of the disasters catalogued: weather, government trouble, cast changes, illness, a reluctant star. A number of critics also read it as a lament for a period when American studios backed projects this ambitious and this unruly. Reservations are few and the spread is narrow. The Los Angeles Times is admiring but more circumspect, finding the film neither celebratory nor iconoclastic and declining to call the whole enterprise either triumph or fiasco. The only mixed notice comes from The Skinny, which grants the mishaps their legend but finds ninety minutes of self-indulgence, a film mostly for cinephiles. Nobody dismisses it. ### Reviews we read (9) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (★★★★★): This is easily the best behind-the-scenes documentary ever made, with brutally candid interviews and explosive footage capturing the relentless crises and unashamed honesty of the Apocalypse Now production. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/hearts-of-darkness-review-apocalypse-now-xgrjr6lhw) - **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (A): The critic calls it one of the great making-of documentaries, comparable to Burden of Dreams, for its coverage of production disasters and deep look inside Coppola's mind. It highlights the self-doubt captured in audio recordings as a major revelation. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse-1798203459) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): The documentary strips Coppola bare of defenses yet reveals him as a great and brave filmmaker. It provides fascinating, harrowing film history through Eleanor Coppola's footage and interviews. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse-1992) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): This is the greatest ever making-of documentary, now on re-release, showing the terrifying production of Apocalypse Now. The critic praises Eleanor Coppola's contribution through her footage and recordings of the chaos. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/02/hearts-of-darkness-a-film-makers-apocalypse-review-francis-ford-coppola-and-the-mother-of-all-meltdowns) - **The New York Times** (Critic's Pick): The film offers one of the sharper portraits of a filmmaker as alchemist, showing Coppola struggling with logistical problems, accidents, and demons before pulling off a miracle. It is well worth scrutiny on a large screen. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/27/movies/review-film-coppola-s-apocalypse-then-the-making-of-a-screen-epic.html) - **Empire**, Thomas Wyndham (85/100, inferred): The critic finds the documentary an engrossing and hilarious account of the chaotic making of Apocalypse Now, highlighting the director's determination amid disasters like weather, cast changes, illness and logistical nightmares. It serves as an affectionate reminder of a time when filmmakers pursued ambitious, distinctive projects. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/hearts-darkness-review/) - **Time Out**, GA (85/100, inferred): The documentary catalogs the disasters that beset the making of Apocalypse Now, from weather and government issues to Martin Sheen's heart attack and Marlon Brando's reluctance. It is an anecdotal and revealing film that illuminates the catastrophes of one project while showing what American cinema has lost since the 1970s. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse) - **Los Angeles Times**, Michael Wilmington (70/100, inferred): The documentary about the troubled shoot of Apocalypse Now is neither smugly celebratory nor iconoclastic; it constructs an almost hypnotic document of an endeavor that defies easy description as triumph or fiasco. Bahr and Hickenlooper deeply admire Coppola and his achievement. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-01-17-ca-34-story.html) - **The Skinny**, Nicola Balkind (★★★): It is the world's best-known making-of documentary about Apocalypse Now, capturing the production's legendary mishaps through Eleanor Coppola's narration. However, 90 minutes of self-indulgence make it a cinephile favourite. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/dvd-reviews/hearts-of-darkness) ## Details - **Director:** Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola - **Director:** Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola - **Screenplay:** George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr - **Cinematography:** Shana Hagan, Larry Carney, Igor Meglic, Steven Wacks - **Editor:** Michael Greer, Jay Miracle - **Music:** Todd Boekelheide - **Producer:** Les Mayfield, George Zaloom - **Cast:** Francis Ford Coppola as Self; Eleanor Coppola as Self; John Milius as Self; George Lucas as Self; Sam Bottoms as Self; Albert Hall as Self; Frederic Forrest as Self; Laurence Fishburne as Self - **Runtime:** 1h 36m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 27 November 1991 - **Genres:** Documentary - **Box office:** $1 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxlYozLpeI ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, CL, CO, DE, DK, ES, FR, IT, LT, MX, NO, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Burden of Dreams* (1982): Herzog in the Peruvian jungle, dragging a ship uphill; the sane version of this story - *Lost in La Mancha* (2002): Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote collapses on camera, and nobody gets to shout at Cannes afterwards - *Day for Night* (1973): Truffaut’s fiction about a shoot going wrong, kinder and funnier than any documentary - *Jodorowsky's Dune* (2013): The great film that was never made, described by the man who did not make it - *Overnight* (2003): A first-time director given everything and losing it all; the cautionary flipside of Coppola --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse