Apocalypse Now - Redux (2001 Francis Ford Coppola)

At three and a quarter hours, I'd glad we'd started it the night before (with a 1964 Armagnac). I'm not convinced the political discussion in the plantation scene adds anything, though the lighting here is astonishing, as is most of Storaro's incredible smoky colourings. As usual, the film goes a bit flat at the end of the journey but at least Sam Bottoms' tripped out surfer Lance survives (ironically, he died four days later of a brain tumour, at 53). It's still an astonishing experience.

Where though is the original ending that I saw at the cinema on January 27th (and February 9th) 1980 (the 153 minute version)? Apparently Coppola had to destroy the Kurtz camp set and filmed its demolition, but it logically fits into the story as an air strike has been ordered. The sight of those big stone faces in the flames is mesmerizing. It's here, and it's amazing.

Underground / Podzemelje: Bila Jednum Jedna Zmelja / Once Upon a Time There was a Country (1995 Emir Kusturica)

I was glad I'd started the first hour of this long but remarkable film, in which the shocking image of a goose pecking an injured tiger (perhaps metaphorical?) burns into the mind. (Shortly after, an elephant steals Blacky's shoes, and he calls it a 'fat horse'.) I started to get a bit bored in the long wedding scene, and was resisting the Delicatessen / Gilliam underground plot thing, though it's clearly allegorical, and the tunnels to other cities was very Catch-22, but you cannot help but be caught up in the epic tale, whether the shifting relationships between Lazar Ristovski, Miki Manojlovic and Mirjana Jokovic, or the disastrous political turmoil of the Balkans that I then had to research (an extremely complicated and bloody story). 

It's mad, funny, sprawling, surreal, intelligent and has a monumental ending. The slightly insane-making gypsy music is absolutely infectious.

I was not too surprised to read that Kusturica challenged an ultra-nationalist leader to a duel in Belgrade in 1993 (he declined). Vilko Filac also shot Time of the Gypsies. Difficult to think of another film that so vibrates with life.