Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (December 30, 2025)
Regarded as arguably the greatest “making of” documentary ever, 1991’s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse examines the lengthy production of 1979’s Apocalypse Now. This comes mostly via footage shot by director Francis Coppola’s wife Eleanor.
We learn that the production started in February 1976 and covered 238 days of principal photography. In addition to the footage from the set, we hear from Eleanor’s private conversations with Francis; she recorded these without his knowledge and intended to use them as a diary reference.
Narrated by Eleanor, the film tells us about Orson Welles’ intentions to make his own adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and why it didn’t happen. From there we learn about the development of Now, a loose adaptation of the Conrad work.
We hear about original plans for it under George Lucas, how Coppola took over the directorial reigns, and the move into production. We find out the financial risks Coppola took, working with the Philippines government, political complications there, ditching Harvey Keitel as the lead actor and hiring Martin Sheen, and about a million other complications that I’ll skip to leave some surprises.
In addition the Eleanor’s narration and Francis’s comments, we get interviews with other participants. This roster includes co-screenwriter John Milius, originally intended director George Lucas, co-producers Fred Roos and Tom Sternberg, production designer Dean Tavoularis, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, special assistant to the producers Doug Claybourne, and actors Larry Fishburne, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Sam Bottoms, Fred Forrest, Albert Hall, and Dennis Hopper.
For an indication of Coppola’s whacked-out mindset in the second half of the 1970s, take a look at the statement that introduces Hearts. At Cannes in 1979, he boasts that “my film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. My film is Vietnam.”
Hey, Now is a terrific film, but c’mon Francis! The wild-eyed fanaticism in his eyes shows that Coppola wasn’t quite in his right mind at the time, and Hearts demonstrates what drove him to become so nutty.
And all the others involved as well, for Coppola wasn’t the only one sent around the bend during the shoot. This is a flick during which we see a drunk, naked Martin Sheen cut himself during the shoot but keep going until we see him covered in blood and crying.
There’s something you don’t find everyday, and Hearts comes with more than a few “what wrong with these people?” moments. Heck, when Sheen has a heart attack, you half expect the production to keep going anyway. Even if he died, you get the feeling Coppola would just Weekend at Bernie’s Sheen’s corpse and continue to film.
I don’t want to paint Coppola as some sort of monster, though he can come across as maniacal and obsessive. It’s obvious that the complications of the production simply pushed him to his limits and left him mentally vulnerable.
Hearts paints a good picture of these issues and shows Coppola’s descent into semi-madness - and semi-fatness, as the scariest parts of Hearts come from the shots of a shirtless Coppola. The horror, the horror!
If I wanted to find a problem with Hearts, I’d focus on the length. 96 minutes is pretty long for a “making of” documentary, but it doesn’t feel like nearly enough to capture such a messed up production.
While the film clearly doesn’t avoid controversial subjects, it still breezes through them a little too quickly and feels too much like a quick snapshot instead of a deep examination. A longer version of Hearts would prove very welcome, as it could better explore the intricacies.
On the other hand, I won’t complain that Hearts doesn’t attempt to provide a step-by-step view of the production. A more traditional “making of” documentary would lead us through pre-production, production and post-production with stops to look at each facet of those steps.
Hearts throws in a little about the project’s genesis as well as casting and gives us a denouement related to the flick’s release. However, footage from the set fills the vast majority of its space.
And that’s fine with me. That’s the tale Hearts wants to tell, and it doesn’t pretend to be a complete nuts and bolts view of the flick’s creation.
Someone else can relate the details of editing, set design, score and whatnot, as Hearts doesn’t care about those elements, and it doesn’t need to worry about them. It wants to get inside Coppola’s head, and in that regard, it succeeds.
I think the plethora of behind the scenes documentaries we’ve seen since 1991 also dims the impact of Hearts to a minor degree. 34 years ago, something like this was practically unique, but with the explosion of various digital discs, extensive “making of” programs became much more common.
Yes, it remained rare to find one this long or this willing to embrace sordid details, as too many movie-centered documentaries are filled with fluff. Nonetheless, Hearts doesn’t feel quite as unusual as it did in 1991, and the fact that we’ve gotten so many other programs of this sort slightly diminishes its impact.
But not by a lot, and Hearts of Darkness remains a fascinating look at an extremely troubled production. Rarely do we find “making of” documentaries that examine their subjects in such an unflinching way, and that access makes the program absorbing.
