The making of a movie has never been documented with more power to discern the true nature of what is happening behind the scenes than in this account of the torment and the passion of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. That is because no other behind-the- scenes piece has ever had entrée of materials that are usually prohibited like shots that were never used, abandoned scenes, suppressed conflicts between the director and his actors, divulging of disheartenment and misery, including even arguments between Coppola and his secretly, patiently ambitious wife that she secretly recorded. I've always wondered how he felt about that.

The film may not be as mind-blowing as I expected, but it bares Coppola of all resistance or argument and still exposes him as a bold and daring filmmaker. It also exposes the chaos through which he put his cast and crew on location in the Philippines, and likewise what he suffered by them. Coppola, outraged that Martin Sheen's heart attack made its way to the media and the news could kill the production: "Even if he dies, I don't want to hear anything but good news until it comes from me." Dennis Hopper, his mind adrift on drugs, is unable to remember his lines and yet somehow improvises well what we see in the film. I love seeing authentic drug scenes in movies. Marlon Brando, at a cool million a week, finally shows up, yet unprepared and unexpectedly fat, and endlessly argues with Coppola about a character in a half-existent script he's barely read. Brando begins one scene and then walks away while the camera is still rolling. And Apocalypse Now premiered years after production had begun, shared the Palme d'Or, and went on to become one of the great mythic productions in film history.

Legends have blossomed from it. Coppola confessed he did not think the ending worked. Now we see what he was talking about. Originally set to be directed by the comparatively anemic George Lucas and scripted by Conan the Barbarian writer John Milius, the project went through so many changes that finally Coppola was writing it as he shot it, and actors were improvising. The production is harassed, plagued and badgered by rainstorms, morbidly obese budget overruns, health scares, and logistical horrors, as when the Philippine government rents Coppola the same helicopters it's using to fight rebels ten miles away.

Coppola shouted in despair to his wife, Eleanor: "I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I am making a bad film." And again, "We are all lost. I have no idea where to go with this." Yet Coppola's vision somehow remained secure. Milius, flown to the Philippines by a desperate studio to bring sanity back to the script, remembers that he walked in prepared to convince Coppola that the war was lost and they had to salvage what they could. When he left, Coppola had him convinced it would be the first film to win the Nobel Prize. That is what Francis Ford Coppola is made of, and why the film is so sad. It's like a dirge in that his glory days are long, long gone. Did he only have a handful of remarkable cinematic achievements in him? What has happened?

In the 1970s, he made the first two Godfathers and Apocalypse Now, assaulted with grave personal, political, and creative resistance that, as is evidenced here, almost dismantled him. The Conversation was made straight from his two bare hands. These films are masterstrokes. After Apocalypse Now, his work took a serious nosedive---The Outsiders? New York Stories? ---and even now, as he has returned to the helm with Youth Without Youth, he cannot seem to repossess his course. He had to fight for those masterpieces and that agony and ecstasy is what made them so unsurpassable. Though he at one point denies it in this documentary, Coppola must run on hectic despair and obstruction to make a great film. And that's what we see him do here. It's a curse.

Hearts of Darkness is based on footage that Eleanor Coppola shot at the time, and on recent interviews with both Coppolas, plus Milius, Lucas and the cast, including Larry Fishburne, whose appearance is fascinating because we see him as a naive, restless 14-year-old on a gigantic multi-million-dollar movie shoot and at the present, where he has changed and learned so much. We feel for once we are witnessing the true story of how a movie got made rather than a series of interviews about how brilliant person A is and what a beautiful soul person B is.

With "Apocalypse Now", Francis Ford Coppola sought to expose colonialism. But as his wife Eleanor's documentary shows, he ended up creating it in the process of filming his movie. "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" mostly looks at the problems that plagued the film's production and nearly bankrupted Coppola*. But it also shows how he went to a third world country, brought western technology, and made the people there work for him. The madness depicted in the movie is nothing compared to the events on the set.

All in all, it's an amazing insight into one of the greatest movies ever made. Still, you should see the movie before the documentary, just so that the story behind it doesn't bias you. Perfect.

*Apparently, as a result of his near bankruptcy, Coppola smashed four of his five Oscars and briefly separated from his wife.

"My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money… too much equipment. And, little by little, we went insane."

Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' is one of the all-time great triumphs, a film so mind-blowingly spectacular that we are immediately aware that this is about as good as any film can get. However, behind this epic piece of cinema lies a production story that is riddled with as much drama and uncertainty as the plot of the movie it created.

Originally slated as a 16 week production, 'Apocalypse Now' took more than double that to film, and Coppola invested millions of his own dollars to ensure that the picture was completed. Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis, was asked to produce a video production diary of the film's completion, and her footage – intercut with more recent interviews with the cast and crew – became 'Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.'

Throughout her narration, Eleanor Coppola frequently compares the plight of Captain Benjamin L. Willard (played by Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse Now') with that of her own husband. Just like Willard is simply unable to turn back down the river, as is Francis Ford Coppola. Having invested so much into this big-budget war movie, he feels that he must pursue it to the end. When asked if he ever considered quitting, Coppola replies with, "How am I gonna quit from myself? Am I gonna say "Francis, I quit?" I was financing the movie. How could I quit?"

The production period was certainly a tumultuous one. Just one week into filming, Coppola made the difficult (and very costly) decision to replace his main actor, discarding Harvey Keitel in favour of Martin Sheen. During the filming of the opening scene in a Saigon hotel room, Sheen got into character by drinking himself into oblivion, unintentionally smashing a mirror and threatening, at any moment, to attack the crew members or Coppola himself. When Sheen suffered a very serious heart attack, and almost lost his life, the following weeks were restricted to filming distant pick-up shots, with Willard's back to the camera while Sheen recovered.

Marlon Brando's somewhat uncooperative actions did not help production, either. Having demanded $1 million a week for three weeks (including a $1 million advance), Brando arrived on the set overweight and unprepared, having completely neglected to read John Conrad's novel 'Hearts Of Darkness,' the distant source for the script. At one point prior to this, Brando had reputedly even threatened to walk away from the film (taking the $1 million dollar advance with him), if production was delayed any further.

Even after watching this film, which documents the events of the production in a detailed and compelling manner, I can still only imagine the pressure that Francis Ford Coppola must have been under. In several instances, during conversations that Eleanor Coppola secretly recorded for future reference, Coppola contemplates suicide, absolutely convinced that his film is going to be terrible.

This is documentary film-making at its most gripping. If you don't emerge from this film with a newfound respect for Francis Ford Coppola and 'Apocalypse Now,' or even just for filmmakers in general, then I seriously doubt that you were even paying attention. For fans of the film, or of film-making itself, this is a must-see.