Whatever the positives of this new version of “Apocalypse Now”, the greatest gift Francis Ford Coppola has given the movie-going public is the mere fact that his 1979 war epic is once again on the big screen. The salient point about this release is in revealing just how much is lost in the transfer to the small screen. Having only watched the movie on video, I was surprised at how entranced I became as the familiar opening sequence-and, equally importantly, the brilliant surround-sounding helicopters-burned and flickered before me in its fullest glory. One of the marks of a great film is when it forces you to slink a little lower in your seat, awestruck, wondering at the magnificent power of the big screen. Plus—decisively, I think—unlike most movie theater seats nowadays, my creaky beechwood Ikea chair has no cup holder.

Before I discuss the new version of Coppola’s classic, I should mention that “Apocalypse Now” has long had an unbreakable spell over me. It’s not so much that I love the movie, I simply can’t take my eyes off it. The movie absorbs you completely, drawing you deeper into the jungle even as it increases the sense of discomfort. I don’t say “dread”: great horror or suspense films inspire dread, and part of the fun is willingly having your wits fried. “Apocalypse Now” creates discomfort. It unsettles you, sears the edges of your mind with a desire to discover whatever it’s got hiding within it. Being such a problematic film, at first I resisted that desire, my reservations having to do with pop interpretations of cultural anthropology, Conrad, and Eliot, and perhaps most importantly Coppola’s use of The Doors. The whole thing had a hippie/flunky/dopehead “like, this is a trip, maaaan” flavor which, needless to say, rankled. The last thing I wanted to do was enter into a serious discourse with the movie only to find, after a wild goose chase, the usual ‘60s counterculture dreck masquerading as cosmic profundity.

The film somehow had me hooked, though, and I kept returning to it. Eventually, after failing utterly to shake the incredible visual pull of the film, I submitted to its slow intensity once I found myself repeating nagging lines about “dialectics” and “warrior poets” to myself in the shower. Because that’s how I came to understand “Apocalypse Now”, through its one narrow aperture: Hopper’s over-the-top war photographer. The great joke about the film is that Hopper’s character is a caricature whose idiotic regurgitations of Kurtz’ “philosophy” actually clue you in to the film’s inner secrets. The photographer is included as a counterpart to the Russian in “Heart of Darkness”, of course, but I think Coppola and John Milius, the writers, might have gotten a little laugh out of the fact that the comic relief is really a quick flourish of demystification. But Hopper’s character is a kind of Woodstock John The Baptist, incapable of comprehending the greatness of Kurtz, so he cannot give all those mysteries away even if he wanted to.

Little wonder that Kurtz openly despises and Willard tacitly dismisses Hopper’s hopped-up shutterbug. No, “Apocalypse Now” rather majestically keeps its manifold mysteries locked in its depths. Few films create so many questions and leave you with so few answers. “Apocalypse Now Redux” widens that aperture. The depths of the movie are not exposed but there is a much more coherent framework to the story that makes it more accessible. For one thing, the crew of the Navy PT boat are more fully introduced, making the trip upriver seem more like a traditional “men on a mission” war movie. The new scenes involving the Playboy Bunnies at a ragged base-camp on the river are particularly wonderful, as you get a glimpse of not only the dehumanization of the women, but of the soldiers, as well, something I don’t think came across as clearly in the original, much shorter Playboy Bunny episode. In the entire original film, in fact, Lance, Chef, Clean and Chief seem, at times, mere narrative expedients—voices to keep us interested, to dispel some of the monotony of Willard’s funereal apprehension of Kurtz.

In the new version, more appropriately, these four characters are more carefully integrated into the story. These are the soldiers which Kurtz calls “dilettantes”, men divided by the insanity of the war, polluted by the “stench of lies” and ultimately sacrificed because of it. The implicit dialogue between Kurtz and the Vietnam War was always there, but now the stakes are more tangibly presented. The better use of the four accompanying soldiers, along with the lesson in French history at the newly-restored plantation scene, allow us to get a better sense of the film’s attitude toward the war. Whereas the original seemed to exist in a wholly psychological realm that often seemed only accidentally related to Vietnam, the new version keeps its psychological depth while allowing a structure of criticism to rise around it, framing it and commenting more locally on the war. Even Kurtz, reading from a Time Magazine in a more lucid scene with Willard, seems much less insane in his attitude toward the war and the war-makers in Washington.

By the time Willard finds Kurtz, the new film has laid out so many nice details about the war that, amazingly, I found myself much more understanding and even mildly supportive of Kurtz. For a moment, as he clutched that Time, I reflected that such a reading wouldn’t seem out of place in one of Oliver Stone’s splendidly ham-handed political pot-boilers, where the sinister political cabal is identified by the madman, the loner, the paranoid, who just might be telling the truth after all. The charm of the new version, however, is that even though we are given more rational criticism to grab onto, the real heart of darkness has not been raided. A little of the fog has lifted, a few shadows lightened, but the deeper questions remain, as they must, unanswered. “Apocalypse Now Redux” better limns the difficulties, problems, and maddening paradoxes we already knew the original contained, but they will remain, to our great delight, forever unsolvable.