Surreal madness of war

Peter Webber, director of Girl With a Pearl Earring

When I first saw Apocalypse Now, as a teenage schoolboy playing truant from my sports class, I was electrified by the film's darkness, insanity and its depth of literary reference. Apocalypse Now is utterly unlike any other war film. It seamlessly blends guns, napalm and TS Eliot to create a visceral portrait of the madness of war.

While many war films are a cheap holiday in other people's misery, there is something about the crazed surrealism of war that this film captures and no other film comes close to. There seems to be a complete lack of morality, which reflects the theme of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, upon which the film is based.

Apocalypse Now is one of those extraordinary films that has broken out of its own form and seeped into the culture. It has always been in the background throughout my life since I first saw it: it was one of the first films I owned on video, it was always on at parties, at friends' houses - it was a shared passion.

The making of the film has itself become a mythology, reflecting America's experience in Vietnam. As Francis Ford Coppola said: "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." There is something mad and chaotic and wonderful about this parallel.

Apocalypse Now works on several levels. Some scenes, such as the napalm attack, are pure spectacle. Others, such as the Ride of the Valkyries, are iconic moments. And Vittorio Storara's cinematography and use of different light sources and flares is amazing.

While there is no doubt that it is a flawed film - there are questions about the ending, for example - it is Coppola's most fascinating picture. It's the last great American film of the 1970s, an epitaph for that era: it's as if the film's ambitions are so great that it almost destroyed American cinema. It has a scale of artistic ambition unimaginable today.

As a director, I have been very inspired by Coppola's depth of vision, his energy and exuberance. Although Apocalypse Now's violent, demonic energy seems far removed from the mood of Girl With a Pearl Earring, both films reflect the powerful relationship between form and content possible in cinema.

Apocalypse Now's hallucinogenic and out-of-control feeling reflects the madness of the Vietnam war, while Girl With a Pearl Earring aims to mirror the silence of a Vermeer picture, to reflect its mystery and awe.