Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

Here you can find an interesting analysis of the novella and the movie version compared.

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Apocalypse Now

« My film is not on Vietnam... my film is Vietnam. » (Francis Ford Coppola)

LIGHTS AND SHADES OF THE SOUL: APOCALYPSE NOW


Apocalypse Now is a 1979 drama movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

It tells a fictional (made-up) story that takes place during the Vietnam War. It tells the story of an Army Captain who is sent on a boat deep into the jungle to capture a Special Forces colonel who has gone insane.

It was partly based on Joseph Conrad's novel about colonialism, Heart of Darkness.

Plot
U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard has returned to Saigon; a seasoned veteran, he is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers approach him with a special mission: go up-river into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces.
They state that Kurtz, once considered a model officer and future general, has allegedly gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia.
Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and/or recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and "terminate... with extreme prejudice."
Willard studies the intelligence files during the boat ride to the river entrance and learns that Kurtz, isolated in his compound, has assumed the role of a warlord and is worshipped by the natives and his own loyal men.

After arriving at Kurtz' outpost, Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an air strike on the village if he does not return. They are met by a borderline-psychotic freelance photographer (Hopper) who explains Kurtz's greatness and philosophical skills to provoke his people into following him.

Kurtz wishes to die at Willard's hands, and Willard, having subsequently granted Kurtz his wish, is offered the chance to succeed him in his warlord-demigod role. Juxtaposed with a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz's chamber during one of his message recordings, and kills him with a machete.

Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror... the horror," a line taken directly from Conrad's novella.


Cast:



• Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard

• Marlon Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

• Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore

• Harrison Ford as Colonel Lucas

• Dennis Hopper as American Photojournalist

HoD (?)

It stands for "Heart of Darkness"

Conrad’s works, Heart of Darkness in particular, provide a bridge between Victorian values and the ideals of modernism. It stands on the dividing line between the TRADITIONAL and the MODERN NOVEL containing elements of both. His adventurous life took him to exotic places but he did not write adventurous stories , rather the settings where were complex mental state could be presented. GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION WAS A SYMBOL FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ISOLATION.

Like their Victorian predecessors, these novels rely on traditional ideas of heroism, which are nevertheless under constant attack in a changing world and in places far from England.

Women occupy traditional roles as arbiters of domesticity and morality, yet they are almost never present in the narrative; instead, the concepts of “home” and “civilization” exist merely as hypocritical ideals, meaningless to men for whom survival is in constant doubt.

While the threats that Conrad’s characters face are concrete ones—illness, violence, conspiracy—they nevertheless acquire a philosophical character. Like much of the best modernist literature produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, Heart of Darkness is as much about alienation, confusion, and profound doubt as it is about imperialism.

Imperialism is nevertheless at the center of Heart of Darkness. By the 1890s, most of the world’s “dark places” had been placed at least nominally under European control, and the major European powers were stretched thin, trying to administer and protect massive, far-flung empires. Cracks were beginning to appear in the system: riots, wars, and the wholesale abandonment of commercial enterprises all threatened the white men living in the distant corners of empires. Things were clearly falling apart. Heart of Darkness suggests that this is the natural result when men are allowed to operate outside a social system of checks and balances: power, especially power over other human beings, inevitably corrupts. At the same time, this begs the question of whether it is possible to call an individual insane or wrong when he is part of a system that is so thoroughly corrupted and corrupting. Heart of Darkness, thus, at its most abstract level, is a narrative about the difficulty of understanding the world beyond the self, about the ability of one man to judge another.

Although Heart of Darkness was one of the first literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial activities, it was initially read by critics as anything but controversial. While the book was generally admired, it was typically read either as a condemnation of a certain type of adventurer who could easily take advantage of imperialism’s opportunities, or else as a sentimental novel reinforcing domestic values: Kurtz’s Intended, who appears at the novella’s conclusion, was roundly praised by turn-of-the-century reviewers for her maturity and sentimental appeal. Conrad’s decision to set the book in a Belgian colony and to have Marlow work for a Belgian trading concern made it even easier for British readers to avoid seeing themselves reflected in Heart of Darkness. Although these early reactions seem ludicrous to a modern reader, they reinforce the novella’s central themes of hypocrisy and absurdity.

At the time Heart of Darkness was written, the British Empire was at its peak, and Britain controlled colonies and dependencies all over the planet. The popular saying that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” was literally true. The main topic of Heart of Darkness is imperialism, a nation’s policy of exerting influence over other areas through military, political, and economic coercion. The narrator expresses the mainstream belief that imperialism is a glorious and worthy enterprise. Indeed, in Conrad’s time, “empire” was one of the central values of British subjects, the fundamental term through which Britain defined its identity and sense of purpose.

Linkers

Here you can view a short list of the most common linkers:

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The Importance of Being Ernest

Ecco il link all'e-text della commedia di Oscar Wilde "The Importance of Being Ernest".

In 2002 the movie featuring Rupert Everet, Colin Firth and Judi Dench: