One Saturday evening a few weeks ago we watched – I should say re-watched – Apocalypse Now. This is a movie that you can only watch every few years (my husband would disagree with that) because of its intensity. It is set in Vietnam during the war. Briefly, Army Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is assigned the unenviable task of seeking out a rogue officer – Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) - entrenched somewhere in Cambodia, who is treated as a god by local native people and who has probably gone mad. Willard’s mission: terminate Kurtz’s command with extreme prejudice.
The action follows Willard and his crew along the river leading to Kurtz’s hideout. Along the way they meet with Lt. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who intimidates the enemy with “The Ride of the Valkyries” blaring from his helicopter during bombing raids. During the trip along the river, Willard reads the dossier on Kurtz and begins to get inside his head. They finally make it to their destination, but not without losing all but three men. One of them is killed at the compound, leaving two to return to Viet Nam after Willard accomplishes his mission.
After the movie it occurred to me that we have the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, on which the movie is loosely based, but I had never read it. So, a few days ago I took care of that oversight.
Although the book is set at the end of the 19th century in the Congo Free State and the movie is set during the Viet Nam war, there were remarkable consistencies. For Europeans or Americans the middle of Africa and the middle of Southeast Asia can be frightening, unfamiliar places. A trip up a river in a jungle is so unlike the world these men came from (Marlow in the book, Willard in the movie). Being in a strange environment can play havoc with everything you thought you knew.
There are differences in the story too. Willard’s mission is to kill Kurtz and Marlow’s is to retrieve the ivory that Kurtz has amassed at the company’s station. And, there have been so many rumors as to Kurtz’s health (physical and mental) that Marlow is sent to see what shape he’s in. Near the inner station where Kurtz is, Marlow and his crew are attacked by natives on the shore shooting arrows. This scene is in the book and the movie with the same result of one of the crew being killed by a spear thrown from the riverbank.
Once Marlow gets to the station, he is met by a Russian that he calls the harlequin because his clothes are patched so much he looks like a clown. This character in the movie is a photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) who has come under the spell of the god-like Kurtz (“I tell you,” he [the Russian] cried, “this man has enlarged my mind.”)
Willard accomplishes his mission of assassinating Kurtz and Marlow accomplishes his, but also takes the fatally ill Kurtz with him on his boat. On the way back, Kurtz dies. His last words are the same in the book and the movie: “the horror… the horror.”
And what is this horror, this heart of darkness? Many things. The wilderness, the darkness of the deepest jungles, the terrible darkness of the heart of man. Imperialism in Africa and interventionism in Viet Nam are the darkness of nations against nations, the horrid treatment of man against man. For after all, man, wherever he is, cannot escape the effects of original sin, the darkness of the soul.
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