(NOTE: Here I'm publishing an essay that I actually wrote in Year 12. This was not a marked piece of coursework counting toward the English Literature A-Level, but was still a piece of work we were asked to complete. For this particular assignment we were discussing how and where Heart of Darkness's influence can be felt in Apocalypse Now; whilst the actual coursework involved comparing Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Laurie Lee's A Moment of War.* Never the less, this was a project that was still useful as well as interesting. Useful in that Apocalypse Now could be used as an interpretation of Heart of Darkness in the wider coursework essay; and interesting given my own fascination with literature/cinema! I'll admit I am rather proud of this essay, and having written it for school it might sound slightly more academic than anything else I might post? Anyway, I thought it would be an apt piece of work to publish as obviously it comes under my aim in starting a blog: discussing novels and films; and besides its something I've already written! I have not altered the essay at all; it is exactly as it was when I handed it in**. I hope you find it as interesting to read as I did to write!)
*I was tempted to briefly offer my thoughts on both these novels here. However, I feel it would be unfair to the authors to summarise my thoughts on their work in a single sentence; so I may come back to these books later.
**Lord knows how I got a decent mark for this essay when I repeat the word 'Ludicrous' in paragraph 4 about a hundred times! Oh well.
Film: Apocalypse Now
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Genre: American Epic War Film
Release: August 1979
Novel: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Themes: Civilisation, Imperialism, Racism
Published: February-April 1899 (Originally published as a three-part serial in Blackwood's Magazine)
Heart of Darkness (HoD) served as the source for director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 American epic war film Apocalypse Now; a film set during the Vietnam War and now widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Coppola used the same primary plot and themes of HoD, but shifted the story and setting from The Belgian Colony in the Congo, to The Vietnam War. As HoD is a searing indictment of colonialism, so Apocalypse Now similarly accuses the American war effort in Vietnam of hypocrisy, insanity and emptiness.
Hypocrisy in both Conrad’s company and the American army in Vietnam is highlighted in a similar style. The army (embodied by General Corman and Colonel Lucas,who give Willard his mission) pretends to be disturbed by the fact Colonel Kurtz has broken from their command; and in a similar manner, in HoD; The Manager feigns concern over Kurtz’s health. Willard see’s right through the army’s hypocritical facade and remarks to himself that ‘charging someone for murder out here was like handing out speeding tickets’. Both the Company and the Army want their respective “Kurtzes” dead, because both Kurtzes expose their motives and methods, and this again highlights the hypocrisy of the so called civilising forces in both stories. Just how far each Kurtz is willing to go to achieve their goals terrifies the Company and the Army respectively; who do not want their real goals to be revealed and reminded of; the wealth found in ivory in HoD and expanding America’s power in Apocalypse Now; and both instead want to keep up the facade of being philanthropic and civilising ‘light bringers’. Just as Conrad’s Kurtz brings in more ivory than all the other stations combined, his Vietnam counterpart is said to have kept winning battles and becoming stronger. The growing strength of each Kurtz unnerves and threatens their superiors. Both Kurtzes are arguably the methods and motives of the Company and the Army taken to each of their logical extremes; so much so that this terrifies the Company and the Army into wanting their version of Kurtz dead.
In both tales, operating beyond the constraints of civilised society for an extended period is portrayed too lead down the path to insanity. As both Marlow, and his Apocalypse Now alter ego-Willard, make their respective journeys up respective rivers; they are both witness to acts of absurdness and insanity. Acts of absurdness and insanity, which HoD divulges to be universal in occurring whenever man attempts to conquer other peoples, and finds himself without the safeguard of civilisation and the sanity that comes with it. So not only are both colonialism and interventionism portrayed as hypocritical, but unhinged and illogical. There are several scenes from HoD which highlight this ludicrous nature of western imperialism; scenes that have also been contextualised and updated into the Vietnam War setting of Apocalypse Now. As a first example of absurdness in both tales, when Marlow first arrives in the Belgian Congo, he witness acts he sees to be pointless and wasteful. A cliff face is being detonated to apparently make room for a railway track, but as Marlow perceives it the cliff is not in the way of anything! However, the ‘objectless blasting was all the work going on’. Everything in this scene is described as being equally as wasteful and pointless-‘pieces of decaying machinery’ and an ‘undersized railway-truck lying there on it’s back with it’s wheels in the air’. Whilst neither directly linked, nor a direct mirror of this scene; similar in that is also Willard’s first experience along his journey too Kurtz, there is a sequence in Apocalypse Now where texan Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore chooses between which of two VC strongholds to attack by picking the one that has a beach with better waves for surfing.
The ensuing scene, showing soldiers attempting to surf amidst enemy fire whilst a sea-side Vietnamese village is attacked simply to clear the beach for surfing; is a world away from the scene of pointless cliff detonation in HoD in terms of action and setting; but is just as ludicrous and obscene. Both scenes paint a picture of similar absurdness. Of proceedings that seem wasteful and ludicrous in equal measure; Men wasting not only ammunition but risking their lives just to get a chance to surf; and in HoD machinery and explosives being pointlessly used to clear way for a non-existent railway line. Both men in charge of these proceedings are also portrayed as being just as inane and preposterous as the scenes themselves. The company’s chief accountant can be compared too Colonel Kilgore. Marlow distinguishes the chief accountant as a ludicrous figure, describing him as a ‘miracle’ with ‘such an unexpected elegance that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision’. Colonel Kilgore is similarly painted as a figure of lunacy; standing bare-chest astride a beach, hardly flinching as shells detonate all around him. Whereas both these characters should stand out due to their absurdness; they in fact only seem at home amongst their equally ludicrous and farcical surroundings; further emphasising the bizarreness and wastefulness of each scene’s action.
An example of absurd behaviour in Apocalypse Now, that is more clearly a reflection of a scene in HoD, is when Willard and his men are sat in the boat, and can hear the sounds of B-52 Bombers taking part in a strike. However, neither the characters nor the viewer see these afore mentioned bombers; we only hear them in the distance. And, according to one of Willard’s men ‘Charlie don’t even see nor hear them’. The point is that these B-52’s don’t seem to be attacking anyone; rather they seem to just be pointlessly shelling the jungle. This scene of pointlessness directly mirrors that of a scene in HoD; where a French Warship is seen by Marlow also firing into the jungle-‘shelling into the bush’. Exactly like the B-52 strike; the French Ship is perceived as pointlessly ‘firing into a continent.’ Marlow writes that somebody on board the ship assured him there was a camp of enemy natives in the jungle; but like the B-52 strike no enemy can be seen. The ship is pointlessly firing it’s cannons into the jungle and making no difference too the impenetrable jungle nor seemingly affecting an unseen enemy-‘A tiny projectile would give a little screech-and nothing happened.’ Marlow himself comments that there was a ‘touch of insanity’ in the proceeding. Both attacks against unseen enemies are made to seem pointless and unreal; absurd and insane. Doomed Attempts to attack and conquer an impenetrable, unconquerable and alien jungle, which reflects the greater nature of not only African Colonialism and The Vietnam War in particular, but western imperialism itself; or so the message of both tales wants us to think.
Coppola was convinced by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that the book was an appropriate template in which to construct his anti Vietnam War critique. The reason for this being that, despite Coppola replacing European Colonialism with American Foreign Interventionism, these two ideals coming from two different societies still fall from the same tree. They stem from the same fundamental idea-that higher civilisations see it as their right to conquer and impose themselves and their ideals upon lesser developed peoples. This is the same whether it be Europeans attempting to control Africans in the Congo, or America seeing it as their responsibility to defend the Vietnamese from Communism and impose a democracy upon them. Thus, the message of Conrad’s book is still clear in Apocalypse Now; despite the changed setting. The message and detail in Conrad’s work is the same message of anti imperialism that Coppola also sought to tell, just in a different time and place. Coppola decided that the story of one man journeying up a river to take out another man who has gone insane due to his position of power was a suitably cinematic tale for his film to portray as well. In fact, both the story and themes of HoD were arguably never intended to belong to any particular context, time or civilisation. The text begins with Marlow, the narrator, comparing the European colonists in the Congo too the Roman civilisers arriving in Britain for the first time; underlining that there is a universal significance too the message and themes of HoD; which allows these two civilising parties too also be compared to the American’s in Vietnam. This is exactly what Apocalypse Now does. The same hypocrisy and absurdness; applicable to the civilising missions of both the Ancient Romans and the Belgian Colonists; Coppola intended to also make apparent in America’s intervention in Vietnam; the universal nature of the book’s message allowing him to do so. The film portrays the American presence during the Vietnam war to be yet another version of this hypocritical and nonsensical western imperialism.
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