In Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, both Joseph Conrad and Francis Ford Coppola create similar statements through their creations as they both centralize their views upon the effects of environmental changes that affect the human condition. The film Apocalypse Now vaguely reflects a similar message pursued by Conrad’s novella, due to the difference in time period, place setting, and circumstances in which the film was created. Conrad wrote his novella during British colonization, focusing upon imperialism. Coppola’s film similarly focused upon the barbaric nature of man, which demonstrates the insanity of the Vietnam War. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad centers his main focus upon the journey of Marlow, a sailor, who travels into the depth of the Congo River as captain to meet Kurtz, an ivory tradesman. Coppola’s film directs a similar connection to the central character, sharing the same journey of a man traveling into the depths of an unknown wilderness. In Apocalypse Now, Willard is assigned to travel the Nung River of Vietnam, locate Kurtz position, and terminate his command. Throughout Apocalypse Now, Coppola also portrays similar themes of imperialism and the corruption of man. In both works, Conrad and Coppola direct this corruption through the character of Kurtz. Upon meeting Kurtz, both central characters share similar actions during the scene, while also differing in the description of Kurtz character. Conrad and Coppola incorporate this scene, to highlight the effects of evil that are reflected through both physical attributes as well as mental. The manifestation of Kurtz’s character reflects similar attributes that display the tragedy of losing his identity as the jungle devours him.
In Heart of Darkness...
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...cene, his barbaric nature portrays an intense power.
In both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, both authors develop the scene in order to highlight the evolution of Kurtz’s character. Each scene reflects similar themes of the animalistic nature brought out of man. Kurtz manifestation reflects the effects that temptations have upon us. In Heart of Darkness, the hunger for material wealth and the sacrifice of blood displays society’s imperial ideology. Conrad uses this scene to show the hidden evil within man, and creates a physical representation of the mental distortion caused by malicious acts. While Conrad indirectly voices the absurdity of war, Coppola uses Kurtz as an example of a soldier driven into insanity by war. Though Coppola fails to show the physical effect of insanity, the scene of darkness that engulfs him displays a similar effect.
Kurtz in both works is surprising very similar; in Apocalypse Now Walt Kurtz is a Colonel in the United States Army. Kurtz is a highly recognized and admired military officer, "Walt Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this country has ever produced. He was a brilliant and outstanding in every way…” and has a very successful career in the army (Coppola 1979). The Kurtz in Heart of Darkness is a successful business man, politician, and explorer. This Kurtz wears the mask of many faces but all the characters that mention Kurtz treat him like a god. It’s these traits that cultivate curiosity within Marlow and Captain Willard. Ma...
In 1979, Francis Coppola released a film that he said he hoped "would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war" (as quoted in Hagen 230). His film, Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, is the story of Captain Benjamin Willard's (Martin Sheen) journey to the interior of the jungle of Southeastern Asia for the purpose of executing his orders to track down Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Once Kurtz is located, Willard is to "terminate his command with extreme prejudice" because Kurtz has raised an army of deserters and natives, whom he rules over like a fanatical war lord- When Willard finally reaches Kurtz's compound and meets him, he discovers a man who has descended into primitive barbarism. From the beginning of their encounter, Kurtz knows why Willard was sent to find him and makes no effort to stop Willard from slaying him with a machete. With his mission accomplished, Willard boards the boat that will take him. back to civilization.
Marlow and Willard seem like two epitomes of every people in the world. They are nobodies and have not strong power. However, they still have some difference. Marlow is a bystander but Willard is soldier. So he is both a bystander and a firsthand participator in the war. For Willard, “When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle” (IMDb 1). Hence, Willard has a double identity to have a profound reflection of inhumane war and frangible human nature. Meanwhile, the film also keeps Kurtz’s name in Heart of Darkness. The novella and the film all introduce Kurtz by other people’s talking or other materials to create mystery. Kurtz has different backgrounds in the two works but they all come from the traditional civilized society. In the novella, Kurtz has European descent “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (Conrad 4). In the film, Kurtz graduates from West Point and gains countless medals. Two Kurtz are convinced by people that they are civilized people, but the cruel realizations change them. Their behaviors are like wild animals and lose reason and morality. It is the decay of humanitarian in the realization because utterly false and hypocrisy social mores lead the evil human
One of the many similarities between Heart of Darkness and "Apocalypse Now" is race. Joseph Conrad and Francis Coppola both use white men as the characters that have dominance (Bradley). The white men not only dominate their respective crews, but also the peoples native to the country the white men are visiting. The character Conrad uses, Marlow, and Coppola uses his character, Willard, both look at the natives as though white men are the civilized culture and the native people are the savage culture (Franklin). Both works also reflect the theory that "civilized" white men that go into an uncivilized land become savage and do not return to white civilization. An example of this that is in the book is MarlowÕs appointment with the doctor. The doctor measures Marlow's skull to compare its size at the present time to the size of his skull upon his return from the Congo. The thought is that a civilized manÕs skull is a different size than a savage's skull. When Marlow asks the doctor how what the results of this test have been in the past, the doctor comments that there are none because no civilized person has ever returned from the Congo. An example of this in the movie is when Willard faces his own personality of whether or not to complete his soldierly mission of killing Kurtz or to abort it. If he completes the mission he is still civil, if he does not, the Vietnam jungle has conquered him. The first soldier that is sent to kill Kurtz did not kill Kurtz, but in fact became one of his followers.
While there are differences between Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Apocalypse Now!, and Joseph Conrad novel, The Heart of Darkness, Kurtz and his influence on the main character remain very similar. Both the movie and novel depict a protagonist’s struggle to travel upstream in a ship in search of a man named Kurtz. While doing so, Marlow (The Heart of Darkness)/Willard (Apocalypse Now!) become progressively fascinated with Kurtz. Kurtz is claimed to have a profound influence on his followers and is becoming a huge influence on Marlow/Willard as well.
Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now takes the audience into a tense and mystical journey through the Vietnam War. This long and agonizing journey is seen through the eyes of Captain Willard played by Martin Sheen. Sheen. Captain Willard is assigned to a mission that relies on him to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, who is played by Marlon Brando. Although Apocalypse Now is an examination of the many terrors of society that are connected to the Vietnam War, Coppola plays much of his film off Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness. Conrad's story focuses on Captain Marlow who is parallel to Willard and the Colonel Kurtz possesses many of the same characteristics in both works. In both works, the Captain is to find the Colonel, but Coppola makes a very significant change in his film. This significant change is the transition of Captain Marlow assigned to find Colonel Kurtz in the Congo, to Captain Willard assigned to assassinate Colonel Kurtz in Cambodia. The fact that Willard has now become an assassin of Kurtz is very important in Coppola's over all point. It especially is important for the last ten minutes of the movie when Willard actually kills Kurtz. The final scenes of the film consist of Kurtz' reading of the poem "The Hollow Men" and the interplay of Willard killing Kurtz while the Cambodian Natives kill a water buffalo in a ritualistic setting. These changes and departures of the ending of Heart of Darkness are made so Coppola can make his point about the Vietnam War and society. The point being that the Vietnam War was completely meaningless and a lost cause among several others. However, as will be shown, these points come in conflict with eachother and are difficult to ...
In Heart of Darkness, all of Joseph Conrad’s characters seem to have morally ambiguous tendencies. The most prominently morally ambiguous character is Kurtz, whose distance from society changes his principles, and leads him to lose all sense of decorum. Conrad takes a cynical tone when describing Marlow's journey. Marlow's voyage through the Congo gives him insight to the horrific, dehumanizing acts that his company and Kurtz conduct. Conrad creates a parallel with the tone of his writing and the misanthropic feelings that the main character experiences. Furthermore, Conrad creates a frame story between Kurtz and Marlow, adding to the symbolism and contrast between contextual themes of light and dark, moral and immoral, and civilization and wilderness. After being sent on a horrific journey into the Congo of Africa, as an agent for the Company to collect ivory, Marlow finds the infamous and mysterious Kurtz. Kurtz, who has totally withdrawn from society, and has withdrawn
Throughout Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad points to the hypocrisy and horrors associated with colonialism. The half-English, half-French Kurtz is the main vehicle used to convey his theme of European colonialism, as “all [of] Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (Conrad 164). It was Kurtz who goes to Africa for the "sake of loot, and thus becomes a great literary symbol for the decadence of colonialism" (Zins 63). With his help, Marlow dissects the reasoning behind colonialism, eventually seeing its evil nature.
Although one is a book and the other is a movie, both Apocalypse Now which is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad portray very detailed scenes by using various elements in their respective works. A scene is particular that stands out is the death of the helmsman which contains many similarities but also many differences between the two works. Similarities like the iconic fog that appears serve to convey a message of the helpless that the characters feel because at the mystery of their surroundings and of the uncertainly of what their tasks.
In the opening scenes of the documentary film "Hearts of Darkness-A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," Eleanor Coppola describes her husband Francis's film, "Apocalypse Now," as being "loosely based" on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Indeed, "loosely" is the word; the period, setting, and circumstances of the film are totally different from those of the novella. The question, therefore, is whether any of Conrad's classic story of savagery and madness is extant in its cinematic reworking. It is this question that I shall attempt to address in this brief monograph by looking more closely at various aspects of character, plot, and theme in each respective work.
The true meaning of varying interpretations comes alive when one compares the two film versions of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now have the same basic outline and underlying themes, however the plots, characters, settings, time, purposes, and points of view differ enough to create two extremely different effects and two entirely opposite movies. Both movies depict an insanity: of man in Heart of Darkness and of war in Apocalypse Now. It is ironic that Heart of Darkness, the movie replica of the novel, is a boring, slow-paced flop of a production, while Apocalypse Now, a loosely based film, had great success and audience appeal. Heart of Darkness is a 1994 Turner Network Television (TNT) Pictures made for TV movie, directed by Nicolas Roeg. It is based so exactly on the Joseph Conrad novel that the differences between the two are almost indiscernible. As in the novel, the Nellie floats on the Thames River while Marlow, played by Tim Roth, tells of his journey into Africa. He is employed by an English trading company and assigned to sail up the Congo to the inner ivory station. He takes along Mfumu, a black native cannibal, as a companion. They encounter strange situations with company managers, the accountant, natives, cannibals, a sunken ship, and natural disasters. All along the way, Marlow hears of Kurtz, the corrupted chief of the Inner Station, played by John Malkovich, and becomes obsessed with finding him. As he nears the station, natives attack the boat and kill Mfumu. Marlow meets a Harlequin who tells him personal stories about Kurtz and his methods of becoming both admired and feared by the native tribe. Wh...
In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" the reader learns more and more about human nature as Marlow, Captain Willard, go farther and farther up the river in search of Kurtz. An evil side lies within every man, but this evil remains repressed by society. When moving up the river and farther away from civilization, the evil side begins to break out. Whenever basically different cultures meet we are led to discover ourselves and can even drive us to perceived madness.
"Heart of Darkness , which follows closely the actual events of Conrad's Congo journey, tells of the narrator's fascination by a mysterious white man, Kurtz, who, by his eloquence and hypnotic personality, dominates the brutal tribesmen around him. Full of contempt for the greedy traders who exploit the natives, the narrator cannot deny the power of this figure of evil who calls forth from him something approaching reluctant loyalty."[1]
The main character in Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, isKurtz. Kurtz no longer obeys the authority of his superiors who believe that he has become too extreme and has come to employ "unsound methods" (Coppola, 1979; Longman, 2000). Marlow is sent to retrieve Kurtz from the evil influences in the Congo, and a wild journey on a tainted river ensues. Along the way, Marlow learns about the real Kurtz and finds himself identifying with and becoming dangerously fond of the man.
Conrad uses the character of Marlow to make use of his own thoughts and views about the people in the Congo. He feels pity for them as he sees them falling down carrying heavy packages and Kurtz commanding them like a batallion of troups. This sight angers Marlow and when he gets to Kurtz, it’s too late. Even he has been pulled in by the darkness. Conrad makes an effective distinction between Marlow and Kurtz.