Heart of Darkness: Apocalypse of Darkness  
by Corina and Francesco

Watching the film "Apocalypse Now" after reading the book “Heart of Darkness", we have noticed some scenes and events described in the book like the ones inserted by Francis Ford Coppola in the screenplay of his film, for example the scene of the arrows' attack, where, near Kurtz's camp site, the steamer is attacked by some natives - Africans in the book, Cambodians in the film - with fake arrows and the helmsman is hit by a pike..

Other scenes that are similar are: the meeting between Marlow and the  Russian boy - between Willard and an American photo reporter in the film - at Kurt'z station, where Marlow/Willard asks some information about Kurtz to his interlocutor; the cruise on  the river, with the mysterius and dangerous vegetation around it.

Some dialogues too are completely identical. For example we can find  some sentences said by the Russian boy in the book - in the film he is an American photoreporter - like: "A voice! A voice", "You don't talk with that man, you listen to him" (reffered to Kurtz), "One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles.They are simple people"(after the arrows' attack), that are the same in the film.Truly important the last sentence said by Kurtz in both works: “ The horror! The horror!".
Also the characters of the book have a correspondent in the film.The  following scheme posts for every book's character his film's correspondent:

BOOK - FILM

Marlow (protagonist) - Willard (protagonist, an American soldier);
Kurtz - Kurtz (an American officer);
the steamer helmsman, an African civilian - the steamer helmsman, an American black soldier;
African tribes - Cambodian/Vietnamese tribes.

  

Before analizing the contents that the two works have in common, it is necessary to have an idea of the film. Apocalypse Now is the story of an American soldier, Willard, during the Vietnam war.
Willard has a mission to accomplish : he has to go to Cambodia where an American deserter, colonel Kurtz has founded a sort of "personal state" where he uses some "insane" methods.
Willard starts his mission and he goes up the river (to reach Kurtz's site) with a steamer and four American soldiers.
During the cruise Willard and his crew will know the atrocities  and the violence of war.
In some events (the arrows' attack, for example) three of the four soldiers are killed, and only Willard and a withe soldier arrive at Kurtz’s site. Here Willard, after meeting the photo reporter and Kurtz, completes his mission: Kurtz is dead.

So, unquestionably, there are many analogies between  Conrad's book "Heart of Darkness" and Coppola's film "Apocalypse Now" , even if the time where they were made is completely different, because the two works are immortal, always of-the-moment, and the sensations we feel while reading the book are approximately the same that we feel while viewing the film. The sensations about the mysteries of the human nature, about the presences of evil and good in every person. These feelings show us the messages that are in the two masterpieces; messages that are really important to comprehend  what the authors want to tell us.

There was madness of war and there still is madness of war and the hope for lasting peace in the future is nearly unrealistic, but we all know the horror of war. That’s what F. F. Coppola and Joseph Conrad maybe wanted to point out. So “Apocalypse Now” is a good movie, because “Heart of Darkness” is a good base for this film.The movie is sending us the same massage of colonialism as the novel does.

The topic about cultural diffrences and about what is happening if two different cultures have to live together is a serious one, because it’s still hard for people to understand other cultures and to accept them in the end. One reason for that is that they don’t make any efforts to get to know anything else, because everything new can be bad, but you always have to think about how wonderful discovering different cultures can be. It’s wrong to destroy other styles of living just because you fear what they could be like and that they might change you as well.The reason why F. F. Coppola had chosen the novel “Heart of Darkness” as a good base for his film, is that the book gives you an impression what the problems during this time were. At first you’ll have to understand the book to find out that the old problems are still present. These problems on our world like rasicsm, the prejudices towards foreigners, war and lots more aren’t solved yet. The context could take place everywhere you want and in any time. The film shows the old problems in a new way.People need other people they can talk to. They need to be accepted and to be heard, otherwise the loneliness could lead to blindness. The evil sides that you’ll find everywhere in the world and the bad things that can occur in every corner can drive you crazy and make you mad. That mad that one day you won’t recognize yourself. And that’s what happened to Marlow/ Willard. His evil side breaks out during times of isolation from his actual culture, because his way of living and his culture confronts another.

That happened often in our history. Since there is human life on earth, there is also the war of cultures, what is exactly what is shown in the film and what you can also find in the book. Whenever fundamentally different cultures meet there is a fear of losing or mixing up your identity, but that is also what leads us to discover more about our true selfes and if your mind is not strong enough to get through all that you’ll get sad or angry or just mad.

During World War II, Germany tried to overrun Europe and to get all the power over it. Another example of ignorance an fear that had caused the death of people just because they were different and because they didn’t accept them and didn’t want to learn why and how they are different. That’s also the way the black people in he book and the poor people in the film were trated. All those gruesome attacks in the book, the movie and of course in our history as well were motivated mainly by the fear of cultural intermixing. Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness” and Francis Coppola’s movie, ”Apocalypse Now” are both stories about a man who is on his journey to himself to his thoughts and feelings about different things. It’s the story about he trip into yoursel and the attempt to understand what you find there trying to make out your real fears; the fear of failure, death and madness.

Another reason why F. F. Coppola had chosen this book could be that he wants to show us the presence of human madness when men live in extreme conditions, without any institutional rule, in other words the fight between the two sides of men, the wild and the rational one.

We can catch the sensation of madness along the trip of the steamer towards Kurtz’s station (into the wilderness) , with the slow and unrelenting change of mood of the crew. In the film the two young boys are extremely nervous, they kill some people without any motivation, in the book the the cannibals are so hungry that they could devour  all the crew (but they didn't do). However the  protagonist - Marlow in the book / Willard in the film - changes completely only in the end,  in different ways. Marlow seems to accept the insane methods of Kurtz, but he didn't do anything brutal, on the contary, Willard falls into the violence, he kills Kurtz and becomes like him, his wild side wins. The changes start during  the boat trip, that resembles a trip into the human nature, and these changes finish with the meeting with Kurtz.

Kurtz character represents the maximum, highest expression of this thing, the white man that goes into a wild region and  forgets his"civilized" nature , he becomes another person, ruthless, savage, he becomes like the wild nature around him.

Resources:

The book “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad

The movie “Apocalypse Now” by F.F. Coppola

by Corina and Francesco