Conrad would have been amazed...

Press, 21 November 1979, Page 19

Conrad would have been amazed...

Joseph Conrad turned a tinpot steamboat, a jungle river, and a wraithiike madman into a minor masterpiece in 1902. Hollywood has added more bang for the buck — quite a few’ explosions are needed to cover costs of S3OM — and transformed the novel “Heart of Darkness” into “Apocalypse Now,” a Vietnam War movie. Conrad would have been amazed. maybe even amused. Director Francis Ford Coppola has put his actors on a gunboat in search of Marlon Brando, a deranged Green Beret holed up in Cambodia. Conrad had his narrator, Marlow, going in search of the original Mr Kurtz, a crazed ivory hunter. Whatever the film’s merits — critics have variously seen it as a masterpiece in its own right and a piece of gibberish from up the river — the novel on which it is loosely based still offers insight into South-east Asian misadventures. Even if there is a world of mystery between Conrad's Mr Kurtz and the quirky mumbler portrayed by Brando,, the allusions V

to Western civilisation losing its way on strange ground fairly leap off the page. They never pin down the causes of Kurtz’s madness (in the movie, the American madness), but they point to it. In the book, “the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion,” Marlow says. Ivory hunters pillage the jungle, as bombs and napalm will in the future. Civilisation in the form of a “begrimed steamboat” had a sure way of flummoxing the natives — the screech of a steam w’histle . . . "They dodged the flying terror of the sound,” Marlow says. In “Apocalypse Now.” an American colonel w’ields pow’er with a different sound. The strains of Wagner blast at full volume from his deadly helicopters on a swoop-and-kill raid . . . The colonel says Wagner scares the heif out of his targets. “We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart

of darkness,” Marlow says, remembering how the “little begrimed steamboat” chugged upriver “like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico . . . between the high walls of our winding way.” Marlow calls his sur-' roundings “an empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.” The great silence is gone right from the start in the movie, as the bombs fall. As the jungle seems to close behind the • boat, shutting off retreat, Marlow watches the natives and wonders if they are somehow him. ■ “That was the worst of it, the suspicion of their not being inhuman,” he says. “They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.” Had Kurtz felt the same before stepping over the edge? One of the strengths of Conrad's book is that we never really know. The mystery remains even as

the clues mount up. “Apocalypse Now” will probably stand or falter on how well the mystery is maintained, and how much it adds to the war story. “The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own,” Marlow says. “That was the reflection that made you creepy all over.” Then Kurtz’s aide comes into the picture, and he

By

STAN DARLING

puts a few pieces together with the warning that understanding may never come. “He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land — I mean literally,” he tells Marlow. “You can't understand. How could you, with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you. stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scan-

dal and gallows and lunatic asylums — how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude, silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion?” American commanders in the jungle seemed just as remote from the stirrings of public opinion.

“His nerves went wrong,” the aide says of Kurtz. “He presided at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites . . . offered up to him.” Kurtz had been working on a report meant to guide the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. His garbled report “had the unbounded power of eloquence,” his aide says, but its postscript gave away part of the unravell-

ing of his boss — “Exterminate all the brutes!” it said. The movie Kurtz, with his loyal Montagnard soldiers, has set up a renegade fighting force, a seemingly-sense’iess killing machine. “Whatever he was, he was not common,” Marlow says. “I can’t forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm- he was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him.” Like many Americans, the aide had not meditated over his devotion to Kurtz and his activities. “Glamour urged him on,” Marlow says, “glamour kept him unscathed. It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism.” The aide responded with bravado, even when he knew he had gone too far to turn back — “Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage.” The light at the end of his tunnel was weak, but he still thought it was there. Kurtz hadn't wanted things the way they were, but didn’t know how to stop. “This man suffered too much,” Marlow says. “He hated all this and

somehow he couldn’t get awav.” There are few excuses even with that knowledge — “To speak plainly, he raided the country,” Marlow says. “He came to them with thunder and lightning, you know. He could be very terrible.” Marlow says the jungle had exacted its own vengeance on Kurtz for his invasion. The wilderness “had whispered things to him about himself which he did not know. The whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.” It “echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core,” In the end, Kurtz had a soul "satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.” “Sometimes, he was contemptibly childish,” Marlow says. “He desired to have kings meet him at railwav stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things.” Despite what he was doing in private. Kurtz insisted in public: “Of course you must take care of the motives — right motives — always.” At the same time, Marlow has a grudging admiration for him. “He had something to say, he said it. After ail, his was the

expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper.” Ag he nears death, Kurtz seems to know finally what he has done (“The horror. The horror.”). Or does he? “Never mind,” he says. “I’ll carry my ideas out yet — I will return. I’ll show you what can be done.” We may have made a mistake in Vietnam this time, we may have lost. Next time . . . Footnote: Although most Of "Apocalypse Now” is based on Conrad’s story, the unexpected ending (the young officer kills Kurtz, even after he has fallen under the maverick colonel’s spell) is based on Sir James Frazer’s “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.” Frazer’s work, originally published in 12 volumes is seen in Kurtz’s study in its edited edition late in the movie. Native kings were often murdered by those who loved them, Frazer said, because their followers believed that power would pass from the ailing king to the stronger killer. Willard (Marlow) kills Kurtz and assumes his power. Conrad let his madman die a natural, if horrible, death. His powers — if he had any left — went with him.