The film Apocalypse Now, first released in 1979, is now recognized as Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's 19th century novella Heart of Darkness, the film tells the story of a journey upriver into a threatening interior where the protagonists face the challenge of attack from an unseen and savage enemy, disease, madness and death. The film can be ‘read’ from a number of different perspectives: as representing the USA's conflict with Vietnam, as a journey into man's soul or, from a psychoanalytic perspective, as representing the unconscious. Derived from this perspective, the author questions why Apocalypse Now continues to have such resonance. Working with Matte Blanco's theory of the mind which he saw as manifesting a form of logic, and which he called bi‐logic, the author interrogates three significant scenes from the film and argues that they can be understood to represent increasingly deeper levels of the unconscious. It is this evocation which makes the film unforgettable.
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness by Call Number: ebook / see chapter on Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse NowISBN: 9780195159950Publication Date: 2004-03-11Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's fictional account of a journey up the Congo river in 1890, raises important questions about colonialism and narrative theory. This casebook contains materials relevant to a deeper understanding of the origins and reception of this controversial text,including Conrad's own story "An Outpost of Progress," together with a little-known memoir by one of Conrad's oldest English friends, a brief history of the Congo Free State by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a parody of Conrad by Max Beerbohm. A wide range of theoretical approaches are alsorepresented, examining Conrad's text in terms of cultural, historical, textual, stylistic, narratological, post-colonial, feminist, and reader-response criticism. The volume concludes with an interview in which Conrad compares his adventures on the Congo with Mark Twain's experiences as aMississippi pilot.