Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now
I have been spending a lot of time re-reading Heart of Darkness, or actually a lot of time thinking about Heart of Darkness and Marlow's Romans narrative. It's been about a week and I am only eight pages though. In an effort to get back to the satisfaction that I get from actually turning pages in a book I picked up Notes By Eleanor Coppola. It is her journal from the three years when her husband was making Apocalypse now in the Philippines.
So far it is pretty good although the Amazon reviews are low. I think it'll be interesting to read along with Heart of Darkness for no other reason than the appeal of knowing that Francis Ford Coppola probably thought about the book about a billion times more than anyone on this blog combined ever will. I wonder with all of that thinking if he is still as conflicted and confused as me? Oh well, back to staring at page eight.
posted by Matthew at
2:43 PM
3 Comments:
That's an extraordinary image. Where did you get it? Is it a photo or a painting?
I think Conrad is trying to evoke that response from the reader rather than convey a message. In the frame story The Unidentified Narrator says
"The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine."
The Unidentified Narrator also says, as Marlow begins to speak, "we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
For Conrad, the kernel of the story is outside the shell and the experiences are inconclusive as well. On one level it’s “the method,” I think.
Google image searched for the Brando pic. It's from the end of I think of AN when Kurtz is waiting for Willard to come assasinate him. Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
Marlon Brando was supposed to show up to the Philippines ready to shoot AN as a Green Beret. Instead he showed up really fat. Coppola wanted to use this to the stories advantage as a sign of Kurtz's excess but Brando wanted the director to shoot around it and camouflage his fatness.
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