Heart of Human Darkness

Rating: Null/10 (18 May 2001)

Going up a river also means going up to the source, the origins...Willard/Sheen' trip up the Nung River leads us to a unknown world, the origins of a human personal madness in the same time of the discovering of the symptoms of an greater scale disaster provoked by a war, at every step of the journey. With Willard's eyes, we are discovering the psychological pattern that can lead a man to alienation...Much, much more than a simple war movie (Vietnam's just a background), Coppola's ultimate masterpiece gets us to a no-human's land (let's remember Chef's speech about where he would like to see his soul finally go, and where he wouldn't). The Patrol Boat also gathers the passive audience of a drama that is played on both shores of the river. Witnessing it without being able to change something about it ("Never get out of the boat"), they are only entitled to follow a path that goes strangely up a river and meet the odd figures of the whole lie... This film is definitely a powerful not-to-be-missed-by-any-so-called-great-movie-addicts Classic...Thus is my judgment about a film that had totally defeated me!