Such a great adaptation of Heart of Darkness

Rating: 8/10 (20 April 2006)

It carries the tone of voice that narrates the book into the jungle of Vietnam and into the wild-eyed look of Martin Sheen and Dennis Hopper and the mystical morbidity surrounding Colonel Kurtz.(I don't say Marlon Brando because after watching the documentary, "Hearts of Darkness," I am skeptical as to how much credit Brando is due for that quality). The tone of voice I'm talking about is brooding and dramatic without being overbearing: "Everybody gets what he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. They sent it up with room service." It is indulgent without being narrow and alienating. A good example of is Hopper's indulgence into aphoristic madness, generously installing lines written by T.S. Eliot and Rudyard Kipling into his stony monologues: "I mean, the man's a geniussometimes he'll walk right by you without even saying a word, and sometimes he'll grab you by the collar and say "did you know that 'if' is the middle word in 'life'if you can hold your head while all around you they are losing theirs" and then "I mean he's a wise man, he's a great man; I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas" (The first one's Kipling, the second one's Eliot.