Original movie mythology

Rating: 8/10 (4 June 2002)

This movie rockets beyond the hype. We are watching mythical creatures come to life. Every exchange here, every character has 2dary & 3diary meanings: Dennis Hopper is not just a photojournalist or just a sleazy sycophant: he's the insane harlequin ("The man's enlarged my mind!") in Heart of Darkness & he's Sean Flynn, the son of another mythical movie giant, of Dispatches.
Willard's narrative insists that the more he saw of them, the more he hated lies. Marlowe in "Heart" can't bring himself to tell the truth, so he lies about Kurtz's last words, telling his "intended" they were her name, instead of what we know they were, thus nailing himself to the heart of darkness. The movie is a journey up river & to the center of the earth.
Maybe "Now" is even the retelling of the Odyssey: Willard in search of Kurtz is Telemachus in search of Odysseus. But Brando's Odysseus is as mad at the end here as Odysseus tried to be in the Iliad. Then the Oedipal twist: kill the father & marry the memory ("It's no mistake that I got to be the caretaker of Walter E. Kurtz's memory.").
Everybody here is mesmerizing: coldly professional assassin Capt. Willard is as dumbfounded as a 10 year old when confronted with the TV news team ("Make like you're fighting!"). The war may run by four-star clowns, but it's OK, because "Charlie don't surf!"
Just like Conrad threw up walls of words to bury his story, Coppola erects walls of symbolism to hide "the horror." There are endless diversions from the inevitable: "I couldn't believe they wanted this man dead."
Maybe one day there'll be a Redux redux: the post-Cold War "Now." Could there be dozens of Kurtzes, forcibly sequestered in caves or deserted monasteries by the war profiteers? With Willard the real Telemachus? What happened when Kurtz died? Did the tribes disband? Or are his minions waiting for the 2d Coming?