The definitive Vietnam movie and the definitive Nietzschean tragedy

Rating: Null/10 (17 December 1998)

Joseph Conrad's famous novella of a man's journey upstream into the deepest and darkest realms of the human psyche is here updated and given the Vietnam treatment. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness we learn of Kurtz through other people's accounts of him. We learn that he is brilliant and learned both as an ivory hunter and as a man. Coppola's Colonel Kurtz is the same except he excells as a soldier. But both have suffered immeasurably because of their drive, cutting themselves off from civilisation and medicine. When we finally get to meet the man he is half dead and quite mad. Conrad's novella is maybe the best anit-colonial story, and this is possibly the best anti-war movie - immortalised in the line from Willard: "Absolutely goddam right - never get out of the f***ing boat."