Double Dose of Darkness

I chanced upon an excellent 2010 interview on video between Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Sheen about their experiences making Apocalypse Now towards the end of the 70s.  That led me to purse a double header experience.  Firstly, listening to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness narrated by Kenneth Branagh and then watching Apocalypse Now.  I had not read the book prior, but have watched the movie a couple of times.

In brief:  An agent goes in search of a successful colleague gone rogue in a culturally alien and hostile jungle.

Novella in brief:  The agent is Marlow, the setting is Congo, the context is Ivory Trade and European colonization.

Movie in brief:  The agent is Willard, the setting is Vietnam, the context is the war and its futility.

The book

Kenneth Branagh's performance is gripping and worthy of his stature.  It occurs to me that with podcasts and audio books getting mainstream, there is an opportunity now to revisit radio plays that peaked before the advent of television.  One can imagine, those that would succeed and star in radio plays would be very different from skills needed for a visual medium.

The novella's writing style is not readily accessible.  What I mean is that each individual passage is intelligible.  But they are vignettes and impressions rather than a straightforward and linear story telling.  However, when the novella is finished, the reader does have an overall impression of the story and its implications.

However, what that means is that there is lot of ambiguity and room for interpretation and debate.  As I read about the author and the book, it seems like since the 1970s there has been a vigorous debate about what the author and the book represent.  One take is that the author was anti-colonial.  Another view that he was a racist.  However, it is clear that the book matters!

A shout out to video sparknotes of the book.  Absolutely brilliant, visual and clear.  I wish I could take an exam right now!!


The Movie

I confess not being able to make head or tail out of the movie the couple of times I have watched it before.  The first time, I was a teenager.  The second time might have been in my twenties.  In general I was left confused, not following the context, the dialogue and more than confused by the Dennis Hopper character who plays the photojournalist.

This time around, having listened to the interview between Coppola and Sheen, read the book and multiple reviews of the book, I was able to follow the movie with crystalline clarity.

In this viewing, I was able to enjoy the directorial choices on how to interpret Conrad's work.  It also helped that the dialogue was in subtitles too so there was no opportunity to miss Marlon Brando's mumblings at the end.

The visuals, music, acting and the sheet scale of the movie is breathtaking.

On racism

As I was reading the various takes on racism charged against Conrad, I was wondering if it was a bit of an academic debate on the one hand and placing modern values on a writer from a hundred years ago on the other.

Then I thought of my feelings towards a romantic comedy hit movie Crazy Rich Asians, that is just out in theaters that I was tempted to see and was sobered by a review in the NY Times about it.

The review said the movie was funny and well made.  However that Singapore was not culturally well represented.  The movie made it feel like the well to do in Singapore were of the dominant Chinese ethnicity.  And that the other ethnic groups were shown as subservient.

I still did not think much of the criticism.

Then there was a paragraph that mentioned that there were two actors who had roles of household help of Indian origin and were shown as bumbling fools.

Suddenly, my lens shifted.  I was cognizant of what the movie was being charged with ....

I am not one to shy away from different points of view and mature treatment of cultural themes.

However, it has dawned on me that charges of unfair portrayal and protestations are to be better understood by whose point of view is being taken - the colonizing or the colonized, the majority or the minority.

Summary

Joseph Conrad's novella and Kenneth Branagh's performance are wonderful and shine light on why this work is so famous and resilient.  Coppola's movie and the acting, especially by Martin Sheen is epic.

A terrific double header indeed.