You know what’s funny? The Stormbreaker film was actually written by Horrowitz himself.

Haha.

I think Copolla did a great job adapting Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam War setting (as the author said). All I’m saying is that I agree that it appears Coppola chose to criticize the Vietnam War by showing how crazy and chaotic it is rather than do a more subtle analysis via observation as Heart of Darkness did.

I am familiar with Chinua Achebe’s critique of the book and I do agree that Konrad did race paint, but in a way that helps the novella work better because Marlow realizes that everyone is the same,no matter how strange they may differ.

Likewise. Everything’s philosophical so there’s no right answer no matter how much we debate lol.

Indeed. My point is that the authors of original material are a rather biased source to cite regardless of how well an adaptation follows the source material. King got his chance to see The Shining remade to follow the source material more closely. It wasn’t very good.

Yes, how deep does one go (or not)…!

I don’t think either Marlow character ‘takes action’ in any conventional way – hence participant-observer. Also, both narratives are complex and layered and it can be argued that both Marlows are complicit in the imperial relationships they ostensibly critique (and you may right that Coppola’s Marlow is less explicitly critical than Conrad’s Marlow). I don’t know if you are familiar with Chinua Achebe’s famous critique of Heart of Darkness’s representation of Africa and Africans but I think a similar critique can be made of Coppola’s representation of Vietnam/the Vietnamese.

So I guess what I’m saying is that in the context of these two narratives that are critical of their respective imperialist conflicts, both Marlows play similar functions even is they themselves are morally ambiguous characters in their own right.

Interesting discussion, though. Thanks 🙂

Either you’re reading too deeply into the film or I’m not reading deeply enough xD.

Yes, he provided some voice over narration (it wasn’t as detailed as I would’ve liked), but I’m talking about his actions- he acts the same from the beginning of the movie to the end, not once doing something that I saw as representative of him changing.

In Heart of Darkness, you see Marlow doing all sorts of different things that differ him from the imperalists until the end where he ends up just like them. Actions include giving food to the dying natives, hanging out with the natives over his own crew, and working whilst everyone lazes about among other traits.

That’s really interesting. I’ve always read AN as a satire of the American War on Vietnam (as has much of the scholarly writing on the film) – what with its surreal, nightmarish portrayal of the war and the insanity of the American presence (sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll – and the surfing, of course). Much of this is conveyed through Marlow’s voice-over narration, which includes commentary on Kurtz – necessarily oblique. From the hallucinatory opening scene of Marlow in the hotel room in Saigon through his journey up the Mecong Delta to Kurtz, and his own descent into semi-madness – how not critique? In addition to the fact that Coppola himself has spoken about it as such, and that the White House refused to fund the film or allow the use of American military equipment because it too interpreted the film as ultra-critical of the Vietnam War. Ghost or not, Marlow mediates this critique throughout.

I believe the point of the article was to target films that are indeed praised for their artistic merits, as The Shining is, but ultimately are big let downs compared to the book.