Nordhausen, Vietnam, & Pynchon

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

I agree that _Apocalypse Now_ is a great movie, but only until the unhappy
Brando episode in the end. Also Molly Hite has touched the issue in her
Pynchon book. According to her Coppola's film compares unfavorably with
Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ and _Lot 49_. Both _HoD_ and _Lot 49_ seem to
acknowledge that "climactic revelation tends to be beyond the reach of
description or explanation" (78). The vitality of both narratives is
strongly connected to the way in which they withhold such culminations. 
In a footnote to this passage Hite adds: "This point was brought home in
Francis Ford Coppola's film _Apocalypse Now_, when Coppola unwisely
decided to *show* what Kurtz meant by "the horror" (163n). 

The reduction of the film's rich cinematographic partiture to some
clumsily depicted Eliotian whimpering horror inside white man's head 
just does not work, in my humble opinion (or, since I otherwise mostly
like Brando, "in my mumble opinion").
 
Heikki