Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Based on the novel
by Joseph Conrad
Coppola chose Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as the motif for his piece. Conrad's first-person narrative was the tale of Marlowe, an agent for a intercontinental merchant company in England. Marlowe tells the story of having been dispatched to Africa to make contact with Kurtz, a fellow agent who has established a trading post in a remote area along the Congo River. Marlowe is struck by the feral nature of the environment in Africa, which gives place to barbarism as his trek upriver continues. He is enthused with the notion of meeting Kurtz at first, who is depicted as a scholarly and upright Christian worker by all accounts. Only the information he begins to compile on his journey upriver gives him reason to believe it is Kurtz who has taken a heavy hand in the atrocities that grow more evident as he nears his destination.
Upon finding Kurtz, he is appalled to find that Kurtz had established himself as a demigod amongst the indigenous tribes. Decapitated heads are freely displayed around the outpost as a sign of Kurtz's power over life and death, his minions approaching his throne crawling in terror before him. Only Kurtz himself is falling victim to disease, and Marlowe manages to extract the stricken, wasted man from the jungle before death overtakes him.
The novel concludes as Marlowe returns to England to confront Kurtz's betrothed with the news of his death. The 'darkness' becomes symbolic of the fear and mystery shrouding the unknown. Despite Marlowe's strong motivations to expose the horror of Kurtz's depredations, he finds mercy towards the woman to be a greater virtue in leaving the 'darkness' surrounding the tale of Kurtz untouched.
Marlon Brando, one of the greatest actors of all time, shared Coppola's vision in taking on the role of Special Forces Col. Walter Kurtz. The renegade Colonel takes his Montegnard army upriver into Cambodia where he is pursued by Army intelligence Captain Ben Willard* (Martin Sheen), whose orders are to 'terminate his command'. Sheen is upstaged by Robert Duvall in his immortal role as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore of Air Cav (Airmobile). Together the three men breathed new life into Conrad's allegory, which itself was made into a less-successful TV-movie afterwards. Like GoodFellas and Schindler's List, it was a triple-cast of powerhouse acting, along with a monumental literary inspiration, that helped this movie soar into cinema history.