The Heart of Darkness was written in 1903 by Joseph Conrad and the words became flesh in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now released in 1979. His artisan vision was able to raise the poetry of Conrad's story and speak them in a language that we don't want to understand, but inherently do. The canonical novel is brought to life in a radical and political translation that makes Conrad's Marlow even more than a hero; he is now Coppola's brand of Jesus Christ sent on a mission by the United States army to kill the anti-American antichrist Colonel Kurtz.
             How does an audience relate to a man who is already dead to the world?
             We don't know much about the journey that has taken him to where he resides at the start of the story, but we understand that he is a man who has already seen things that have emotionally dismembered him. Martin Sheen's Captain Willard has already lost the life he once lived before we catch up with him in his Saigon hotel room: since being stationed in Vietnam during the war, his wife has left him, his mission has ended and he no longer fits into society because of his experiences in the war. We, the audience, empathize with Willard because we have either lived through a war or have fought in a war. We have compassion for Willard because we have created him and he's died emotionally for our sins.
             The Conrad novel prepares and foreshadows his "hero," Marlowe, in his dealings at the Company Office. Greeted by the women knitting black wool, who sit calmly outside of the office like sentries, he finds out that the men who have passed this way do not return. Willard is also given a "taste" of what is to come in his meeting at Army Headquarters. He sits down to a feast of the grotesque, a last supper before beginning his mission. While the guests take stabs at the bloody beef, a tape is played with a man's voice describing the way a slug slim...