How Cultures Die, with a Whimper

When Coppola made Apocalypse Now, we are all aware of the long line of associations, nods etc back to Conrad, Conrad back to Dante and all the others that fitted in along the "long journey up a river".  Coppola obviously saw a very close association to the T. S. Eliot 1925 poem The Hollow Men and had his Kurtz choice of Brando read it in full, while blending in the modern words and music of Morrison.

So who better than Jim himself to set the vibes of what is going on here.

"Unless we face and accept and transcend The Horror we will always be eaten by its shadow. Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now presented this macarbre and filthy yet heroic and beautiful journey in a fearfully intense way and Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, rendered with tender menace by Brando in Apocalypse Now (but cut back in the final version) absolutely stuns me and always has because it speaks to the very real fear we – unless life was very loving and sheltered – will have to face up to and go beyond – or be constantly weakened by this lack of dealing with it – or worse become shallow deniers…the nice are usually the worst! The strange thing is it makes me feel immensely calm and secure – that someone makes this that is so real, yet so ungraspable,  for so many – explicit and hauntingly beautiful! j.m."

But in 1969 Kubrick had already done his own version of How Cultures End [the American one]

So here is the Utube I used as the audio, which has the words as well.  It is amazing, same as the playing of Kurtz, how Brando can give such feeling to words without neeeding to understand the meaning - eg nobody told him "rose" was a noun.

Of course the poem is very much directly related to Apocalypse Now, but I wonder just how much inspiration Coppola got from 2001 A Space Odyssey, ie being able to see THROUGH the Clarke space candy facade [rat's coat?] of the "basic level" as Kubrick calls it, and as Morrison says above "ungraspable for so many".

I don't think it is any coincidence that the Brando reading and Hollow Dave's "Last Supper" in ASO were the same length, saving me any editing to speak of.  And maybe I got lucky that the "supplication from a dead man's hand" happens just as Red Dave becomes Black Dave and sits down under the picture of his own "crucifixion" hanging from a tree with wailing women stretching their hands up to him as if HE is The Monolith [raised stone images].

I could go on for a long time about the other associations but suffice to say "The Shadow" is the key to understanding the main concepts, explaining WHY the shadow from the eclipse of the sun which Moonwatcher was ABLE to predict with more accuracy than HAL is the "main item" of the movie.  So please watch and listen to get the vibes of what this all means "in the real world" as Penny Lane would say.