Didn't pick up on your 'The Dark Knight Rises' reference yesterday but I remember the line and Bane's monologue very well. Makes me think of "UniSol: Day of Reckoning" even more than of "A Now" and 'Heart of Darkness' since like in "TDKR" in "UniSol" the two are more proper adversaries...not to mention the fist fights and such.Carmel1379 wrote: ↑February 6th, 2019, 7:21 amMy "adopting the darkness" line was taken from 'The Dark Knight Rises' btw. Bane:Perception de Ambiguity wrote: ↑February 5th, 2019, 4:22 pm(...)
What you wrote there reminds me of how the Roeg film suggests that Marlow is very much like Kurtz when he was young and started going into the Congo. It's never spelled out but this connection is implied throughout the film. And, well, Marlow in the film never has any interests in the ivory business and is very much a doubter from the start, but there is a progression on his journey that makes him align more with Kurtz line of thinking, and with meeting Kurtz he embraces the "darkness" fully. With 'Apocolypse Now' I never quite got the sense that Willard's journey to the end of the river changed him much or at all, as he apparently already went through so much in the war and got fucked up by it when the film starts, all the progression occurs only once he reaches Kurtz' area and listens to the man. In Roeg's film Marlow rubs the blood of his Congo friend over his face after he gets arrowed to death on the boat, and he "goes a little mad"/is more hardened from then on, I guess this would be the equivalent to the 'Apocalypse Now' gif you linked to.Theatricality and deception; powerful agents for the uninitiated... but we are initiated, aren't we Bruce? Members of the League of Shadows. And you betrayed us. (...) Ah, you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding. The shadows betray you because they belong to me.
k, I don't really have anything to add (maybe later, as I said). I could spam some out-of-context 'Paradise Lost' scraps now.
'War hath determin'd us, and foil'd with loss / Irreparable'
'With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seiz'd us, though undismay'd. Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light,
Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant
Barr'd over us prohibit all egress.
These past, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next
Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him, plung'd in that abortive gulf.
If thence he 'scape into whatever world,
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers and as hard escape?'
'Thus roving on
In confus'd march forlorn, th' advent'rous Bands,
With shudd'ring horror pale, and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a Frozen, many a Fiery Alp,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A universe of Death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.'
...
But interestingly Marlow is in a sufficiently fit state to survive, continue living. (Obviously otherwise the story would never possibly have been told.) He can return to England, to some extent feign normality, and lie to Kurtz's wife his final words were her name, despite being (for a lack of better word) traumatised [apparently Conrad's 'Lord Jim' I have yet to read is in part about trauma] by everything that happened, with the traces of the darkness still encroaching upon him wherever he sails. He doesn't become or replace Kurtz (iirc in AO there is a shot suggestive of this idea, where Willard, after having slain Kurtz, stands above the "brutes") or pursue the voyage to the end of the river to its conclusion (like Kurtz has), which is utter annihilation. I suppose this is some form of consolation -- with Marlow also being the stand-in for the reader to some degree -- as he's able to uphold a conscience, not become a madman, in an all-so-civilised manner lie to Kurtz's wife, etc. And without hearing those words Marlow wouldn't have felt an urge to meet the wife, hearing them gave him her name in a poetic sense, the woman representing the other/missing half of Kurtz that Marlow wasn't able to meet in the Congo.
In the film Kurtz has more final words for Marlow than just "The Horror"², I assumed it's in the book or at least that it quotes a poem, but it seems to be an original, at least I couldn't trace it back to any source online:
I reckon encountering his possible future self might have prevented him from becoming the "mad Kurtz" as an older man. And if you take this quote into account Kurtz could be seen as Marlow's demon, whom he got to know in a way that people usually aren't able to get to know their demon. Not that Kurtz when he was young really was all that much like Marlow, younger Kurtz seemed more ambitious, educated, with multi-faceted talents,... I guess it's more about Marlow following Kurtz' footsteps up the river, die Wiederkehrung des Ewig gleichen, holding many of the same ideas and ideals, but not necessarily about the threat of him befalling the same fate. The film at least has the story framed as Marlow telling the story as an older man, so we already know from the beginning anyway that he doesn't end up like Kurtz, but yet he clearly took a lot of lessons from the experience and it shaped him as a person.
As for what he tells the wife, it could be seen as a lie, but in some way I found that it could also be seen as a poetic interpretation of Kurtz' dying words in the film. That what Marlow read into the words is that they were about Kurtz' wife, since the film makes a big point about Kurtz longing for her all along up until the end (painting portraits of her, most of all). The horror could be the unwaning longing for her and yet the impossibility of returning to her because of all the other reasons, ambitions (and the need to earn money), with this unsolvable inner and social conflict being a big part of the reason that drove him into the madness, a metaphor for what applies to everyone in life in one way or another. Without hearing those last words Marlow maybe wouldn't have felt an urge to go to the wife, Kurtz gave him her name in a poetic sense, meeting her he got to know the half of Kurtz that he couldn't get to know in the Congo, now he gets to have a more complete picture and a bit of inner peace, resolving some of those inner conflicts that Kurtz struggled with so much.