Heart of Darkness vs. Heart of Gold
Last year I watched the psychological war movie "Apocalypse Now" (1979), which is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novel "Heart of Darkness" (I've never read and dont plan to). It's a metaphor of war in general and to a large extend it's raw and brutal with lots of horror. It can also be related to another great movie "The Deer Hunter" (1978), which is more about regular people's broken lives back in America around the time of Vietnam war.
You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
A couple of months later while I was watching "King Kong" (2005), a scene of Jimmy reading the same book caught my attention.
Jimmy: Why does Marlow keep going up the river? Why doesn't he turn back?
Hayes: There's a part of him that wants to, Jimmy. A part, deep inside himself that sounds a warning, but there's another part, that needs to know ... that needs to defeat the thing which makes him afraid.
The reality on Skull Island is wild, and the struggle to survive is just dangerous yet necessary. However, Manhattan in the midst of the great depression may have revealed more dark depths of the human mind and soul. Neither savagery nor civilization is better than the other.
We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories. The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.