The French Plantaion Scene

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I don't think it's a bad scene.

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People don't like it because, as great as the movie is (and - full disclosure, I prefer the Redux to the Theatrical and am looking forward to "The Final Cut" or whatever FFC has in store for us), the "extra" Bunny scenes and French Plantation both serve as quite extended breaks and interfere with the pacing of the film.

Of course, the Theatrical was always jarring to me because the ending was so abrupt - no real context. Effective as a psychological pairing with Willard, but it's like missing an entire act of a play, "WTF has happened here?"

So, the extras put back in Redux provide a tremendous amount of context, how we got to that point and why. This whole allegory of everyone going about individual lives, but having to use the same road (or river).

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I think he returned to her.

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I respect everyone's interpretation of something like this, but it makes no sense. Willard killed Kurtz and replaced him as the head of the cult. That's as obvious as it gets. Kurtz was Willard a few years before. He made that same journey and ended up in the same place. The crux of it is - the movie took the Heart of Darkness story, moved it to Vietnam and tweaked it to make it represent America's journey from the 1950s through the 1960s (whereas the original Heart of Darkness was an allegory about Europe's experience in the colonization of Africa).

Surely you can see that, right?

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don't think it's a bad scene. Au contraire, I think it's very well done. it just doesn't match the rest of the movie.

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These are exactly my sentiments as well. It does not match the rest of the film and I completely understand why it was cut originally, but honestly, the entire plantation scene reminds me so much of The Godfather and feels like something out of those films, it's why I love it.

It hasn't such an heir of prestige and why I think of as clsssic Coppola. It also expands on Willard and his character, but, again, the film is really just about them on the boat, slowly going insane, deeper and deeper into the jungle, and getting to Kurtz (aka Heart of Darkness) not western politics in Indochina.