There is a scene in the unexpurgated version of Apocalypse Now that is referred to as the Plantation Scene. The Martin Sheen character goes deeper and deeper into the jungle in search of the infamous Kurz. And he stumbles upon a French plantation, there in the heart of the jungle. And he is invited in.
And at the dinner table with its tablecloth and delicate porcelain china, the men in the family argue politics while the patriarch’s granddaughter listens. And she has this beautiful, fragile, porcelain face, delicate as a statue from Versailles. White skin, soft curls, eyes sad and nervous, frightened like a doe. A granddaughter so pristine, so ethereal, that she looks more angel than human. And she says nothing and listens.
And when the Martin Sheen character goes to bed she quietly goes there to join him. And we see her behind the white mosquito netting as she takes off all her clothes, then suddenly revealing to us a body so voluptuous, so lush, so sensuous, as though she has perhaps become one with the jungle. And as she climbs into hiis bed she whispers these words:
part of you loves and part of you kills
and that is the end of the scene.
And in those dark days when I thought of you and I thought I would not survive, the only thing that made sense enough for me to find any bearings at all ,in such a world, in a world that no longer made sense, was that line from the end of the Plantation Scene, in the unexpurgated version of Apocalypse Now
Part of you loves and part of you kills
It was the only thing upon this earth under the moon and the stars and between the seven seas that made human existence and you even remotely comprehensible to me.
