04/07/2023 - Daniel Jařab’s film might be less intoxicating than its name and the idea behind it suggest, but it is still a decent take on Apocalypse Now in Europe

There have been so many failed, unproduced film adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness before the successful and now-legendary one, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Coppola proved that a seemingly unadaptable piece of literature is actually adaptable enough if interpreted loosely. Since then, there have been movies that have drawn at least some of their inspiration from Conrad’s novella, such as Fabrice du Welz’s Vinyan [+see also:
trailer
film profile] or James Gray’s Ad Astra, but now is the right time for a new, meticulous and thoroughly recontextualised take on the source material.

Ready or not, here comes Snake Gas, written and directed by Daniel Jařab, whose previous works include historical and genre-influenced pieces like Vaterland – A Hunting Logbook (2004), Head - Hands - Heart (2010) and Secret Agent (2020). This modern and European take on Conrad’s work has just premiered in Karlovy Vary’s Special Screenings section, and although its angle is pan-European, it might prove to be a tougher sell than expected for international distribution.

Our hero is Robert Klein (Stanislav Majer), whose cosy existence as a teacher in France gets interrupted by the news of the disappearance of his brother Emanuel (Václav Vašák), whom he barely knew. While tending to the affairs that his brother left unfinished, Robert gets asked by the brother’s business partner to take a trip to an unnamed place where Emanuel hunted eels and sent them, canned, to a Japanese importer. The anonymous location that looks like the Danube Delta in Romania is, however, populated by various agents of global powers, desperate migrants and adventurists, while being de facto ruled by the energy company NAG, whose primary concern is drilling for gas in the protected area.

Robert gets special treatment there, since everybody seems to be looking for Emanuel, who has supposedly gone rogue and made his own makeshift kingdom. He travels first by car, then by boat, accompanied by company man Engel (Martin Pechált) and two guys who know the area well enough – Rudolf (Braňo Mosný) and Aleš, aka Lobo (Dalibor Buš) – but as the trip progresses, and as they edge closer to Emanuel’s darkness, the closer they get to their own inner darkness, with rifts appearing within the gang and shifts in power occurring as every person reveals their own true face.

The idea of using such a classical piece of literature as a starting point to comment upon the state of the world today – complete with capitalism running rampant, governments just waiting for an excuse for conflict, refugees and migrants stuck between a rock and a hard place, and so on – is certainly an ambitious one, and it might even make sense. The trouble, however, lies in the execution, which is not always the deftest, even though the acting is solid throughout, with Majer outstanding as a refined man encountering darkness for what is perhaps the first time. Meanwhile, Oleg Mutu’s naturalistic cinematography in murky colours is quite fitting. The core of the problem lies in Jařab’s screenwriting and directing, which both rely too heavily on broad strokes and predictable tricks, such as the extensive use of pseudo-philosophical voice-over narration, some nightmarish dream sequences and the horror-like loop of Jakub Kudláč’s synth score. In the end, Snake Gas seems more like a lower-budget, TV-orientated Euro-thriller riff on Apocalypse Now, rather than a proper contemporary reading of Heart of Darkness, although it is still a decent watch.

Snake Gas is a Czech-Slovak-Romanian co-production between Cineart TV Prague, Arina Film Production and The East Media Production, in co-production with Czech Television and HomeMedia Production.