Stalker (1979 film) of the "Time Out Film Guide" has compared "Stalker" to Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", also released in 1979, and argued that "as a journey to the heart of darkness" "Stalker" looks "a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's." As well, "Slant Magazine" reviewer Nick Schager has praised the film as an "endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness". In Schager's view "Stalker" shows "something akin to the essence of what man is made of: a tangled knot of memories, fears, fantasies, nightmares, paradoxical impulses, and a yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach and yet intrinsic to every one
Heart of Darkness a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case." Other critiques include Hugh Curtler's "Achebe on Conrad: Racism and Greatness in Heart of Darkness" (1997). Moving beyond ideology critique, French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe called "Heart of Darkness" "one of the greatest texts of Western literature" and used Conrad's tale for a reflection on "The Horror of the West". "Heart of Darkness" is criticised in postcolonial studies, particularly by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. In his 1975 public lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness", Achebe described Conrad's novella as "an offensive and deplorable