Paradise Found
A film by Mario Andreacchio
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski.
This film is about Paul Gauguin (Kiefer Sutherland), the artist who is famous for having traveled to Tahiti and for painting its natives. He was apparently a successful stockbroker, who, without having had any formal training, rather capriciously and at considerable expense , chose to change his career and become an artist. He appears to have been able to totally abandon any ‘money sense’ he had as a stockbroker and become very poor in a short time. Poverty and intimations of Gauguin’s ‘womanizing’ become unbearable for his Danish wife Mette (Nastassja Kinski), and she takes herself and their children back home to Copenhagen.
This film touches on the enduring theme of how to best live one’s life. Gauguin’s romantic bohemian aspirations are encouraged by Camille Pizarro (Alun Armstrong), an artist he initially patronized. Pizarro talks about Art being able to touch the world and thereby transform it. Motivated to make a revolutionary difference in the world Gauguin seeks to find ‘from where we came and (hence?) where we are going’. Perhaps in the same manner that Van Gogh chose the peasants as subjects of his art, Gaugiun chose the natives of Tahiti. Hence we have the now famous paintings of Tahitians. Did he transform the world? Certainly Paris at that time did not think so. In the wake of total humiliation Gauguin returned to Tahiti.
This film unfortunately does not do justice to its beautiful deeply dark and watery location. Although somewhat informative I found this film to be a joyless experience.
Lou Crow
This film is terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, rotten. Or, if you want it better expressed: insurmountably tedious.
Never mind the problems of editing (lip sync) or the dodgy period mise-en-scène, the script was a flood (!) of clichés. Emotion, when present, was misplaced. A painful experience all round!
Felix
