1492: Conquest of Paradise

Comments by Francisco Vaz Brasil

Tagline:

Centuries before the exploration of space, there was another voyage into the unknown.

Summary::

Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas and the effect this has on the indigenous people. Big budget account of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas. Released in 1992, for celebrate the 500th anniversary of the discovery. Shows the disastrous effects the Europeans had on the original inhabitants, and Columbus' struggle to civilize the New World.

Comments:

Columbus is living with a woman to whom he is not married, and has had two children with her. There is some cleavage in women's costumes. There is one passionate kiss between Columbus and his girlfriend. Native garb, topless women from a distance. We see bare bottoms.

Conquest of Paradise tries to tell too many stories in its more than two-hour running time. The film opens with a scene between Columbus (Gerard Depardieu) and his 9-year-old son (Billy Sullivan), in which he shows the boy that the world is round.

[That is even true of the inevitable scene in which Columbus uses a piece of fruit to illustrate his belief that the world is round. This time it is an orange.]

[The theory that the world was round was held in intelligent circles long before Columbus was born, and ships capable of sailing across the Atlantic had been available for a long time.]

They are sitting on the shore looking out at a ship sailing west, watching her disappear below the horizon. The seaman and son have an interesting relationship throughout the film and it is through the boy's remembrances that the film gets its historical base. After this scene, the movie is often interrupted by narration in an attempt to move the action along and give some needed information. The narratives also give a sense of veracity which the film desperately needs. Often the action seems unbelievable. For example, at one point during a storm in the islands of the New World, a lightning bolt strikes a cross in the middle of the town built by Columbus' men, setting it on fire.

“Nothing results without human progress”
"Asia can be found to the west," he bellows, "and I will probe it."

The first half of the movie focuses on the vision of Columbus and the primary obstacle between him and a northwest passage to the Orient -- funding, not the ocean. After defending his theory about the shape of the world before the church and the state, he is offered an audience with Queen Isabella (Sigourney Weaver). He sells his idea to the queen, who feels that there is not so much to lose in the gamble of a few ships: "The same cost as two state dinners." We then move on to the sea voyage, with the same hardships one can find in any other "sea voyage" movie. The crew gets angry, they threaten to mutiny, Columbus gives a rousing speech, and they push onward. Columbus' plan is finally accepted by the queen and he sets off for what he thinks will be India. He instead strikes a new world, landing in the Caribbean, calling the island San Salvador, according to the religious penchant of the times.

Columbus began in Spain, crossed the Atlantic, landed at the island that he called San Salvador and opened up a can of worms still squirming 500 years later. The story starts in Spain as well, where Weaver makes a few guest appearances as an inexplicably flirtatious Queen Isabella and Sanchez , as her money manager and advisor, spends a lot of time looking good on a horse. We're all eager to be off by the time we hit the high seas but the voyage and discovery are dispensed with in fairly short order.

What comes next is the colonization of the New World and bewildering internecine battles between the indigenous people and the newcomers, with much switching of sides and bloodshed all around.

The New World scenes, filmed in jungles reminiscent of the islands south of the United States prior to the "conquest," are beautiful to look at but too long. A great deal of time is spent "looking around," as if the audience doesn't know what a jungle looks like.

1492 tries to compress years of historical research into an entertaining film between two and three hours long. There are many interesting and entertaining things to be found in the film, but they are hidden among blank stares from Depardieu, lingering silences, and confusing relationships that are never truly followed through to a conclusion. Perhaps if one or two of the many relationships in the movie became the focus of attention, 1492 wouldn't seem so vast. The entertaining moments were there, but they never seemed to come together. The acting was mild in most cases and the stereotypical nature of the antagonists was disappointing. Weaver did stand out in the scenes she shared with Depardieu, given her power as royalty and the natural power she usually brings to the screen. I found myself wishing for her return as the movie dragged on.

Columbus begins well, but his administration proves a fiasco, both for himself and the native Americans, who are enslaved and forced to work to satisfy the Spanish lust for gold, which, apart from religion, seems to be their only abiding love. Columbus also is a nepotist, setting up his brothers and sons as officials in his government.

Columbus is a failure in the eyes of the Europeans; he found too little gold. He, his brothers, and sons are ousted and replaced in the governorship of the new world. He lives to see the continent named after another, Amerigo Vespucci. But his final vindication is his memory, "I did it, you didn't," he tells to Sanchez. We have to agree. Whatever else he was or was not, Columbus did do it.

Through the film we learn Columbus is a dreamer -- a man of ideas, and a man of action -- a doer; a man with two bastard sons and their live-in mother, who Columbus never bothers to marry. Columbus is also a social climber, coveting the title "Don", which indicates entry into the nobility, and hoping to become the hereditary administrator of any territories he may find.

The action occurs during time of the Spanish Inquisition, where people with new ideas are being garroted or burned at the stake in the name of God.

Introductory scenes are etchings of natives being massacred. We see a woman and a number of other people tied to stakes where they are strangled and then burned; we hear them choking. The men on the ships are sunburned and their skin is blistered and pealing. 39 Spaniards are shown after they have been beheaded and burned. One native's hand is cut off by De Moxica, (it’s a terrific scene!) because they think he was stealing gold. Men are shown hanging with their extremities cut off. Slow motion fighting complete with lots of blood and guts. After a tropical storm, we see a number of dead bodies, both human and animal.

War and destruction is in man's nature. Columbus says, after his discovery, "there are no crimes there, there will be no need for a judge." He was quickly proven wrong.

After spending way too much time on the ocean with Columbus's three ships (you kind of wish they would sail over the edge of the world), they arrive in the West Indies, only to turn around and sail back. The rest of the film deals with the not particularly comprehensible politics of Columbus's venture, which leads to the violent slaughter of trusting natives by a band of cardboard villains.

When Christopher Columbus set out for the New World, he knew there was danger ahead. and his sailors would suffer until exhaustion Perhaps the most wondrous image in the movie comes during Columbus's first land sighting. At first he sees only mist. Then, as if on cue, the fog curtain parts to reveal a lush landscape of trees and sand. Other scenes: Indian hairstyles ; the atrocities against the natives came about not as a product of evil but through Columbus's ineptitude as a political leader and finds more brutality and treachery than gold.

Some quotes collected from the movie:

Columbus: Paradise and hell both can be earthly.
Sanchez: [Columbus stops Sanchez after he leaves an audience with the Queen. Sanchez looks at him, disgusted] You're a dreamer.
Columbus: [shooting a glance out of a window] Tell me, what do you see?
Sanchez: [pausing to look] I see rooftops, I see palaces, I see towers, I see spires that reach... to the sky! I see civilization!
Columbus: All of them built by people like me.
[Sanchez doesn't respond - shocked]
Columbus: No matter how long you live, Sanchez, there is something that will never change between us. I did it. You didn't.