1492: THE CONQUEST OF PARADISE
A film review by Kirsten Starcher
Copyright 1992 Kirsten Starcher
I really expected to like this movie a lot. I'd heard so much about it -- how it was the great epic of the year, definite Oscar nominee, blah, blah, blah.
For the first hour, I believed it. I was completely blown away by the sets, the costumes, the ships; I thought Depardieu was super; the plot was really captivating; there were some wonderfully powerful moments, i.e., when he first sights land, etc., etc. It seemed really good.
But the rest of the movie, after he returns to Spain and then goes back to the New World to establish a colony, just ... died. The plot became disjointed and confusing -- no explanations were made for a number of events (the civil war, though it had been building for a bit, just came and went without much ceremony, for example). The movie started to move *SLOWLY*. I mean, dragging. It was as if they'd made a reasonably slow-paced movie that was three and a half hours long, and then realized, "We can't do this!" and had to cut parts out, leaving the rest of it as slow-moving chunks of action. [Actually, rumor has it that that is precisely what *did* happen. -Moderator]
I really didn't like Sigourney Weaver as the Queen. She may have looked all right for the part, but she just didn't have any believable royal presence. Add to that the American accent -- it didn't really fit in with Depardieu's French accent and the dozen or so other accents mixed in throughout the movie.
I also found the dialogue, at times, incomprehensible; I'm sure I missed some vital bits of information because I just couldn't catch what the characters were saying. I wasn't the only one to mention this, either; I've heard this from one or two others. It's not just me going deaf. :-)
There was no real character development of any of the characters besides Columbus, either. The "bad guy" (Minoxa? I can't remember) was just a "bad guy." I read the press kit and it cleared up something that was never made clear in the movie; that Minoxa resented a foreign peasant having such power, and found it simply intolerable. I mean, I could tell he didn't like Columbus and his ways, but I didn't really see anything else until I read that.
Also, throughout the movie, Columbus refers to the "New World." The few history books I've looked at on the topic all state that Columbus went to his grave believing that he'd found a new route to Asia; he didn't ever find out that he'd found a whole new continent. Bit of an inconsistency, isn't it?
To summarize: This movie tries really hard but just piddles to a halt. Fantastic sets, wonderful attention to detail (except the damn accents) but just can't last the 2.5 hours. Wait for videotape.
(It does have a cool soundtrack, though!)
-- Kirsten Starcher kirsten@morgan.ucs.mun.ca
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