"Paradise Found" film / dvd

I just watched a film / dvd last night I think many of you might enjoy. It's a 2001 film directed by Mario Andreacchio called "Paradise Found" and it's a drama about the life of Paul Gauguin, emphasizing his time in the South Seas. Kiefer Sutherland plays Gauguin and Natassia Kinski plays his wife Mette.
Having read a fair amount about Gauguin & his letters, it doesn't seem to follow his life exactly, several things are not even mentioned, however I think they did a beautiful job portraying the sense of escapism and his attraction to the exotic. Tikis play a much larger role in the film than I think they did in his real life, but they are featured prominently with missionaries burning them, Gauguin seeking out those remaining, and what they represented to him in his art.
The film ends with his return to Tahiti after his failed Tahitian exhibit back in Paris. It does not deal with his increased poverty, severe health problems and eventual death in Tahiti at all.
At any rate, I would highly recommend it to Tiki folks. Moving away from my family to come here at 19, many decades ago, I've always related to Gauguin and I feel this film, aside from featuring some beautiful tiki scenes, does capture some of the emotion involved with one who feels a real compulsion towards Polynesia.

Wow, I never heard about this film, it sounds very interesting! A bit unrealistic though: Gauguin would have never left his bourgeois life if his wife would have been Nastasja Kinski! :)

The fact that it seems to be omitting the part of his life where he lived and worked in the Marquesas (where he actually died) is unfortunate, it was there that he came in even closer contact with Tikis (Tahiti not having had a notable Tiki tradition) and carved some nice objects, such as his famous studio panels.

But, as is often the case, film scripts are being 'streamlined' to keep the storyline straight, leaving out 'confusing' changes of place and time.

On 2007-06-02 12:50, Kaiwaza wrote:
...aside from featuring some beautiful tiki scenes, does capture some of the emotion involved with one who feels a real compulsion towards Polynesia.

Any film that accomplishes that is to be commended. It will be even harder to translate ones compulsion towards Polynesian POP onto film, I am really waiting for THAT!

They did streamline quite a bit and I think they kind of meshed his Tahitian and Marquesan experiences. They also streamlined his love life, maybe to avoid confusion or make him more "likable" to the general public. In the film, he just has one Tahitian "wife", while he had at least two in real life, plus the Javanese woman he had with him while returning briefly to Paris. I also think they made the relationship between him & Mette resolving a bit more smoothly than it did in reality.
I'm a bit surprised I'd never heard of it at all, even in the small art house theatres. Or no one here seems to have mentioned it. You really should all check it out. I saw mine through Netflix. Gotta love Netflix.

[i]On 2007-06-03 01:53, bigbrotiki wrote:
It will be even harder to translate ones compulsion towards Polynesian POP onto film, I am really waiting for THAT!

:D me too!!

..now if only someone would make a film about leeteg...with all the madness, sex and booze and the fatal crash that ended it all....