This film fails in every possible way. Even the cinematography manages to flatten the lushness of Tahiti. But the story line is worse.
One has to wonder how and why it is near impossible for modern people to reconcile that Gauguin can be both a despicable pedophile and a great artist? I guess this is the fruit of ever decreasing interest in the classics, where literature for 3,000 years did not have the difficulty we have today in portraying real or archetypical legendary persons as both great personages and contemptible.
Consider that the entire film fails to mention, even once, this "wife" was 13 years old. That his relationship with her, and the natives, is a refection of his own selfish and predatory individual colonialism. Even his abandonment of his wife and children in France, attested to as abandonment in the sourced biographies, is inverted into them not wanting to come with him.
One has to wonder how and why it is near impossible for modern people to reconcile that Gauguin can be both a despicable pedophile and a great artist? I guess this is the fruit of ever decreasing interest in the classics, where literature for 3,000 years did not have the difficulty we have today in portraying real or archetypical legendary persons as both great personages and contemptible.
Consider that the entire film fails to mention, even once, this "wife" was 13 years old. That his relationship with her, and the natives, is a refection of his own selfish and predatory individual colonialism. Even his abandonment of his wife and children in France, attested to as abandonment in the sourced biographies, is inverted into them not wanting to come with him.