1492: Conquest of Paradise

I'll never forget reading about the making of 1492: Conquest of Paradise in my beloved biography Depardieu. Gérard, set to play Christopher Columbus in Ridley Scott's epic, studied English with a private tutor for months before filming, to try and wean him away from his famous accent. Then, during the scene when he learns of his voyage's destination, he storms through the room and declares, "My God! We leave in two weeks!" When you watch that scene, you'll find it hard to believe he worked so hard to take away his accent, since he sounds exactly like he always does. But, since I love him, I don't really care. To any critics, I offer the challenge to them to try and become fluent in a foreign language without any trace of an American accent, all in front of a movie camera. At the end of the day, 1492 wasn't a success at the box office, but it's a very tricky subject to get right. Are you going to paint Columbus in a positive light? Are you going to focus on the voyage, the backstory, or his life in the New World? Is it going to be fictionalized, painfully truthful, or somewhere in between? If the latter, you can guarantee critics will rake your movie across the coals for being realistic in parts and glossing fiction over other parts. So, when you rent this movie, be open-minded. The movie won't please everyone, but even the most thorough history classes won't please everyone. What you will get in 1492 is a very lush, beautifully filmed epic. The sets and interior design are very pretty and realistic, complete with natural-looking lighting. The outdoor environment, filmed on many different islands, looks as untouched by civilization as possible, and many scenes are quite interesting to see Columbus's adjustments to his surroundings. You'll also get to see France's most popular, talented actor in another larger-than-life role. Granted, he doesn't sound Italian, but many Americans don't care about specific accents; as long as he has one, they think he sounds foreign enough. Sigourney Weaver dons some beautiful gowns as Queen Isabel, and you'll also see Armand Assante, Fernando Rey, Tchéky Karyo, and Frank Langella in the supporting cast.

source: 1492: Conquest of Paradise

Anyone who has a clue about history will cringe all the way through this movie. Kind of make Columbus look like a hero in the eyes of the Tainos. I am happy to see the the movie grossed well below it's production cost...that should tell you what a spectacular joke this movie was. I might just watch it again to amuse myself...truly a bad movie. Aside from looking for familiar location shots, this movie left me amazed that for all the money spent, little was done in researching the history of the Taino encounters. In this country, we no longer have Columbus Day....it is now called the Day of Races.To honor such a man wreaks of ignorance.

What a beautiful movie! 2+ hours of visual enjoyment, even if it doesn't tell you anything new about Columbus. Add to it the musical theme "Conquest of the Paradise" that has no equals in austerity and power! I gave it 10.

This is a great film, I really enjoyed watching it. We watched a small amount at school, and I just had to go out and borrow the video to watch it all. Gérard did a great job of playing Christopher Columbus, this film is also very informative and I did learn from it. I would recommend that everyone go and get this film on video and watch it.

This movie is filled with so many historical inaccuracies, its getting ridiculous already after 20 minutes of the movie. Everything from the "flat earth"-plot to turkeys in Europe. Its a disgrace. It portraits Colombus as some sort of hero who was nice to the natives. It was the other way around. This movie is beyond terrible.

I have rarely seen a big budget historical film filled with so many inaccuracies. One would think that a film of that caliber could have hired a writer who would have known that Columbus left Hispaniola with only two ships, since the Sta. Maria was destroyed. The film shows 3 ships departing. There is never a mention of a third or fourth voyage, nor of the discovery of Terra Firme. Further, there is not a single mention of the name Hispaniola (or La Española) in the film. The dramatic scene of landfall at Guanahaní is ruined by the appearance of the island. Watling Island is low and scrub covered, not hilly and forested. The birds on the island and the fauna are more proper of Costa Rica. The scene of the death of a crewmember from a snake bite is a comical sham. Not only were are there no poisonous snakes in the Caribbean, there are no snakes at all on Watling. The budget of the film could have bought a lot more! What a waste...

1492 casts a long shadow over my filmgoing life. It is one of the first films I remember seeing where I started thinking of all the activity that went into making a film. My young mind did not process a lot of the plot - and in retrospect I can partly blame the makers of this film - but I did notice shots, sounds, music. Perhaps the music more than anything. So fast-forward a decade and a half at least... 1492 was massive in Europe when it came out. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, Legend and Blade Runner, was telling the story of Christopher Columbus, starring the venerable Gerard Depardieu, all to a score by Vangelis which flew off the shelves faster than any film score since, well, Blade Runner. What did they have to show for it. We know the story, or we think we do: Columbus, an Italian immigrant, gets a grant from Queen Isabella of Spain to map a shorter route to India, sailing West. What he discovers is a whole new world, the Caribbean islands. But the "new world" experiment fails badly and before long utopia becomes a stage for jealousy, manipulation, superstition and even genocide. It took several studios to co-finance this massive undertaking, based on a screenplay by journalist Rose Bosch. Supposedly, Scott immediately had his sights set on Depardieu, which paradoxically leads us to both the film's greatest asset and liability. Depardieu exudes a very un-Hollywood brand of charisma: grounded, vulnerable, but also prone to hardness and anger. His Columbus is a tragic idealist, likable even when carried away by his own arrogance. It's hard to imagine anyone else in the role. It is a pity then that his English was nowhere near good enough to carry the film. For many years, I had been warned and had only seen the film dubbed in my native French (it did help that Depardieu dubbed himself, as did supporting actor Tcheky Karyo), but upon seeing the film "as intended" I was simply baffled. This, coupled with a script that leaves a few motivations unexplained and sometimes gets bogged down, severely undermines a film that is otherwise brimming with first-rate craftsmanship. Despite the odd heavy-handed use of orange gradient filters recalling the younger Scott brother's feature-length Air Force commercial, the film is littered with unforgettable imagery. Vangelis' music, though even more effective listened to on its own, plunges you headfirst into another world, one of infinite possibilities. The net result is a very imperfect film, but as an exercise in world-creation, an admitted Ridley Scott hobby, you'l be hard pressed to find its equal.

Ridley Scott's masterpiece, 1492: A Conquest of Paradise, is a visually compelling film and well acted. Those who gave low viewer ratings in the viewer comments obviously do not see the beauty of epic films. Epics are supposed to be kind of lengthy. It is, to me, the best depiction of Columbus I have ever seen. True, the lead actor is a Frenchman, but if you set that aside you can see that he looks and acts like what one would picture Columbus to be. Durring the sailing scenes it almost made you feel as though you were sailing along with Columbus. I think that the people who are down on the historical accuracies and "inaccuracies" of this film do not cease to realize that Columbus was out for more than spices from India but also a conquest to spread the Gospel to the people of the Far East. The other inaccuracies of the film have only been brought to light years after the films release. They discovered that Columbus was probably not from Genova.

This film was pretty bad. The acting stank, it dragged out too long, and they got the history all wrong. They try to give Columbus 20th century values, and it just looks bad. I remember the scene where Columbus was showing his son an orange and the horizon and says "Its round." Well of course its round, its an orange!