James Emmanuel P.

del Mundo
Activity #1
1CMT1H-GED121 READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Summary of 1942: Conquest of Paradise

1492: Conquest of Paradise" sees Christopher Columbus as more complex and humane than in
the other screen treatments of the character. His Columbus is an enlightened revision of the
traditional figure, treating Indians the same as Spanish noblemen and seeming content with the
notion that nature, not the Catholic God, is their deity.

Columbus is also a good deal more convincing as a human being. As played by Gerard
Depardieu, he seems huge and shaggy and dogged, just the kind of man who would get an idea in
his head and refuse to surrender it. We are familiar with many of the stages in his story, such as
his defense of his voyage before hostile scholars, and his careful courting of Queen Isabella as
his patron, but Depardieu makes them seem new.

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. In the dreary "Christopher Columbus:
The Discovery," released last August, it was an apple. I am waiting for someone to make it a
potato, since Europe before the discovery of America had no potatoes - a fact I have been
husbanding for years in case I am ever a guest on "Jeopardy." What disappoints me a little about
Scott's version is that he seems to hurry past Columbus' actual voyage of discovery. There is
intrigue in the Old World and adventure and violence in the New, but the crucial journey that
links them seems reduced to its simplest terms: The three ships sail, the crews grow restless,
there is mutiny in the air, Columbus quiets it, and then land is sighted. (In the previous film
version, Columbus helpfully offered to be beheaded if land was not sighted in three days, an
embellishment of history that Scott and screenwriter Roselyne Bosch wisely omit.) 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 (Europeans were
already rounding Africa on their way to Asia, and the Vikings preceded Columbus to North
America by centuries). What prevented Europe from expanding into the new continent was
essentially superstition and conservatism, a strong impulse to leave things as they were. It was an
impulse that Columbus was constitutionally unable to accept.

Ridley Scott is a visually oriented director who finds great beauty in his vision of the New
World, including a breathtaking shot in which the ocean mists rise to reveal a verdant shore. He
shot his film in Costa Rica, where the Native Americans are depicted as dignified and gentle,
people who inspire Columbus to wonder whether they might not be an improvement on the
inbred backbiting nobles of the Spanish court. I am not convinced that Columbus was as
enlightened as he seems in this movie, but perhaps historical figures exist in order to be
reinterpreted every so often in terms of current needs.

The screenplay is the result of extended research by Bosch (who nevertheless observes in the
film's notes that Catholics in Isabella's Spain could be burned at the stake for eating meat on
"Holy Friday"). She continues Columbus' story for a decade after his discovery of America, as he
brings news of his triumph back to Spain, returns to the New World as a viceroy, and then
struggles with the land, violent noblemen, opponents in Spain and even a hurricane before being
James Emmanuel P.del Mundo
Activity #1
1CMT1H-GED121 READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY
returned in disgrace to prison. There is a happy ending; Isabella grants his wish to visit the
American mainland, and he dies after dictating his memoirs to his son.

One of Depardieu's most touching moments is a closeup as he hears his fellow Italian Amerigo
Vespucci described as the discoverer of the mainland, although here the movie plays fast and
loose with the facts, since Columbus, who visited South America before Vespucci did, is given a
sad line in which he asks how much further it was (and "America" was not named after Vespucci
until the year after Columbus's death).

What I would someday like to see would be a film much closer to the bone than this one, one in
which the physical rigors of the voyage and the first settlements were depicted more realistically.

My take-away;

It’s understandable that the story of Christopher Columbus, the famed Spanish explorer, would
be simplified and sanitized for elementary-aged minds as the man who “discovered America”.
After all, how exactly does one communicate to kids that this adventurous-seeming guy’s quest
for exotic riches would play an instrumental part in one of the worst genocides in recorded
history? Like many other kids of my generation, a fuller picture of Columbus came into view as I
got older— he didn’t even discover “America” per se; he landed on an island in the Bahamas,
and even then, it had already been “discovered”, judging by the centuries-old indigenous
civilization they encountered upon making landfall.  In recent years, progressive America has
increasingly caught on to the problematic nature of Columbus’ lionization, subsequently calling
for the replacement of his eponymous holiday with one that better honors the native population
decimated under his leadership. The movement has grown so strong, in fact, that many cities like
Los Angeles have written this switch away from Columbus into law. A small pear of defense
against accusations of historical inaccuracy is actually worn by the movie. It features an
underdeveloped frame story that suggests the movie is actually based on a biography of
Columbus written by his son Fernando, who is not his biological child. A brief voice-over
narration by Fernando (Loren Dean), who remembers his father saying, "Nothing that arises from
human progress is attained by majority consent," opens the film. The concept of "human
progress" didn't exist in the 15th century, thus it goes without saying that this is a bogus
statement from Columbus and not something he actually said. Those who become enlightened
before the others are also doomed to seek that light despite others.