Gauguin: Voyage de Tahiti

Irrevocably restless, never satisfied, constantly searching for sober novel inspiration with inexhaustible molten severance, erupting in fits of doubt and displeasure, encamped in violable abandon, glacial patience laboriously un/restrained, deep freezes and heat waves embryonically articulated, searching for radical bewilderment, impecuniously torn and strained, ambidextrous ambitions quotidianly qualified, seaside simplicity, inconspicuous nebula.

There wasn't anything else Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) could have done, although realizing this he likely should have embraced celibacy.

He seems to have been responsible inasmuch as he constantly worked to improve his art, dedicated to his personal tasks, resolved to carry on, but his wives and children were left destitute, as was he for much of his life, I suppose his family could have gone with him to Tahiti, although if I had several children and my partner was an artist who had never sold anything and was approaching 40 I likely would have moved on even if it would have crushed me.

Details.

Gauguin: Voyage de Tahiti doesn't present many details from his life, apart from the fact that he left his family behind in France to find inspiration in Tahiti where he met another woman whom he treated brutishly while painting.

The film condenses various aspects of his life into short scenes that depict him working, loving, playing, breaking down, scenes which infantilize his social relations while romanticizing his artistic stagger, the scene where a doctor notices that he isn't painting anymore adding sympathy and concern, the scene where he locks his wife Tehura (Tuheï Adams) up while he goes to work accentuating his callous desperation, as he realizes he has nothing else left, and is aware that must seem unappealing.

A bit of a scoundrel I suppose, base instincts overpowering free spirits at times as nagging hopelessness engendered cantankerous decay.

You still have to imagine you're Gauguin, you're a struggling dismissed talented artist with nothing to hold on to later in life besides works that aren't selling and intense stubborn commitment, no one recognizing your talents besides yourself, students prospering while you struggle, you have to situate yourself within his rugged composure, while remembering that you may have been less lascivious had you no steady income in the age before birth control, to take something enduring away from the film.

You could probably learn more about him from reading 5 pages of a biography.

But would you be able to imagine you were there, struggling as he struggled, toiling as he toiled, watching as everything he risked and loved slipped away, with as much doting dour devotion?

Voyage de Tahiti presents vivid impressions lacking in substance but full of rich emotion.

The other side of the world.

Lost in love at play.