What idiot thought it would be a lucrative idea to make a movie about a greedy Genoese explorer who accidentally discovered the Bahamas? And not just one movie, but two multimillion dollar catastrophes. Did they really think it would be suspenseful? (“I wonder if he’ll make it? Will he ever reach land?”) Did they assume that interest would be at an all-time high because that year marked the 500th year since he touched land and claimed it for Spain? Did they expect inner city youths to trade in their NY Yankees baseball caps for one with a “C” on them? What were they thinking of when they green-lit those foolhardy film projects?
After I sat through Christopher Columbus- The Discovery and the fatuous 1492: Conquest Of Paradise, I wish he had sailed off the edge of the world like many had predicted. In fact, I began to hate Columbus so much that for a while I wouldn’t even set foot on Columbus Circle or walk down Christopher Street.
The first Columbus to come out of the movie release chute was Ilya and Alexander Salkind’s Christopher Columbus- The Discovery, navigated by former action director John Glen.
Columbus is played by the robust and handsome George Corraface who smiles so much in the first 20 minutes you begin to wonder if he is feeble-minded or on Prozac. Most of the movie takes place on board ship as the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria plod across the rolling open seas in search of a viable trade route to Asia. If you’ve ever been trapped on a boat with people you don’t even remotely like for an extended period of time, you’ll know how arduous it is to watch this movie. I kept nodding off in my seat, rallying from time to time when I heard shouts of “I see land!” coming from the screen. But my joy was always short-lived. “It’s only a cloud bank!” a swarthy Spaniard would cry out, and I would start sobbing into my half-full tub of popcorn. Then back to more rolling waves and grumbling crew members. Even George Corraface had stopped smiling. By the time they finally did spy the shore and the music began to swell, the three people still left in the theater were either too battered by lethargy or too seasick to rise to the occasion.
To the movie’s credit, there were a few laughs, albeit inadvertent ones. Marlon Brando as the Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada lumbered onto the screen; with his gray head poking out of a mountainous monkish cassock, he resembled the actress and comedienne Pat Carroll. Every time he walked into a room and nodded, a giant cash register seemed to ring out on the screen: “Give him another million for that scene.” He comes down to the dock to see Columbus sail off. Ka-CHING. “Give him another well-deserved million.” He sits silently at the court of Isabella and Ferdinand. Ka-CHING! “Another million!” Mercifully the audience was able to let out a desperate chortle at the sight of Tom Selleck, as a grumpy Ferdinand, and Rachel Ward, sucking in her cheeks, but the rewards were few and far between. I stumbled out of the theater depressed, tired and green at the gills.
I had higher expectations for Ridley Scott’s 1492. But I soon discovered the title referred to the running time and/or how much the movie would probably make at the box office. Scott clutters up the screen with sumptuous visuals and bombards the ears with a cacophony of sounds- from Vangelis’s thundering score to ear-splitting bird screechings and sword clashings. It’s as if he’s trying to distract the audience from the fact that nothing is going on up on the screen.
And that poor big lug Gerard Depardieu, as Columbus, has to speak all his lines phonetically so that after a while you are reminded of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. “Zee wooorld eees rooound…” says Depardieu to his son holding up an orange.
Sigourney Weaver shows up as Isabella, momentarily fooling you into thinking an alien might have stowed away on the Santa Maria. But no, alas, she just stands around looking younger and younger as the years drag on. (Did Columbus bring back Botox from the New World?)
The only bright spot in the movie is Michael Wincott as the villainous Moxica. With his long sweeping ebony hair and his black and silver spangled jumpsuit he looks like he just stepped off the cover of an old Kiss album. He’s so archly evil, hacking off Native American limbs and snarling contemptuously at Columbus in that husky Gravel Gertie voice of his- it’s the only bright spot on the bombastic ocean Ridley Scott stretches out endlessly before you.
You can almost see why the subject matter could be a lure for a director. The story of dreamers who stand up against the conventions of their time to forge their own way is the basis for countless mythic epics.
Maybe every director should tackle this saga and get it out of their system. There were, after all, two movie biographies of Jean Harlow. And Capote. Even two television bio-dramas of Liberace. Let everyone get a crack at Columbus so we never have to hear his name on the screen. Martin Scorsese could do Cape Columbus. Spike Lee: Columbus Fever. Woody Allen could do Columbus & His Sisters. Abel Ferrara could do Bad Columbus. Michael Bay: Transformers: Revenge of Columbus. Even Kevin Costner could return to directing with Dances With Columbus.
Historical revelations on how Columbus barbarically enslaved thousands of natives and other unsavory aspects of his journeys make it less likely that any filmmaker would be that stupid to cinematically celebrate the man “who sailed the ocean blue.”
Maybe it’s just time we said: “Goodbye, Columbus.”