Check out Ricky Raw's original review and post here.
"The Moon and Sixpence" had a lot of the blunt and unsubtle parallels with "Darling", although I feel that the latter movie was a hell of a lot better. Darling seemed to pull off its bluntness with a free flowing ease due to brilliant editing and directing, The Moon and Sixpence seemed a bit choppy and its transitions weren't very smooth. As if it wasn't dumbed down enough it also literally displays on screen read-out-loud text of what we just saw. I see too many problems with this movie which literally watches a like a rough draft. The Dutch artist was way too much of a pathetic caricature, the scenes in Tahiti were pointlessly goofy, our main hero somehow immediately transforms from a boring buffoon with no social skills into a cold and aloof bad ass as soon as he sprouts a beard but to name a few. I suspect I would understand the movie a lot better if I looked into the original novel as well as the biography of Paul Gaugin it might fill in the gaps for me because the movie paints an incomplete picture. A quick Wikipedia search shows that Gaugin spent some time with Dutch painter Van Gogh in France, and during this time Van Gogh infamously cut his ear off. Clearly this shows that the dynamics of their relationship and their characters were quite a bit different than Strickland and the Dutch artist in the film.
In his review, Ricky claims Strickland's character was a good depiction of clinical narcissism. I think however that Strickland came off as more of a selfish asshole than a true narcissist. I think he is more antisocial than narcissistic. He seems to be too much in his own world to expect much of other people. He lacks the enviousness, doesn't expect to be known for his brilliance and definitely isn't obsessed with admiration. I think the movie tries to portray him as a quasi-autistic genius, kind of like the movie "Amadeus" portrays Mozart. But unfortunately the movie is too simplistic to be a character study of a tortured genius, so it lightly touches upon Strickland's inner turmoil but doesn't really develop the theme very much. The scenes where we find out he has leprosy and forces his wife to burn his paintings allude to it but don't develop the theme much.
I also think there are quite a few modern day indies that portray the alpha/beta attraction dynamic just as well as the old movies without succumbing to politically correct pressures. A particularly good one comes to mind called "The Vicious Kind" with J.K. Simmons.
"The Moon and Sixpence" had a lot of the blunt and unsubtle parallels with "Darling", although I feel that the latter movie was a hell of a lot better. Darling seemed to pull off its bluntness with a free flowing ease due to brilliant editing and directing, The Moon and Sixpence seemed a bit choppy and its transitions weren't very smooth. As if it wasn't dumbed down enough it also literally displays on screen read-out-loud text of what we just saw. I see too many problems with this movie which literally watches a like a rough draft. The Dutch artist was way too much of a pathetic caricature, the scenes in Tahiti were pointlessly goofy, our main hero somehow immediately transforms from a boring buffoon with no social skills into a cold and aloof bad ass as soon as he sprouts a beard but to name a few. I suspect I would understand the movie a lot better if I looked into the original novel as well as the biography of Paul Gaugin it might fill in the gaps for me because the movie paints an incomplete picture. A quick Wikipedia search shows that Gaugin spent some time with Dutch painter Van Gogh in France, and during this time Van Gogh infamously cut his ear off. Clearly this shows that the dynamics of their relationship and their characters were quite a bit different than Strickland and the Dutch artist in the film.
In his review, Ricky claims Strickland's character was a good depiction of clinical narcissism. I think however that Strickland came off as more of a selfish asshole than a true narcissist. I think he is more antisocial than narcissistic. He seems to be too much in his own world to expect much of other people. He lacks the enviousness, doesn't expect to be known for his brilliance and definitely isn't obsessed with admiration. I think the movie tries to portray him as a quasi-autistic genius, kind of like the movie "Amadeus" portrays Mozart. But unfortunately the movie is too simplistic to be a character study of a tortured genius, so it lightly touches upon Strickland's inner turmoil but doesn't really develop the theme very much. The scenes where we find out he has leprosy and forces his wife to burn his paintings allude to it but don't develop the theme much.
I also think there are quite a few modern day indies that portray the alpha/beta attraction dynamic just as well as the old movies without succumbing to politically correct pressures. A particularly good one comes to mind called "The Vicious Kind" with J.K. Simmons.
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