Reality Reels: Have you been to ‘Reel Paradise’

What would you do if you were having a mid-life crisis? If you’re John Pierson you’d round up your family and set off for Fiji for one year to screen free movies for the natives. Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) takes us along via this documentary to experience every aspect of their journey. John and his wife Janet, with their two children, Georgia and Wyatt, quickly learn that things are not as they are in America when in Taveuni, Fiji.

John has difficulty adjusting to this new culture of relative poverty in a natural paradise. His intentions are good, but he struggles to get the local people as excited about movies as he is. From his frequent battles with the local projectionists to his distrust of their landlord, John is often loosing his temper. Janet tries sincerely to integrate into the culture from the very beginning, making friends and learning the ways of the Fijians. It isn’t until their rented home is broken into for the second time and a few thousand dollars of equipment is stolen that Janet begins to lose her faith. The Pierson’s daughter, Georgia, quickly makes friends with a local girl her age and begins spending a lot of time with the local boys, one of which her parents are not fond of. The Pierson’s son, Wyatt, debates his father on virtually every aspect of the types of movies John wants to show. The two Pierson children even attend Fijian school and are far more successful across the board at fitting in with the Fijians.

Often it seems that nothing can go right on this mission of motion pictures, but in reality the only time things really seem to work as planned is when a movie is being screened. Even the local Christian missionaries are against John and what he’s doing, claiming he is undermining their teachings of how western democracy and capitalism is best for them. Free movies do this? Reel Paradise (2005) is a fascinating documentary on how two cultures thousands of miles apart, both geographically and culturally, collide in an effort to learn from one another. It is also a very entertaining movie for the average movie geek, as John is a kind of movie geek and the idea of running your own independent cinema in an island paradise has certainly crossed most of our minds at some point. [On a side note, I find it ridiculous that this documentary received an R-rating for language and very mild and relative references to sexual topics.]