{"id":1620,"date":"2022-11-01T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T17:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2024-01-30T02:20:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T02:20:33","slug":"that-should-be-a-movie-the-journey-of-isabela-godin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/01\/that-should-be-a-movie-the-journey-of-isabela-godin\/","title":{"rendered":"That Should Be A Movie: The Journey of Isabela Godin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A lady of gentle birth but with an iron will spends weeks surviving in the Amazon rainforest. It\u2019s like the female version of The Revenant<\/em>. Only she\u2019s in the jungle. And she\u2019s driven by love instead of hate.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Now That Should Be A Movie.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Short Pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s called The Journey of Isabela Godin<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a romantic drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the vein of Adrift<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is like The Revenant<\/em> meets Wings of Hope<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It follows an upper-class  gentlewoman with an iron will Isabela Godin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And an awkward French scientist Jean Godin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they struggle to make their way from colonial South American to Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Problems arise when diplomatic issues strand Jean on the east coast of South America and he is unable to reach Isabela on the west coast. For twenty years. Then Isabela becomes lost in the jungle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together their love, faithfulness, and devotion to each over will overcome the distance and the greatest life-and-death situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea came to me when I read The Mapmaker\u2019s Wife<\/em> by Robert Whitaker from beginning to end during one shift when I was a nightguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My unique approach would be the fish-out-of-water experiences of French Jean Godin in Spanish Peru and of upper-class Isabela in the Amazonian wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A set piece is when Isabela is lying on the jungle floor, surrounded by the bodies of family members. Starvation and dehydration have taken a toll on her body. She is being assailed by insects. Then she sees a figure. It is a hallucination of her husband. Then she hears his voice. \u201cGet up,\u201d Jean tells her. She struggles to stand up from the jungle floor. Then she cuts the shoes off the feet of her dead brothers and makes a pair of sandals for herself. Then she throws a scarf over her body and, with machete in hand, plunges into the jungle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Target audiences would be men and women (20 to 80), Latin Americans, students of history, nature lovers, and environmentalists with a concern for the Amazon basin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People would want to see the movie due to the themes of romantic love, faithfulness, devotion, adventure, endurance, inspiration, and the epic, exotic settings of the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Today\u2019s story I would like to pitch as a movie is that of Isabela Godin\u2019s Amazonian journey. I have consulted The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True Tale Of Love, Murder, And Survival In The Amazon<\/em> by Robert Whitaker<\/a>, from Basic Books. And The Lost Lady of The Amazon: The Story of Isabela Godin and Her Epic Journey<\/em> by Anthony Smith<\/a>, from Carroll & Graf Publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story begins in the scientific academies and halls of Europe. Debate raged between the followers of Isaac Newton vs those of Ren\u00e9 Descartes over the shape of the earth. The Newtonians believed that the earth was an oblate spheroid, narrowed at the poles and swollen at the equator, like a ball or balloon. Cartesians believed the earth to be prolated, and elongated at the poles like an egg or football. The debates were heated and took on the nature of national pride. The French decided to settle the matter by sending two expeditions, one to Lapland, the other to Ecuador, then part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The equatorial expedition was led by geographer and mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine. Accompanying him was a young prodigy who would serve as a Best Bboy, Jean Godin des Odonais (hereafter referred to as Godin). Among Godin\u2019s many duties would be carrying the chain used for measurements. Unlike most of the other members of the party, he was not a part of the French hierarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Monument to the expedition at the equator in Quito, Ecuador.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The French Geodesic Mission to the Equator was the first major international scientific expedition and is considered the South American equivalent of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark\u2019s Corps of Discovery Expedition. Part of the significance of the expedition was the fact that Spain had closed South America off from other invaders, I mean European powers, for two hundred and twenty-five years. The diplomatic agreement was such a shakeup of the status quo that it was declared that the Pyrenees along the French-Spanish border no longer existed. They left France on May 16, 1735, and arrived in Quito, Ecuador, then part of Peru, in June 1736. From 1736 to 1744 La Condamine led nine Frenchmen and two Spanish men over the continent as they climbed the Andes to heights never before reached by Europeans, mapped the Amazon, and studied plants and minerals. Most of all they precisely measured the distance of degree of latitude at the Equator and the arcs of the Earth’s curvature on the Equator to determine the shape and size of the Earth. These studies would help scientists understand the laws of gravitational and planetary motion that govern the universe. However, they were unable to prove that the earth was prolate, the Lapland expedition proving that it was oblate two years before the La Condamine expedition finished their measurements in 1739.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All was not in vain for La Condamine\u2019s expedition. Some members of the expedition documented and sketched Incan ruins. Others witnessed volcanic eruptions, discovered rubber, and identified the cinchona tree, which would become one of the first antidotes to malaria. La Condamine created the metric system. Godin collected 4,000 species of plants and drew sketches of 800 species of animals. He also found a wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar\u00eda Isabela de Jes\u00fas Grameson was born January 28, 1728, in the port city of Guayaquil. She was the oldest of four children. Her mother was Josefa Pardo de Figueroa, whose family were descendants of the Castilian king Alfonso XI. Her family was part of the Viceroyalty who had arrived in the colony of Peru in the late 1500s. Isabela\u2019s father was Pedro Manuel Grameson y Bruno, who was born in France and was a colonel administrator in the city of Riobamba. As a member of the highest strata of colonial society, she was treated to all the available highest education, finery, leisure, and privileges, including an Indian maid to wait upon her.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Riobama, Ecuador in the 18th Century<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Being part of the elite meant that when Isabela turned six, she was sent to a convent school. There she was taught to be chaste and virtuous, which included purity, humility, charity, and being timid. They were not allowed to leave the cloister and all visitors had to be approved by the headmistress. The overall purpose was to prepare the girls to be wives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gramesons became acquainted with the scientists during their stay in present-day Ecuador. They discovered that Pedro and Jean Godin\u2019s family had mutual friends back in France. Even though Isabela was still at the convent, she heard about the French and the Parisian dances they had been teaching the upper-class women, also known as Creoles, of the Viceroyalty. She, like so many before and after, dreamed of seeing Paris. She might have also heard that during a squabble between the expedition and locals a young Frenchman of the name Jean Godin had slipped out of town by cover of dark and traveled to Lima to get help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When girls in the Peruvian convent school turned twelve, there were two options for them. They would either prepare to marry a man or become a nun. If she prepared to marry a man, most likely contracted by her parents, she hoped to do it quickly. Spanish society at the time considered an unmarried woman of twenty to be an old maid. If she waited too long, people would begin to suspect she was no longer a virgin, dismissing her chances of marriage. (As a tie-in with my last post about the Battle of Poitier<\/a>, these Spanish ideas about womanhood came from the Reconquista era on the Iberian Peninsula)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabela was thirteen when she began courting Godin, who was twenty-nine. No record survives of their courtship. Robert Whitaker infers in The Mapmaker\u2019s Wife <\/em>that Isabela was not passive but strong-willed in the courtship. Godin would later write that she was \u201cexceedingly solicitous\u201d of traveling to France.  La Condamine said she had a \u201cprovocative mouth.\u201d Any misgivings the parents might have had of a union between a Frenchman and a Spanish Creole lady were overcome and the couple was married on December 29, 1741, in the Dominican College of San Fernando in Quito.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In the months following the wedding, Isabela went into seclusion for a month, society believing it improper for a wife to be seen out in public during her \u201cdeflowering.\u201d Once that tradition had been honored, she and Godin began visiting relatives and friends as part of her ritual entrance into adulthood. From now on out, as a lady of high society, she would only leave her home if accompanied by her husband or a maid. At fourteen she was already pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Jean Godin had planned to take his wife to France in 1743, they remained in Quito. Isabela gave birth to a girl. Joy turned to sorrow when the baby died of an infectious disease four months later. Godin pursued several business ventures, all of which failed. When an epidemic broke out during Isabela\u2019s second pregnancy, the family moved from Quito to Riobamba hoping to find a healthier climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean\u2019s business ventures in Riobamba also failed. Isabela endured two more pregnancies, the infants dying just a few days after birth. Godin worked on a grammar of the Incan language Isabela, a speaker of Quichua, helped him in the endeavor. Then in foreshadowing of things to come, Godin received a letter that had been mailed from France eight years earlier. His father was dead, and his family welcomed his return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But which way to go? He could travel to Lima and take a ship around Cape Horn, but that would be a long overland trek and even longer sea voyage. Godin decided the best itinerary would be to cross the Andes, make his way through the jungle, stopping at mission stations set up by Jesuit priests, and then sail down the Bobonaza, Pastaza, and Amazon rivers by canoe to the Atlantic, then hug the shoreline until arriving in Cayenne, France Guiana. He would go ahead of Isabela to chart the course. He was thirty-six years old when he left on March 10, 1749. Isabel was in her fourth pregnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean Godin’s journey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Godin\u2019s voyage was one of the first since the Conquistadors had explored the Amazon two hundred years before and is considered the first \u201ctourist\u201d excursion down the river. He would also experience diplomatic rigmarole and difficulties which would foreshadow his and Isabela\u2019s later trials and tribulations. He arrived in French Guiana on April 20, 1750. And he stayed there as an unwilling resident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 16 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a myriad of reasons for his virtual imprisonment. Letters to France could take two to four years to sail across the Atlantic, be received by the recipient and answered by the recipient, and sail back across the Atlantic if the ships did not sink or were captured by rival nations. And this if the letters were not lost in French bureaucracy. The French eventually provided Godin with a boat to pick up Isabela. However, the rickety condition of the craft forced him to turn back at the mouth of the Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there were diplomatic issues. He would have to travel through Portuguese and Spanish territory, which would require a passport. Again, letters requesting passports would take years to travel back and forth across the Atlantic and the continent. And that if the letters were not lost in the slowly grinding machine of bureaucracy, which could easily happen since Godin was not considered an important person in the bigger scheme of government and society. Then world events such as the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War) made the colonial powers suspicious of each other, suspecting foreigners of being spies. Even the governor of French Guinea was suspicious of Godin. In an era in which colonial marriages were forgotten once the husband returned to Europe, why was this man so faithful to a Spanish Creole?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabela, who gave birth to a girl whom she named Carman, had expected Jean Godin to return within two years. But events and time moved slowly in 18th-century colonial Peru, so she was not surprised when he did not return within the expected time frame. But then he did not return within four, then six years. Then she began to despair. <\/p>\n\n\n

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One of her brothers, Antoine, was a priest at the mission stations in the jungles. Every time he returned to Riobamba or sent a letter to the church leaders on the coast, she asked if there had been any word of Godin. As the years passed without any word, she would remain in her house for hours, refusing to venture into society. Sometimes she would walk to the top of a hill looking east and search the horizon. Mostly, though, she buried herself in her duties as an upper-class Creole woman and a mother to Carmen, until the daughter, like her mother was whist away to convent school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She turned thirty-six in 1764 and was now considered an old woman, making her unmarriable according to colonial society. Isabela still did not give up hope. She prayed to the saints for the return of her husband. She prayed to the Virgin of Sicalpa, whose statue, high on a hill, overlooked her town. Her faith was encouraged when she witnessed a miracle at San Sebastian Church when the image of a saint suddenly appeared before the parishioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she heard a rumor that a vessel, ordered by the king of Portugal himself,  might be waiting at the Spanish jungle settlement of Loreto. Furthermore, Godin was still alive. She had no way of knowing Le Condamine, having heard about Godin\u2019s predicament, had pulled some strings, contacting people who knew people who knew people until word had reached the highest echelons in Portugal.  To verify the rumors, Isabela sent her slave, twenty-three-year-old <\/a>Joachim, to find the boat He departed in January 1767 and returned three months later, exhausted, having been unable to verify the message. He lacked the proper travel papers. Being of African descent made travel harder as people regarded him suspiciously. She sent him again, promising him his \u201ccard of liberty\u201d \u2013 freedom. It took him twenty-one months to travel the two thousand miles to Loreto and back. When he finally returned, he could verify that there was indeed a boat waiting for her to take her to Godin who was alive but too ill to travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Isabela waited for Joachim, Carman contracted smallpox and died in April 1768. She was only 19. As she was dying, she asked Isabela to relate to her the story of how her mother and the father she had never known had met and about her dream to see Paris. Isabela\u2019s only child to live past infancy was gone, leaving her alone without any fruit of her marriage to Godin. (According to Smith in Lost Lady of the Amazon, her other children had lived past infancy but also died of smallpox before reaching adulthood, p. 84)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabela\u2019s loss made her even more determined to reach Godin. She hires over thirty Indian porters to transfer goods on the first leg of her journey. She would be accompanied by her brothers Antoine and Eugenio. The latter would bring his son Martin with him with hopes of sending him to Europe to obtain a higher education. Isabela also brought Joachim and two Indian maids. Then two strangers arrived at the last minute. Dr. Jean Rocha and his traveling companion, Phelipe Boge. Rocha offered his medical services in exchange for joining their company. Isabela reluctantly let them join. The doctor also had a personal attendant, probably a slave. The total number of the group came to forty persons.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Some tried to warn Isabela away from the journey. It would take six months as they traveled three thousand miles through the Andes, passed volcanos, down the canyons, into the rain forest, and by canoe down three turbulent rivers. The jungles were filled with \u201csavage\u201d Indians, wild beasts, insects, and disease. The Indigenous population had been in constant rebellion against the Spanish authorities for two decades, the fighters escaping into the jungle only to reemerge and attack settlements. The Jesuit priests had been expelled and with them went the mission stations which had been the lifeline through the jungles for Europeans. Furthermore, Isabela\u2019s departure was also in stark contrast with Spanish ideas about a lady wandering too far from her home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she was determined, and the party left on October 1, 1769. The first three hundred fifty miles would be the hardest as they crossed the Andes and then canoed two hundred twenty-five miles down the turbulent Bobonaza. The trek took them three thousand feet high into the Andes where they would face extreme temperatures in a region that experienced rain two hundred fifty days out of the year. Then they would descend three thousand feet over forty miles. As they did so they would have to cross dozens of rivers, creeks, gorges, and canyons in an area that had bogged down Francisco Pizarro and his conquerors two hundred years before. At every water crossing the Indian servants would have to throw up makeshift bridges. Isabel was carried in a litter by servants. The chair pitched back and forth, bruising, and battering her. However, it was out of the question for a lady to walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They expected to find canoes at the first village on the Bobonaza River. Instead, they found it totally abandoned.  Smallpox had struck. Many of the houses had been burned to drive out the \u201cevil spirits.\u201d All of the indigenous servants dropped their supplies and fled back into the mountains. The party found two Indians hiding in the jungle. They were free of the pox and helped build a dugout canoe for Isabela and her companions. They would also navigate for them.<\/p>\n\n\n

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An example of Bobonaza’s rapids from Robert Whitaker’s blog in which he retraced Isabela’s steps <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The stretch of Bobonaza they were on dropped one hundred feet, was full of rapids to be navigated, and passed through deep gorges. The first two days of river travel were uneventful. Then on the third morning, the Indian pilots disappeared. Isabela realized she had made a mistake by paying them in full at the start instead of paying half at the beginning, and half at the end. The men tried paddling the canoe themselves. They were unable to make it very far. However, they soon met an indigenous man, who despite being ill, agreed to be their navigator.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journey continued without incident until on October 31, 1769, a gust of wind sent Rocha\u2019s hat into the river. When the Indian leaned over to fetch the cap, he fell into the river and drowned. Shortly thereafter, the canoe was overturned, dumping all the party and their supplies into the river. Isabela nearly drowned due to her heavy clothing. The party was able to hold onto the canoe until they made it to a sandbar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rocha and Boge said they would take the canoe and travel to the next mission station where they would gather supplies and then return.  With fewer provisions and persons in the canoe, it would be easier to steer, they claimed. Isabela sent Joachim with them. They left on November 3. Isabela would later notice that Rocha had left none of his possessions behind with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sandbar was two hundred feet wide and several hundred yards long. The marooned party built a shelter, a leaf-roofed carbet<\/em>, and made ponchos out of palm branches. None dared venture far from the sandbar due to fear of the anacondas, pit vipers, coral snakes, and jaguars hidden among the underbrush. They also feared the fiercely reputed Jibaro tribe said to live along the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even on the sandbar, they were not safe. Sand flies, gnats, and other insects assailed them, leaving them with bites and festering sores. Mosquitos, having a natural breeding ground in the swampy land and marshes that made up the topography of the Amazon basin where the party was marooned, were a particular menace since the party had no netting to protect themselves from the malarial and yellow fever-carrying pests. The air was humid and oppressive. Their clothing rotted and deteriorated in the heat. Then rains came down, rising water narrowing the bar. They notched a stick to mark their days, but as the weeks wore on, they became confused, notching more days than necessary. After twenty-five days their food supplies were reduced to nothing.  It was clear nobody was coming back for them.<\/p>\n\n\n

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An example of the Robonaza River bottom from Robert Whitaker’s blog <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On November 28th<\/sup> they began making a raft. They dragged out narrow trees from the edge of the jungle and tied them together. They decided to leave Rocha\u2019s slave and Isabel\u2019s two maids behind (Note: Smith in Lost Lady <\/em>claims that the maids seat with Isabel in the middle of the raft while Rocha\u2019s slave helped the brothers and nephew steer with poles). But as soon as they cast off with the raft, it twirled out of control and turned over, dumping everyone into the river. Once again Isabela\u2019s heavy clothing weighed her down and she was almost pulled under by the tangle of tree branches on the river\u2019s bottom. When the party emerged from the water, they were still close enough to the sandbar to walk back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they decided to hack their way through the dense jungle lining the riverbank. Eugenio or Antonio would lead the way, with Isabela, Martin, and the maids in the middle, and Rocha\u2019s slave taking up the end (again there is a version that says the maids and slave remained on the sandbar). The jungle they hacked through has been described as a place where botany strikes back. Tropical plants had spiny leaves that cut the skin. Trees had jagged stiletto-like spikes sticking out from their trunks. The tips were covered by lichens and microbes that could easily cause infection when they broke the skin of a passing human. Isabela\u2019s clothing was so torn up that she wore her brother\u2019s pants, a sight unseen in colonial Peru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there were the insects. Mosquitos left botflies eggs under the skin of Isabela and her party (If you’re not squirmish, check out this video of botflies being removed from a human). Fire ants stung their feet and legs and the kissing bug bit them on the faces, implanting parasites that could eat away their brains. Tic bites left scores and abscesses on their skin, which soon became infected. According to Whitaker in The Mapmaker\u2019s Wife, \u201cThe jungle was killing them in a thousand small ways. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n

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Credit: Robert Whitaker<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Then starvation began taking its toll on the party. Their glucose supply ran out and their bodies started breaking down muscle tissue to extract energy. Their metabolisms slowed down and they became lethargic as their bodies consumed themselves in a hopeless quest to find energy. Then dehydration and thirst struck. What little water they found was unable to fortify them against the heat of the jungle. The thick cover of tree branches and dense underbrush trapped heat and humidity on the jungle floor. Their tongues thickened and the effects of suffocation set in as the party collapsed in a heap to the jungle floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first to die was young Martin. He passed in his aunt\u2019s arms as she wiped the sweat from his forehead. One of the maids died in her sleep. Next perished the other maid and Rocha\u2019s slave. Then Eugenio passed on. Antoine died chanting his beads. Isabela lay alone among the corpses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Joachim had reached civilization on the 8th of November.  It took him two or three days to gather up a rescue party. Unsurprisingly, Rocha and Boge declined to take part in the rescue. Rowing against the river\u2019s current, it took Joaquin and the Indians more than twice as long to ascend as it took to descend. When they reached the sandbar in late December, they were greeted with the sight of torn clothing, scattered palmetto leaves, and human bones with flesh on them. A body, believed to be that of Rocha\u2019s slave, was found in a shallow pool. Joachim believed he saw footprints in the sand. Maybe Isabela was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when the party found the bodies in the woods, he did not give up hope. The pile of bones was not high enough to contain her body. His mistress must have been like family because he spent an undermined amount of time searching for her. But the heat of the jungle sun made the smell of death more nauseating, and the rescue party turned back empty-handed. Rocha feared that Joachim might kill him and had him jailed. An inquest was held. Madam Godin was declared dead.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Isabela had indeed laid on the forest floor with the corpses of her family for a few days. Then she began hallucinating. She could see Jean Godin with an outstretched hand. Then she heard a voice. It was Jean\u2019s voice. \u201cGet up,\u201d he said. So, she got up.  She picked up a machete and cut the shoes off the feet of her dead brothers to make sandals for herself. She was nearly naked from the waist up, so she wrapped a scarf around herself and plunged into the jungle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wandered the jungle for days. She sipped the watery dew from the leaves of plants. She ate raw the eggs of birds straight from their nests. Her hair turned white. She shuddered from chills. The sameness of the jungle floor nearly drove her insane. Yet she kept drawing on the strength of prayer and her visions of Godin. She found healing from the grief of losing her four children. They had been spared the ordeal she was now enduring. As she continued her journey, she felt like God was walking beside her. <\/p>\n\n\n

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An artist’s depiction of Isabela emerging from the jungle from Rejected Princesses<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Then after nearly 10 days of jungle wandering, she spotted two indigenous couples. She was hesitant about approaching them at first.  What if they were cannibals? She decided that being eaten was a preferable fate to her current condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The indigenous couples were just as surprised as she was when she emerged from the jungle. A \u2018white\u2019 woman, her skin was a patchwork of scars, scratches, abscesses, blisters and festering sores. Then they begin to help her, using tried and true methods to remove the botfly maggots and splinters from her skin. They then took her to the Portuguese boat that had waited for her for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She still had a long and tiresome journey ahead of her. Doctors urged her to rest. But she was still determined. Despite her condition, she insisted on continuing her journey to her husband, believing that would best honor God for sparing her life in the jungle. Her only condition on continuing her travels was that Rocha was not a member of the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabela and Jean Godin were reunited on July 22, 1770. It had been twenty years, two months, and twenty-one days since they had last seen each other. She was forty-two and he was fifty-six. They made their way to France where in 1792 they would pass away within months of each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabela remember her promise to Joachim. She had him released from prison and gave him his freedom. According to Smith in Lost Lady of the Amazon<\/em>, Joachim was in some ways the hero of the Godin drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had been sent over the mountains to find the boat. He failed once, and had succeeded on the second attempt. After a two-year stint, he had returned to Isabela with the good news. He had undoubtedly been helpful on her own mountain journey and had then been entrusted to bring back aid from [the village of] Andoas for the beleaguered group on the riverbank. Without his dogged devotion, there would never have been a rescue party, and he could not be blamed for its tardiness. After finding the corpses he had then gathered the valuables, handed them over as requested and, as a reward for all his pains, had been banished back to Quito. (p. 155, 156)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not to distract from Isabela\u2019s heroism. Of all the people in the group, it was surprising that she, a woman of gentle birth, had been the sole survivor. She might have been a gentlewoman, but she had an iron will when needed. All who heard her tale in Latin America and Europe were inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a lady deserves a movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proof that Isabel\u2019s journey would make a great film is found in the run-on sentences of a letter that Jean Godin wrote La Condamine which in typical 18th-century wordiness he says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were it told in a romance that a female of a delicate habit, accustomed to all the comforts of life, had been precipitated into a river; that, after being withdrawn when on the point of drowning, this female, the eight of a party, had penetrated into unknown and pathless woods, and traveled in them for weeks, not knowing whiter she directed her steps, that enduring huger, thirst, and fatigue to very exhaustion, she should have seen her two brothers, far more robust than her, and a nephew yet a youth expire by her side and she yet survive; that, after remaining by their corpses two whole days and nights, in a country abounding in tigers and numbers of dangerous serpents, without once seeing any of these animals or reptiles, she should afterwards have been strength to rise, continue her way, covered with tatters, through the same pathless wood for eight days together till she reached the banks of the Bobonaza, the author would be charged with inconsistency; but the historian should paint facts to his reader, and this is nothing but the truth. The truth of this marvelous tale is attested by the original letters in my hands, from many missionaries on Amazon, who felt an interest in this event, and by other proofs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s address the elephant in the room regarding the age gap between Isabela and Jean. Now I might get canceled for this, but I do not believe a film should skirt the issue or make her older. It was the world of the people in 18th<\/sup> century colonial Peru and we moderns do not have a right to impose our own standards upon their story to make ourselves comfortable. Sticking with the historically accurate age gap would allow a film to discreetly, and, obviously, nothing sexual, explore how their relationship grew from one of convenience to one of true love. This would best honor Isabela since it was obvious she loved Jean. If her love for him was able to overcome twenty years of separation, a three-thousand-mile journey, being lost and nearly dying in the jungle, then it was surely able to overcome cultural requirements and an age gap. To deny her true age would be to deny the power of her love. [Note: I am against more, abusive marriages of child brides, see my post about I Am Nujood, Age 10 And Divorced<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Statue of Isabela in Riobamba, Ecuador<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Isabela\u2019s story has a lot of elements that would make it a great movie. There\u2019s romance, love, devotion, faithfulness, adventure, political suspense, and survivalism, and the epic grandeur of the Andes and the exotic setting of the Amazonian rainforest. There are plenty of themes to explore, including the effects of colocalization, slavery, and the end of colonial rule in Latin America, and the role and treatment of women in 18th-century Spanish society. The depiction of the rainforest would raise awareness of the environmental issues facing that part of the world. Logging companies in the rainforest, instead of thinning the trees like my tree farm-owning family does, are clear-cutting the jungle, polluting the water, causing erosion, and destroying flora that could contain the ingredients for life-saving medicines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When considering the director\u2019s helm for Isabela\u2019s story, most people would suggest Roland Joff\u00e9 (The Mission<\/em>), Werner Herzog (Wings of Hope<\/em>), Greg McLean (Jungle<\/em> [2017]), or James Gray (The Lost City of Z) since they\u2019ve had experience filming in the Amazon jungle. Of course, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu (The Revenant) would be a good choice. My top three choices would be Chloe Zhao (Nomadland), Debra Granik (Leave No Trace), or Anna Gutto (Paradise Highway<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because it is an inspiring and epic tale of love and devotion set in the exotic location of South America is why I believe the journey of Isabela Godin Should Be A Movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s called The Journey of Isabela Godin.
\nIt is a romantic drama.
\nIn the vein of Adrift.
\nIt is like The Revenant meets Wings of Hope.
\nIt follows an upper-class gentlewoman with an iron will Isabela Godin
\nAnd an awkward French scientist Jean Godin
\nAs they struggle to make their way from colonial South American to Europe.
\nProblems arise when diplomatic issues strand Jean on the east coast of South America and he is unable to reach Isabela on the west coast. For twenty years. Then Isabela becomes lost in the jungle.
\nTogether their love, faithfulness, and devotion to each over will overcome the distance and the greatest life-and-death situations.
\nThe idea came to me when I read The Mapmaker\u2019s Wife by Robert Whitaker from beginning to end during one shift when I was a nightguard.
\nMy unique approach would be the fish-out-of-water experiences of French Jean Godin in Spanish Peru and of upper-class Isabela in the Amazonian wilderness.
\nA set piece is when Isabela is lying on the jungle floor, surrounded by the bodies of family members. Starvation and dehydration have taken a toll on her body. She is being assailed by insects. Then she sees a figure. It is a hallucination of her husband. Then she hears his voice. \u201cGet up,\u201d Jean tells her. She struggles to stand up from the jungle floor. Then she cuts the shoes off the feet of her dead brothers and makes a pair of sandals for herself. Then she throws a scarf over her body and, with machete in hand, plunges into the jungle.
\nTarget audiences would be men and women (20 to 80), Latin Americans, students of history, nature lovers, and environmentalists with a concern for the Amazon basin.
\nPeople would want to see the movie due to the themes of romantic love, faithfulness, devotion, adventure, endurance, inspiration, and the epic, exotic settings of the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,335],"tags":[329,314,327,332,321,325,316,333,319,320,317,326,322,315,318,331,324,328,330,323],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south-america","category-strong-women","tag-alejandro-g-inarritu","tag-amazon","tag-anna-gutto","tag-bobonaza-river","tag-chloe-zhao","tag-debra-granik","tag-ecuador","tag-french-guinea","tag-isabela-godin","tag-jean-godin","tag-jungle","tag-leave-no-trace","tag-nomadland","tag-peru","tag-rainforest","tag-roland-joffe","tag-the-lost-city-of-z","tag-the-revenant","tag-werner-herzog","tag-wings-of-hope","entry entry-center"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paCks2-q8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/33_of_Les_Francais_en_Amazonie_..._Illustrations_par_P._Hercouet_et_F._Masse_11192652893.jpg?fit=1920%2C1117","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2369,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions\/2369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}