I agree with you on Henri's and Dega's deliberations on escaping, particulary poor Dega when he realises his wife doesn't love him really that much to help him get out of prison sooner. I think it's an excellent movie. Just look at the tropical scenery, serving both as a hot humid hell (when they're in the penal colony on Devil's island and the leper colony on Pidgeon Island) and a timeless paradise (when Henri lives among the natives dving for pearls). The solitary confinement was also brutal. Spending two years there, then escaping, then getting caught, then spending five years again, only to see Marette (the homosexual that joined the two in the escape) dying and Dega spiritually broken. There were some hilarious scenes, some of them dark, like when the chieftain asks him to draw a butterfly on his chest, the scene where the merchant was dead, hung by his feet (presumably because he didn't offer proper compensation to the tribe for their pearls), and the mother superior taking Henri's pearls, snitching him off to the authorities and then thanking him for helping the poor. Also, the music score is beautiful, comparable to Horner's score for LBT.
