This looks ridiculous
I'll see anything with Kidman but not this. Some of the casting looks like comedy skits especially Pattinsen.Also hate the directiors work.
shareI'm truly sorry to say that the film is indeed very bad.
The User Review by derwunderbaremandarin is bang on the mark.
Anyone who wants to watch a woman traipsing across a desert with camels should watch something like 'Tracks', which is more up-front about issues of adventure and finding oneself and does not involve cultural elites setting up conspicuous encounters and professing huge respect for each other. Nothing against Bell herself; she was out there doing it.
The film is massively overblown. Its score (sometimes - annoyingly - echoing that of L. of Arabia) and the decent production values were both trying to up the value of a dead script (Herzog's) and a turgid storyline. The exposition was lifeless, with wall-to-wall telling and no effort to show. I have rarely seen more instances in a single film of second-tier actors being actually prevented by the director from delivering his own bad lines well (terrible directing, seemingly zero time spent on rehearsing scenes). And as for Churchill's cockney accent.. WTF!!!!
Franco was given no leadership and delivered everything in soft, sensitive mode at snail's pace. Lewis was good, Kidman fine. But when will this bubble finely burst - the one where top-notch actors get together with a big-name director in a cosy alliance without bothering about a dud screenplay that lacks dramatic potential and without paying any thought to the lines they will be asked to deliver?
At no point in the film was I excited or engaged. I had a brief flicker of emotion at the end - as one does - when the epilogue notes were flashed up. The Bell material should have been made into a TV docu-drama, but judging from his documentaries I think Herzog is too egotistical to submit to that format.
excellently stated
share