The Guru of the US film critics, Roger Ebert, wrote about the work of Werner Herzog. “He has never made a single film that would be a compromise solution, unwertig, arose from purely pragmatic reasons or been uninteresting Even his failure is spectacular. ”
That was in 2006, Ebert is now deceased. He duke new film “Queen of the Desert” does not need to see and can not revise his judgment. It is at this point but said very clearly: The world cinema is inconceivable without Werner Herzog’s body of work that is one of the most exciting artistic achievements of the 20th and early 21st century. The monumental bust “Queen of the Desert” can not erase this fact. but
It is also true that all this is “Queen of the Desert”, which is not Duke residual plant according Ebert. Especially one thing: uninteresting. Spectacular is Duke failure here at most, because you just do not recognize the film as his. Would, for example, Veronica Ferres play the leading role instead of Nicole Kidman … Man himself wants rather not imagine, but then he would run just fine as “Event Movie” on Sunday evening in the ZDF.
In this subject and Handlungsort fit at first glance perfectly to Duke oeuvre. It’s about the life of Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman), the female “Lawrence of Arabia”, and much of the story wears in the desert. The majestic and cruel wilderness has always played at Duke a prominent role, he examines the relationship of the people back to nature and back and described mainly with “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo” as intense as no director before and since the clash of natural grandeur with human hubris. And that in a film language that worked beyond the classical narrative cinema, while his own was utterly.The history of “Queen of the Desert” follows the young Gertrude from the English estate of her family, where she terribly bored and feels imprisoned, to Persia, where her uncle worked as an ambassador. You fell in love not only in the exotic country and its people. Even the Secretary Henry Cadogan (James Franco) kindled in her, as they say in the profession of tearjerker so, the fire of passion. The two want to get married, but then it turns out that is Henry, a player and highly indebted. His suicide never twists Gertrude.
In the following years she breaks repeatedly daring expeditions into the desert. Trips that her among the Arabs respect and the honorary title – to bring “Khatun Queen of the Desert”. Nobody knows the desert peoples as they, by any other Europeans feel that they are understood as defined by it. Unexpectedly, Gertrude in love again, this time in the British Major Douhty-Wylie (Damian Lewis), but this relationship is destined not lucky.
Aufgebrezelte soap opera
The real Gertrude Bell, forgotten for years, is one of the most colorful figures of the early 20th century. She made two world travel, climbed the Rocky Mountains, was best-selling author and despite their autonomy strict opponent of equality. Not least, they played an important and contradictory role in the breakdown of the Middle East between France and Great Britain. But none of this can be found in Herzog’s film. In his version of her life story is actually already at the very beginning the air out.
In elongated sequences Bell hanging on balls around, only at home, then in Baghdad, and the audience is bored at least as as the main character , Ever sets this start, which operates all kinds of effort with costumes and equipment, set the tone for the rest of the movie: “Queen of the Desert” is a aufgebrezelte soap opera, a tearjerker it, but one of resounding Tristesse. Man rubs his eyes, but Duke is serious about the romanticized trimmings, the only alleged passion.
example of this is the description of the relationship between Gertrude and Henry. Rarely a screen couple has so much fire as lacking here. Kidman and Franco can obviously nothing to start together, and it is impossible not to ask the question whether James Franco, this wannabe artist / art filmmaker / poet / author whether this James Franco not quite actually a very, very limited actor is. As Gertrudes Love Interest Anyway, he exudes the charisma of a staid bookkeeper.
Cultural Überlegenheitspose
in the film repeatedly invoked “poetry of the Bedouins” – where it is? In this film, at least she is not plugged. Instead: Unimaginative, unloving kadrierte Desert panoramas juchzende violins and disgusting is cherished world music in a score to comment on even the most mundane scene, gruesome stilted dialogue, which is inherent in no life. As early as February, when the highly anticipated world premiere, the fürIrritation made in the features section.
The hardest weighs that Duke, who also wrote the script himself, the political dimension of this really so exciting substance neglected. The root of many problems of today, ailing world of Arabia are at this time, which was so strongly influenced by colonial self-perception of European countries. In “Queen of the Desert” Herzog makes this view of the Arabs to own.
Not one of them plays a greater role. Most frequently still Bells servile servant is to see who reads to her every whim. Even among themselves they speak English, Arabic dialects are difficult to hear. Arrogance and cultural superiority Poznan – find unfiltered input into this so sentimental, so unimaginative edification History
When you credits rubs again incredulous eyes.. Is there really: Director – Werner Herzog
Trailer for “Queen of the Desert”:
Queen of the Desert
USA 2015
Original title: Queen of the Desert
Written and directed by: Werner Herzog
Cast: James Franco, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson
rental: Prokino Filmverleih
Length: 129 minutes
Certificate: without
From: 3 September 2015
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