44/100
As stodgy and shapeless as it appears, but not, thankfully, as boring. I’d actually go to bat for the first 45 minutes (where “go to bat” = “not bad”), which largely consist of an unusually diffident James Franco romancing Kidman’s Bell via card magic and poetry; he’s playing a real individual, Henry Cadogan, but I’d wager this part of the movie is least beholden to biography, and all the more vital for it. You can sense Herzog’s offbeat presence when e.g. Henry asks Gertrude’s permission to kiss her atop some ruin and then decides maybe they should put some distance between themselves and that vulture first. Downside is that Bell’s subsequent Arabian adventures come across (unintentionally, I’m sure) as recklessness borne of sublimated grief: She lost the love of her life and was left to court death. Nor does Kidman exactly radiate obsessive iconoclasm—it’s a solid performance (among other things, she’s surprisingly credible as a twentysomething Bell, despite being nearly 50 at the time; had to remind myself they weren’t de-aging actors yet, except via plastic surgery), and I didn’t expect her to emulate Klaus Kinski or anything, but there’s definitely a costume-drama feel to the entire picture…which, again, works better when it’s a Merchant–Ivoryesque romance at the outset than when it’s striving to be a Lean-style epic. It’s the kind of film one might call “handsome” in what’s clearly a slightly disparaging way, though Herzog obviously knows how to shoot stunning Moroccan landscapes. Credit for that, full blame for writing a screenplay that concludes with someone intoning “She was the uncrowned queen of the desert.” Yes, we just watched that.
Written entirely on my phone while sitting with my dad on his birthday as he watched USA beat (unless I’m jinxing it) Bosnia and Herzegovina.