Queen of the Desert, (2015) directed by Werner Herzog

Filmed on location in Morocco, Jordan and England, the cinematography is outstandingly beautiful, with sharp contrast between the isolation of the Arabian desert, the green of England and the gracious architecture of the various cities. The story of English explorer and archaeologist Gertrude Bell’s independent travels through what became Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, in the early 20th century is fascinating and worthy of a much better film than this. At its best, the dialogue is expository and didactic, more suited to a documentary than a drama. At its worst, it is stilted and laughable. The film is extremely fuzzy with its timeline, causing confusion and mucking around with history. Nicole Kidman’s performance is patchy; she is more convincing as the increasingly confident desert traveller, but is undermined by the film’s insistence on the capable Bell being portrayed as a kind of femme fatale, which apparently requires lots of panting and heavy breathing to express deep emotion. Some of the casting is odd. James Franco should be romantic as Bell’s first love, Cadogan, but he comes across as a bit oily and creepy. Robert Pattinson is better than expected as TE Lawrence, and he and Kidman work well together. Damian Lewis is as solid as ever as Bell’s later love. The actor who plays Winston Churchill can’t suppress his cockney accent, which just sounds stupid. A few genuinely laugh-out-loud moments are scattered through the film, but the humour sits a little oddly among all the desert intensity. The costuming is as glorious as the scenery, but it all adds up to a film that looks good but is not much more than this.