BERLIN 65 ( 2015) REVIEWS
BY Alex Deleon
The 65th Berlin Film Festival opened with two portraits of obsessed women in life threatening desert situations, Portrayed by international superstars, respectively Juliet Binoche in "Nobody Wants the Night" and Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog's "Queen of the Desert". In the first Binoche portrays the wife of Commander Peary who was lost in the far north seeking to be the first man to reach the North Pole. His wife (an aging austere Binoche) sets out to find him defying all sorts of insanely threatening situations whike her Eskimo team strongly advises against carrying on in the barren Arctic white desert where only polar bears are at home --what happens to her at the end of this harrowing trip through the Arctic wasteland I never found out because, like many others in the audience, I felt compelled to leave long before her tedious ordeal was over.
That was the festival opening film directed by Catalan femme director Isabel Coixet (pronounced Kwashet) a berlin favorite and regular. NOT the best possible opening choice from an audience perspective but fest director Dieter Kosslick has his own private priorities.
On the first full day of the festival the big film was Kidman starrer "Queen of the Desert" in which Kidman portrays another historically possessed woman -- an English aristocrat, Gertrude Bell, who became a sort of female Lawrence of Arabia when she was enthralled by the purity of the way of life of the Bedouin nomads of the middle eastern deserts and ventured in her own into the interior despite strong objections by the British governors in Cairo and Baghdad.
Press Conference, QUEEN IF THE DESERT: Nicole Kidman, Werner Herzog, and James Franco.
You've heard heard of "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle": Now meet Gertie, Queen of the Desert as portrayed by an ever lovely and delicate Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog's sandy historic Middle East epic: along the way you'll also run into a gritty dropout Lawrence of Arabia and a bungling caricature of Winston Churchill. Fantastic sand dunes and the best camels ever fill out this vast portrait of the Middle East in World War I when the lines were drawn that stake out today's post Arab Spring Nightmares. Topical background in view of today's headlines -- ISIS beheadings and incineration of hostages and all that, most lushly filmed in Morocco and Jordan with an extensive cast you will need a scorecard to keep track of and so long it feels like GWTW, but worth the patience it takes to sit through especially if you are a Werner Herzog advocate and, like myself, a lover of camels. Quite beautiful to watch but it does take patience and should be provided with an intermission to break up the interminability. In the packed house press screening I attended there was a steady trickle of walkouts after the halfway mark.
Might win something because this is Herzog Lifework homage year in Berlin but is really overblown with many hoaky impersonations of Arab Shieks and Kidman, though more radiant than ever, is far too delicate a flower to portray the hardy desert survivor the real Gertrude Bell of the title (1868 - 1926) must have been.