Waiting for The Barbarians. (15.)
Directed by Ciro Guerra.
Starring Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Gana Bayarsaikhan and Greta Scacchi. Available for Digital download from September 7th. 114 mins.
Waiting is not the obvious approach to take with the Barbarians; surely Running From or Preparing For make more sense. But after an hour or so you may be Begging For them to rabble around and liven things up in this ponderous literary adaptation.
This is such a heavyweight project it's perhaps no surprise it makes slow progress. There's a prestigious cast adapting a prestigious novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee in the first English language film by prestigious Columbian director Guerra, (Embrace of the Serpent.) It's even got the octogenarian British cinematographer Chris Menges back behind the camera, to shoot his first film in seven years. He does a majestic job though his rich widescreen images won't make much of an impression streamed onto your telly.
Rylance is The Magistrate, running a distant outpost of The Empire. He has a cushy existence until Depp's Colonel Joll arrives, convinced that The Barbarians are plotting insurrection and tortures prisoners to find the evidence to prove he's right. You're probably wondering which Empire, which Barbarians but, them's the vagaries. This is a work too important to bother with specifics. Instead, you get a historical and geographical mishmash with the soldiers' uniforms seeming French to me, the barbarian being Genghis Khan types and the locals looking like they come from the Moroccan location where it was shot.
And when allegory comes in through the front gate, subtlety usually sneaks out the back. No doubt Coetzee's 1980 novel is masterly but his screenplay merely offers very obvious Iraq War parallels, making points about the inherent weaknesses of empires and limitations of civilisation that the last two decades of current affairs have already rammed home very effectively.
When he emerges from a coach in his sunglasses, Depp initially looks like he nursing a very severe hangover but he's actually fully engaged in the project. Rylance though carries the film, playing the embodiment of decency and the rule of law, the one sane man in a world going mad. But Rylance plays him with such shrinking wallflower reticence that his softly spoken decency becomes hateful. He's such a born-to-lose chump he takes away any tension; he makes it all too easy for them.
Directed by Ciro Guerra.
Starring Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Gana Bayarsaikhan and Greta Scacchi. Available for Digital download from September 7th. 114 mins.
Waiting is not the obvious approach to take with the Barbarians; surely Running From or Preparing For make more sense. But after an hour or so you may be Begging For them to rabble around and liven things up in this ponderous literary adaptation.
This is such a heavyweight project it's perhaps no surprise it makes slow progress. There's a prestigious cast adapting a prestigious novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee in the first English language film by prestigious Columbian director Guerra, (Embrace of the Serpent.) It's even got the octogenarian British cinematographer Chris Menges back behind the camera, to shoot his first film in seven years. He does a majestic job though his rich widescreen images won't make much of an impression streamed onto your telly.
Rylance is The Magistrate, running a distant outpost of The Empire. He has a cushy existence until Depp's Colonel Joll arrives, convinced that The Barbarians are plotting insurrection and tortures prisoners to find the evidence to prove he's right. You're probably wondering which Empire, which Barbarians but, them's the vagaries. This is a work too important to bother with specifics. Instead, you get a historical and geographical mishmash with the soldiers' uniforms seeming French to me, the barbarian being Genghis Khan types and the locals looking like they come from the Moroccan location where it was shot.
And when allegory comes in through the front gate, subtlety usually sneaks out the back. No doubt Coetzee's 1980 novel is masterly but his screenplay merely offers very obvious Iraq War parallels, making points about the inherent weaknesses of empires and limitations of civilisation that the last two decades of current affairs have already rammed home very effectively.
When he emerges from a coach in his sunglasses, Depp initially looks like he nursing a very severe hangover but he's actually fully engaged in the project. Rylance though carries the film, playing the embodiment of decency and the rule of law, the one sane man in a world going mad. But Rylance plays him with such shrinking wallflower reticence that his softly spoken decency becomes hateful. He's such a born-to-lose chump he takes away any tension; he makes it all too easy for them.
