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I have to be blunt. Reading Gertrude Bell's Wikipedia entry arguably provides more thrills than watching Werner Herzog's misfire of a biopic. Although a contemporary and, as this film suggests, a likely friend of TE Lawrence, Queen of the Desert, doesn't even come remotely close to telling Bell's story with the same sort of grandeur and vision that David Lean achieved with Lawrence of Arabia.

Bell led a life of adventure and achievement, in a range of diverse locations and across a variety of disciplines that Herzog doesn't really even attempt to explore. Hell, the woman even had an interesting death (as far as deaths can be interesting I suppose). He only focuses his cameras on Bell's middle eastern travels. But then makes the mistake of trying to define much of Bell's life through a couple of failed and unfulfilled love encounters with men associated with diplomatic posts. A great deal of onscreen time is spent in various embassies and at different functions, that I'm afraid I consider time just wasted.

When Herzog finally decides to turn to the desert, we are presented with some breath-taking, but often quite brief scenes. We see her begin to interrelate with a number of Bedouin tribes in abrupt, fairly forgettable exchanges, which never succeed in portraying how she ended up being such an influentially historical figure in the region, whose reputation rivalled that of Lawrence himself. Then there are factual inaccuracies that Herzog allows/makes for no real artistic objectives. Basic things such as her being confined to Ha'il for 11 days, not over 3 weeks as mentioned in the dialogue. Occasional years and dates are mentioned onscreen, but shouldn't be taken too seriously. Using the film's timeline, the film appears to begin in 1902, when an obviously young Gertrude first achieves her ambition of travelling east due to her influential father. The only trouble with that is, by this time she was actually 34 and had made copious trips to the Middle East.

Queen of the Desert was both a critical failure and a rather huge commercial flop. It's such a shame that $36 million should be wasted on a movie that doesn't really begin to explore what made this independent, intelligent woman ahead of her times tick.

Gertrude Bell is one of the most remarkable people (of either sex) to have ever lived...but you wouldn't know it from this film. Archaeologist, mountain climber, poet, translator, linguist, explorer, diplomat, spy, (to name just a handful of her many accomplishments) and all in a time in which women were virtually prohibited from doing any of those things, for the most part, and in territories that even men of the time feared to tread. In addition to being the world's expert on both Sunni and Shiite relations before, during and after WWII, she was charged with drawing up the boundaries for modern day Iraq. She was respected, admired and desired.

But, since she was female, it took nearly a decade to green light a movie on her life and then some man decides to make her life story an epic "romance" and, of course, make the MEN in her life central to her story. How heartbreaking that her story was so terribly contrived to conform to Hollywood's stereotypes about women and women's lives. And how more tragic that this film could not even find a U.S. distributer as of this writing. This is why we live in a world that thinks women make little to no contributions to history. We rarely tell their stories and when we do, we stuff the round peg of a remarkable life into the square hole of Hollywood sexist tropes, believing no one wants to see a film with a female protagonist unless she's spending at least half the movie pining over some man in order to feel whole.

While the movie does cover many of her remarkable accomplishments, my beef with the film is the need to weigh her story down with overly melodramatic, poorly written scenes of tragic love instead of celebrating a superlative life of unique and notable triumphs. I wanted to see more on her travels, her discoveries, her diplomacy, her efforts during the war. Just gender flip this film (although it would be hard to find a man of history as accomplished in multiple fields as she was) and you'll see how ridiculous is the script's focus on what was only one facet of the brilliant gem that was Gertrude Bell.

I urge anyone interested in history to read about this woman's life. Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, by Janet Wallach is a great biography.

Hollywood has perfected the fine art of trivializing and "romanticizing" women's history...yet again.

Queen of the Desert breaks form with several other Herzog movies: A female lead character, a grand Hollywood-like production and most interesting: a different perspective on the culture-nature dichotomy and the effects of cultural distance that almost forms the core of Herzog's work.

It tells the story of Gertrude Bell (Kidman), an English writer and traveler who became more and more influential in the Middle East region through her unprecedented travels where she formed bonds with several future postcolonial leaders. Later in life she became involved in politics and helped to found several nation states (and determine its borders), along which Jordan and Iraq through the Hashemite dynasties. She worked in close cooperation with T.E. Lawrence (Pattison).

It is always interesting to see what's left out of the story: her efforts to establish the new countries were far more extreme and tiresome (plus the real reason Iraq was founded: cost-cutting by the British Empire), her witnessing of the Armenian genocide and slave trade, her actual spying role, her relative poverty, illness and depression later in life. What is paid attention to elaborately are her love interests (well played by Franco and Lewis), both ending in tragedy. But too much are we watching a watered-down, Hollywood interpretation of Bell by Kidman and not the real strong and intelligent woman she obviously had to be handling the complexities of deal making in the region.

Yet some typical trademarks of Herzog still shine through: travel to unknown, unmapped places where people find their cultural beliefs and visions on reality tested. In Herzog's world, venturing into nature from the cultural boundaries of existence always leads to suffering and destruction, mankind being unable to conquer the forces of nature. What makes this movie then atypical in the work of Herzog is that Bell finds solace and fulfillment through that process. Also atypical is the time we spent inside: these scenes inside the bastions of power are unfortunately not the best in the movie, and in the landscape scenes, Herzog seems much more on his turf.

Herzog always saw himself as resisting the banality of the images film is projecting, but here he somewhat contributes to that process. Despite that Queen of the Desert is still very watchable, informative and yes, even entertaining.

Queen of the Desert (2015)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Nicole Kidman plays Gertrude Bell, the legendary British woman who would tackle various things in her lifetime and she would become one of the most loved figures in history. This Werner Herzog biography would make you think the only thing she accomplished was dating the wrong men.

Herzog is one of my favorite directors and I think everyone was excited when they learned that he was making another feature film and that he was going to be getting an actress like Kidman. The film would eventually hear boos at various screenings and it would limp into American theaters two years after it was first released. It would get some of the worst reviews of the director's career and it only managed to get back $2 million of its $36 million dollar budget.

QUEEN OF THE DESERT isn't as awful as some people have made it out to be but at the same time you can't help but call it a complete misfire on many levels. I think the majority of the blame has to go to Herzog's screenplay because this is a film about one of the most interesting women in the world and yet there's nothing interesting about her told here. For the life of me I can't figure out why this film only looks at her love life and outside of some narration, we'd never know what made her special.

I'm pretty sure Herzog was wanting to make an old'fashion epic with a strong leading lady. The problem here is that the screenplay is just deadly boring and none of the emotions the film works for are ever gotten. There's no romance, no drama, no comedy. There's really nothing here to be connected to and you basically just sit there wondering how such a film could go so wrong. At 128-minutes the film really drags in spots and it's just a real shame that the end result was so bland.

There are some good things to be said. The cinematography and music score are both extremely good. The locations used look terrific and there's no question that there are some beautiful visuals to look at. I'd also argue that Kidman was very good in the role and delivers a good performance but there's just nothing on the page for her to work with. James Franco is okay in his role and Robert Pattinson is good in the part of T.E. Lawrence.

QUEEN OF THE DESERT is sadly a film that will probably be remembered for it bombing at the box office and it coming from a legendary director. Herzog has done so many wonderful films in his life that you'd think this here would have been a sure thing but sadly it was a major bust.

This film was an attractive costume drama which would not have been out of place on Masterpiece Theater, but anyone familiar with Gertrude Bell's achievements and who has read the book 'Desert Queen', will be disappointed at how much was left out. Yes, she was born to a wealthy family, had a brilliant mind, earned a first class degree at Oxford - even attending Oxford was a rarity for a woman at that time. She mixed in the best society being very well connected socially, and also enjoyed the company of many intellectuals of the day. Yes, she fell in love with Henry Cadogan and mourned his death for seven years. She had been prevented from marrying him by her overly possessive parents on some very flimsy grounds - he was a gambler and had no fortune, when they could have easily set up a trust fund for her which he could not touch. Her parents apparently even opened her mail to ensure that she was not being led astray. Her dutiful devotion and love for her parents may have caused her later infatuations and unrequited love for the wrong men.

Her friendship with the married Doughty Wiley was shown, as was her iffy working relationship with T. E. Lawrence who supported her while being quite catty behind her back, but her later unrequited love for Henry Fitzsimmons, who used her but refused flat out to marry her, was not. Nor was her long and very close friendship with King Faisal of Iraq, which began when he was Prince and whom she had been instrumental in supporting on the throne. As Faisal's wife and family remained in Mecca and Gertrude became his close adviser, many suspected that they were lovers.

Her years of round the world tours to get over Henry's death were left out. Eventually she began her journeys through the middle east and gained the knowledge which put her in the center of things in WWI as a source of information about the Arab tribes, and supporter and close adviser to King Faisal. She was present at the Paris Peace Conference when the winners, desperate to get their hands on the oil, divided up the middle east between them, largely reneging on the promises to allow the Arabs their own kingdom and instead installing puppet kingdoms under British and French mandates.

The film ended with a very brief meeting with Faisal and his brother Abdullah, and an epilogue about the creation of Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia where Gertrude Bell had helped define the borders and choose the rulers. But there was much more to the story. After the heady success of helping to create the modern middle eastern kingdoms, being appointed Oriental Secretary awarded the CBE, and being Faisal's right hand woman, called upon every day not only for advice, but companionship, games, tennis, Gertrude found herself becoming less and less important as her task had ended. It probably did not help that she was a woman and had trodden on quite a few toes on the way up. Men would have felt threatened by her and wives would have been jealous. She concentrated her efforts on her writing and establishing the Baghdad Museum, but her life had become empty and no doubt she felt unwanted and useless. Faisal saw less of her and spent more time in Europe 'taking the cures'. Her family fortune disappeared in the post war changing times and she was reduced to living alone if not in poverty, but 'straightened circumstances'. In 1926 she died of an overdose of sleeping pills, which was ruled an accident.

Other than leaving half the story out, the other serious flaw was the miscasting of Faisal and Abdullah and their very brief appearance at the close of the film. The two actors should have switched parts. Abdullah, the great grandson of today's King of Jordan, was short and round faced, Faisal was tall, thin, charismatic and extremely handsome. His leadership of the Arab revolt was the reason for the allied win over the Turks. From the film one would think she had only met with Faisal for one minute. Showing more of her relationship with Faisal would have perked up the film enormously.

Overall, this topic should have been a Masterpiece Theater miniseries running for at least six hours.

Obviously the director of this movie does not understand the context of the middle east and he is taking this part of the world as a bulk and treating it as a whole. When in Tehran they speak Arabic, Tehran is in Iran they speak Farisi not Arabic, when in the market one guy is obviously Moroccan while the movie is narrating a middle eastern story (Amman Jordan) different dialect, and the Beddouin music always starting with Allah W Akbar which is a religious chant not necessarily specific to the middle east where you can find Christians, Kurds and a lot more ethnicity. To make long story short the director reflected his understanding of the ME based on orientalist concepts and not real facts.

The film is ok, I never felt bored or found myself waiting for it to finish.

However the depiction of Gertie was really of an entitled woman who swanned around wherever she felt like because she believed she should be able to, whilst letting other people fix things for her.

There must have been more to this person than this?

A film worth seeing, explains the birth of present middle east. A visionary feast and both Nicole Kidman and James Franco's acting is superb.Most critics didn't give it a thumbs up but for me it was a beautiful film, maybe because the lead was a woman who changed the course of history! For anyone who doesn't know anything about the middle east should see it just for history and Gertrude Bells significance in history....

The photography is exhilarating and get to see the desert and the oasis in their beauty. The movie might lack historical details but it focuses on Gertrude Bells life, so that is understandable. But at least for people who never knew what or how the middles east came about and what she did it is an eye opener. A must see file for me!

What a massive disappointment from Herzog. Before this I was a huge Herzog fan, which is why this film is such a bizarre shock. It was as though Werner Herzog had suddenly become a pupil of Josh Boone, which is like Mozart taking lessons from Justin Bieber. Is this some kind of joke?

Sadly not. This is an over long, melodramatic, corny idealisation of an aristocratic woman who, having no real responsibilities in life, decides to use her vast wealth to embark on a life long holiday across the desert, because really what else is she do with her time?

Throughout the film the main character is idealised, swooned over, worshipped and deferred to. Why? Not because she belongs to the most privileged and powerful class of women on the planet, but because she has a courageous heart and a deep, enigmatic understanding of Arabs.

At the end we have some childish moralising about the injustice of the British empire, aptly spoken from one aristocrat to another (without a lick of irony) and then the 'Queen' of the upper classes rides off into the desert to be immortalised as a female idol for generations to come. Not that she actually did anything to help anyone whatsoever.

Poorly acted, poorly written, poorly conceptualised and thoroughly boring.

I believe that Queen of The Desert is greater than the sum of its parts, and that its parts are inspired to begin with. So many things about this film are beyond beautiful, they are sublime. I watched it twice. I don't know if Werner Herzog wanted to make a Hollywood-style period romance, and it doesn't matter to me whether anyone else thinks he achieved creating one or not.

The film isn't about a romance, it's about romance, period. Specifically, the romance that can find itself at the center of someone's life. Herzog told a story in which Bell had multiple romantic relationships that weren't just with people. In this way he gave her character a deep spiritual life. She had a fling with poetry and writing, an affair with the desert, passion for traveling, true love with multiple men, and loving friendships. In addition, every main character is shown to be loving in some way. I like TE Lawrence's character (played delightfully by Robert Pattinson) because he tries like mad to avoid romance, but also seems to be feigning his aversion.

In QOTD, many characters risk their lives for love, and some do give their lives. It isn't just one or two main characters, and it isn't just for the love of another person.

Near the end of QOTD, a bedouin leader asks Bell why she loves them (Arabs) so much. By her answer, which is a tribute to her trusted guide Fattuh, we understand what she's all about, and what this film is all about. It's beautifully written dialogue by Herzog.

One of my very favourite things about this film was the number of times Kidman was shown laughing. There is hardly a character in the film with whom she isn't seen sharing a good laugh. The film isn't funny, and Bell wasn't meant to be comedic. And yet there is this frequent laughter. That's joy. There's joy in this film. This is what has made Queen of The Desert one of my favourite movies of all time.

I enjoyed the "dreaminess" of the film. In no way was it psychedelic or self-referential (done for effect). It was written into Gertrude Bell's character. This was a wonderful artistic choice.

Random things I loved: The references to poetry and literature. The loud camels nearly ruining the grand orchestral score. The steampunk-ish pistols in the case. James Franco flirting like only James Franco can. The snow in the desert! No subtitles. And most of all, the use of a good number of truly great actors from around the world who are of Arab descent.

Some favourite moments: the close-up on Bell when she and Cadogan hold hands for the first time. When Doughty-Wylie kisses her for the first time and her reaction is shown at length (such complex acting from Kidman and Lewis here, especially Kidman). The hand-held camera at the desert camp. The pain of the young Arab messenger as he confesses to Bell, "I would give anything for a woman like you," knowing he would never see her again but for that moment. The Shiek of the Druze talking Virgil.

Anytime a filmmaker is both writer and director, like Herzog is here, there will be a divergence from the tropes of the genre in which his film may be expected to fit. Hopefully the audience will buy in to his vision. I did wholeheartedly.

Having worked in Saudi Arabia, I was really looking forward to this film. But it fell short in just about every way. Historically it was dreadful (starting in 1914 and then "going back" 12 years - by my simply maths this is 1902 - to have a toast to Queen Victoria by an embassy official is nonsense since she had died in 1901!) The acting was hackneyed and Nicole Kidman, though trying very hard, was totally unconvincing.

Numerous people have pointed out the howlers such as the wrong language being spoken, reading from left to right, and handling food with the left hand; and how on earth did she keep her skin lily-white while riding through the desert. At the very least she could have expected a somewhat red nose and face!

But the main criticism must be the script which was so predictable and puerile and laughable and lacked depth in any way whatsoever. A great shame as much of the location and images were lovely - and I could even believe some of the scenes shot in Morocco and Jordan were actually shot in Saudi.

If you like desert scenery you may well enjoy this film, just so long as you don't think for one moment this biopic reflects reality.

Although it's not Lawrence of Arabia, and Robert Pattinson suffers from O'Toole comparison, director Werner Herzog still brings to life the hitherto little-known heroine, Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman). Her exploits at the beginning of the 20th century helped cast a favorite light on Bedouins and Druses as she moved among them and helped negotiate the end-of-WWI land split in Arabia and environs.

Herzog will have to suffer my criticism that remembers his crazed but magnetic wild men like Aguirre and Fitzcaraldo. Queen lacks the energy in his many stories of madmen like Aguirre. Here, while Nicole appears aristocratic and smart, she never rises above the thoughtful scholar or emerging anthropologist.

Alas, too much is the time spent with the two loves of her life and not enough time among the tribes and diplomats she had to corral to get her inside unknown territory. Why must women in movies still be defined by the men they love?

Herzog is not at his best with virtually half the film watching her dance around the Tehran Embassy diplomat, Henry Cadogan (James Franco), and the British officer, Charles Doughty-Wylie (Damian Lewis). Herzog misses the more romantic possibilities of her involvement in the war effort in favor of two not very interesting romances.

That her loves tend toward their suicide hints at the powerful woman who could have sparked these annihilations. Kidman, a fine actress who gives a nuanced performance here, is mostly directed to play coy more than adventuresome.

I can see why this movie wasn't a box office smash - it's not an adventure tale with battles and lots of excitement. This is a biopic of a brave British woman who explored the desert areas of what is now Syria Iraq Jordan etc in the early 1900s and got to know the tribes and later help draw up boundaries of the newly formed countries after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Her ill fated romances punctuate the story.

Nicole Kidman convincingly plays a range of ages from 20s to I guess 40s. Robert Pattinson looks a bit goofy and out of place as TE Lawrence. But even more strangely cast is James Franco as an English civil servant. He whispers his dialog so his accent isn't terribly disastrous.

The photography in the desert is quite stunning.

Interesting.

"Queen of the desert" (2015 release; 125 min.) is a bio-pic of Gertrude Bell, a/k/a "the female Lawrence of Arabia". As the movie opens, we are told it is "Cairo, 1914, British Arab Bureau", where a group of men (including Winston Churchill) is debating how to reshape the faltering Ottoman Empire. Someone mentions they should maybe consult Gertrude Bell. The movie then goes to "Twelve Years Earlier", where we see Gertrude restless in her parents' strict British upbringing. She begs her father to let her get away from it all, and he finally gives in, sending her to to British Embassy in Tehran. At this point we're 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this movie is the latest from writer-director Werner Herzog, equally known for both feature films and documentaries. Here he brings to the big screen a 15 year period in Gertrude Bell's life, during which she traveled the Arabian peninsula and deserts relentlessly, earning her the nickname "the female Lawrence of Arabia" (T.E. Lawrence in fact appears in the film as well). Herzog is known as a very solid storyteller, so it comes as a surprise that the storytelling isn't stronger, in particular the first half of the movie drags far too long for its own good. As we are watching the movie unfold, it is clear that this is a big budget movie, and in the end the movie functions as much as a travelogue than anything else. There are some notable acting performances, none more so than Nicole Kidman, in what I consider her best role in YEARS. James Franco is in the movie for a good half hour (as the Secretary of the Tehran Embassy and Gertrude's early love interest), and an unrecognizable Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence.

This movie premiered over 2 years ago at the Berlin Film Festival to less than stellar reviews, and pretty much sank like a stone upon a wider European release. Imagine my surprise when the movie opened this weekend out of the blue and without any pre-release hype or advertising on a single screen for all of Greater Cincinnati. The Saturday matinée screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great, and even though the movie gets only 2 screenings a day, I would be surprised it if lasted more than a single week on the big screen. That said, given its reputation, I had zero expectations going into this, and much to my surprise the movie isn't nearly as bad as I had expected it. The lovely photography and scenery, and a very likable performance from Nicole Kidman, did the trick for me. If you liked "Lawrence of Arabia" (and who doesn't?), you should definitely give this a try as well. Keep your expectations low, and chances are you'll find this fairly enjoyable.

I am surprised that I had never heard of this movie until The Movie Channel showed it this month. It must've had a very short release here in the U.S. To get the complete story, see the documentary "Letters From Baghdad" (2016), narrated by Tilda Swinton, as Gertrude Bell, which was shown on PBS, and was so good, that I didn't even want to watch this one. I did enjoy this one, in spite of their trying to insert romances with men that were less than portrayed. She was truly an independent individual !

I'm from Persia aka Iran, in our country we have more than 20 different languages and Ethnicities but our race/nationality is Persian and to let you know Persians speak Persian, simple and easy if you repeat it twice you'll learn it, Persians speak Persian, Persians speak Persian, that's it, not Arabic not Farsi!!! We say Farsi only in our native language just like Germans say Deustch as the name of their language! Alexander was a junky who attacked Persia and raped Persian womens and childrens and burned Persepolis and the whole city and took life of many peoples but these two lovely birds were in Persia and they shared the coin of the Alexander *The great* to show their love!!! And the Arabic hats!!!

It's hardly known but Bell, a significant historical personage, neatly drew from memory the lines of what became the modern Middle East. The lines, entirely arbitrary and not reflective of tribal relations, ethnicity, language, or religious sect, were designed to clarify the rolls of the British, French, and Russian empires in 1916. Her map was attached to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. She was the only woman accepted as an almost equal by Kings Saud and Faisal of Arabia.

Queen of the Desert might be Herzog's most brilliant film to date. But it is not a work of genius--not because it isn't great but because Herzog failed to dumb it down for average movie-going audiences. Hence for many it will come across as a stock, even boring, romantic adventure drama. If you see it that way, well, I can't help you. It is timely, beautiful, and relevant. Most reviewers missed the mark on this one, although in a commercial sense it probably won't be successful because it will fly over the heads of typical audiences, especially in the U.S.

Warning for the masses: no spaceships or aliens, and precious few gunbattles. (Btw, I'm in Wisconsin, and I hate history lessons.)

Hard to watch, boring and almost painful. Kidman comes across as spoiled child and not as the serious soul searching explorer.