Review of Queen of the Desert (2015)
Seen in 2026.
Gertrude Bell explores Persia and the Arabian peninsula from about 1892 and on through WW1.
As usual, Herzog focuses on the headstrong individual in epic circumstances. I think he aimed for a feminist Lawrence of Arabia (1962), putting Robert Pattinson in the role of that Lawrence and making his role secondary to Bell. What Herzog actually made here is a new Fitzcarraldo (1982) with a budget and two uninteresting romances, which is still preferable to a remake of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994).
Nick Waring is excellent in the supporting role of Mark Sykes. Casting Nicole Kidman as Bell was possibly intended to explain Bell’s lack of success in her romances. Kidman is quite good, but she’s as tall as her suitors, and not framed, lit, or made up to look as pretty as usual. Regardless, everyone involved in her romances is doomed. Bell’s rival for her first suitor is sweet, mousy, and no doubt crushed when the suitor kills himself. Bell’s rival for her second suitor is his wife, who makes “ominous remarks” about killing herself, so the second suitor kills himself by simply enlisting and going to Gallipoli off screen in 1915; an uncommonly spectacular form of suicide.
It is probably relevant that Bell was not a feminist in the dominant mode of 2015. She co-founded and campaigned for the Anti-Suffragette League, that is, against giving even women like herself the right to vote, but that ignoble activity is omitted. I suppose Herzog angled her love life in this tragic way to ennoble Bell in her quest, but the true strength of the film is far away from the romances, in the beautiful dromedaries and desert scenes. Herzog includes some poetry but omits the archaeology of the period almost completely.