Queen of the Desert (2015)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

She was a woman with so many accomplishments when women were next to nothing. In the film all you hear about is single lines stating this accomplishments and the rest is she doing childish argues to go somewhere new and let man save her from everything and show her everything!!! The small periods of romance are so hytened in the movie that left no place for her personality and it seems like they tried to show that she did everything for her lost loves! I am not much of historian or anything but as an Iranian I am sure what they show as Tehran (Iran) was totally wrong. You see people in Moroccan/Syrian/Arabic clothing which definitely does not belong to Tehran, you hear people speaking Arabic then you hear actors and actresses trying to read poems in Farsi. It is even a pity that they did not learn a few lines of farsi and pronounce everything with a not very accurate translation (as far as I could read the texts) even locations featured in the movie are nothing like Tehran, the palm trees that you see in some scenes can not be found by hundreds of kilometer from Tehran which means that the love birds cannot go for a short ride to such places. You also see a ton of actors and actresses that enter the plot and they have such a short appearance that their dialogues become silly. Take the 1 year love story of the daughter of consul in Tehran that ends with her crying, leaving dinner table and nothing more... I cannot get why this was necessary and many of Gertrude Bell's achievements were not! Was it necessary to see that the man she loved was loved by other women? What does it tell us? Should we compare her personality to a spoiled teenager who is only care about fun and shopping? Do not let me start with Robert Pattinson's role! Who chose him to be Lowrance and how silly he was depicted here... I really don't understand! 5 star to me was for them trying and some how some accurate scenes...

Anyone would think that Werner Herzog has lost his power to compel with this and the disappointing BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS. QUEEN OF THE DESERT is a lengthy biopic of British explorer Gertrude Bell, but in Herzog's hands it turns into a tawdry, drawn-out story bogged down by romance and glossing over the interesting parts of Bell's life. The first mistake is in casting a fiftysomething Nicole Kidman in a role that should have been played by a woman thirty years younger. I don't care how much plastic surgery Kidman has had, but she doesn't look or act like a young intrepid woman at all. Kidman delivers a typically superficial performance, concentrating on her note-perfect accent over anything approaching depth or insight. She's bland. The best actor here is Robert Pattinson as Lawrence of Arabia, but he has very limited screen time. The rest is a blur of well-shot desert landscapes and stultifying human drama, and I'm afraid it's my worst Herzog viewing yet. Perhaps he should stick to the great documentaries he still makes, like INTO THE INFERNO.

Movies are a great way to reach a wider audience and spark interest in further reading, but this one has an inaccuracy in it with Henry Cadogan. Other than that, it is excellent. It ought to have made more money, but "most" people don't care enough about learning new things. That is the reason why it didn't make a profit.The movie beautifully brings Gertrude Bell to life, and succeeds in showcasing her brilliance and her fascination with learning about the world, plus her talent for diplomacy. Male jealousy of her achievements is shown from the outset. She just doesn't care, and that is one of the things that made her great.Ms. Bell expected and required men to accept her on her own terms.

It is ridiculous that this movie has a 5.7 rating. It is a very interesting and entertaining work based on the life of an incredible woman. I really can't get people who don't understand the difference between a MOVIE, that's main objective is to entertain and a DOCUMENTARY that is meant to inform. I enjoyed this movie and thought Werner Herzog's respect for the truth of Gertrude Bell and the region came across on screen. Nicole Kidman gives a fine performance as Bell. She comes across as an earnest, seeker of the truth of the region and it's people, much like a latter day, more civilized, female version of Sir Richard Burton. I liked Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence. It was a subtle performance and a scary one to take on, because Peter O' Toole, ya know? The rest of the cast is solid.Any movie set in the Middle East, done by a westerner, will suffer in comparison to 'Lawrence of Arabia' and Herzog does a good job of not trying to compete with spectacle, though the movie is beautifully shot. He focuses on the interaction between the people and Gertrude's attempts at romance. I didn't know anything about Bell before watching this movie. She was really a remarkable woman and I thank this film for bringing her story to life for a modern audience. If you're not the type to nitpick over whether or not the term 'a lot' was used at the turn of the 19th century and you like historic movies that prompt you to learn more about it's subject matter, you will enjoy 'Queen of the Desert'.