Queen of the Desert (2015)

A chronicle of Gertrude Bell's life, a traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché for the British Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Director:

Werner Herzog

Writer:

Werner Herzog

Stars:

Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Robert Pattinson

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Nicole Kidman	...	Gertrude Bell
James Franco	...	Henry Cadogan
Robert Pattinson	...	T.E. Lawrence
Damian Lewis	...	Richard Wylie
Jay Abdo	...	Fattuh
Jenny Agutter	...	Florance Bell
David Calder	...	Hugh Bell
Christopher Fulford	...	Winston Churchill
Nick Waring	...	Sir Mark Sykes
Holly Earl	...	Florence Lascelles
Mark Lewis Jones	...	Lascelles
Beth Goddard	...	Aunt Lascelles
Michael Jenn	...	Thompson
William Ellis	...	Early of Chester
John Wark	...	Arnold Runcie

Storyline

A chronicle of Gertrude Bell's life, a traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché for the British Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.

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Plot Keywords:

englishwoman | bedouin | world war one | arabian desert | ottoman empire | 

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Taglines:

One woman can change the course of history

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Genres:

Adventure | Biography | Drama | History | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for brief nudity and some thematic elements

Did You Know?

Trivia

Robert Pattinson admitted that at 6' 1", he's actually too tall to play T.E. Lawrence who was much more diminutive in real life.

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Goofs

At 1:36:00, the Bedouin Sheik holds and offers the lamb's head with his left hand. This is contrary to all etiquette, as the right hand is used for eating while the left one is, shall we say, the wiping hand.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Sir Mark Sykes: [stadning at a map] Assuming become Ottoman Empire finally becomes defunct, Russia would get the Dardanelles, the portion closest to them, and the Italians the islands off the mainland.
Winston Churchill: And the French had no problem with that?
Charles Doughty-Wylie: The French have a problem with anything. That's their nature.

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Crazy Credits

The credits are shown over footage of sand blowing across the desert.

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Alternate Versions

A new cut with a running time of 110 minutes was presented at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles on Nov.8 2015. The original version, which premiered in Feb. 2015 at the Berlinale and was released in some countries, has a running time of 128 minutes.

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Connections

References Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

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Soundtracks

Les Nubiemes Valse
from the ballet "Faust"
Written by Charles Gounod
Performed by Vaughan Jones and The Manor House String Ensemble

User Reviews

A Remarkable Human, a Remarkable Life, Too Bad Hollywood Ruined It

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.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Germany]

Country:

USA Morocco

Language:

English Arabic Turkish French

Release Date:

14 April 2017 (USA)

Also Known As:

Queen of the Desert

Filming Locations:

Morocco

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$1,592,853

Company Credits

Production Co:

Benaroya Pictures, H Films, Raslan Company of America

Technical Specs

Runtime:

128 min 110 min (re-cut)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital (5.1)

Color:

Color Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1