6 thoughts on “Queen of the Euro-Centric Desert

  1. When I saw the top image on this, I didn’t realise it was Nicole Kidman. I thought it was Shame Nun from GoT…

  2. Part of me is like: oooh, Damien Lewis? Pretty costumes? YAY!
    And the other part of me is like: ugh, desert movies are usually boring!

  3. Gertrude Bell was a fascinating woman. One of the first women to graduate Oxford with a Classic First, an explorer equal to Sir Richard Burton, a woman whose inquisitive mind sought solutions. One who wrote extensively on the Arab world with knowledge, and one who valued their culture.
    When I found out a movie was going to be made of her life, I did my happy dance. Queen of the Desert sounds like it falls short of telling about this influential woman, but I will see it, the movie, either in the theatres, if it gets a US release or on DVD and then make my own decisions.
    I still think she, Gertrude, deserves a miniseries. Beatrix Potter got one. And her life was a struggle for independence.

  4. Does anyone know the actor with the hilarious hair at the end of the movie with the bird?

  5. A Historian Goes to the Movies did a very interesting post on this movie. The main point of it was that the main character actually had a huge influence on the creation of the middle eastern states that exist today (and, by extension, the current conflicts in the region), but that the movie didn’t really show that.

  6. I remember that James was in ‘Tristan & Isolde’ with a not quite baby Henry Cavill (he was a baby in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, with my boy Guy Pearce)- I can’t recall anything about his accent except for the fact that he was doing an English accent in that (I guess) – & I distinctly recall Tristan’s uncle, Rufus Sewell screaming ‘You don’t know what you have done!’ at some point (took me right back to ‘First Knight’ & Sean Connery screaming at Richard Gere; ‘You leave me nothing! Nothing!’) & Isolde’s father screaming ‘Oblige them!!’ before he’s killed…

    Other than that, there was the rightly memorable night-time boat scene for the wedding & a flash or two of the beach/ hut stuff in Ireland, the rest is just a vague fog of battles- maybe politics, & Isolde’s removing of her veil when Tristan wins the duel – I could not detail the plot, or put it in order if my life depended on it.

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