Kidman regal as Herzog’s desert ‘Queen’
Werner Herzog is a cinematic legend whose considerable achievements go back nearly 50 years.
His “Queen of the Desert,” only now being released two years after its Berlin premiere, stands as a risky departure and a new challenge for the 74-yearold filmmaker, whose documentaries and features such as “Aguirre the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo” and “Grizzly Man” are chronicles of obsession and destruction.
Like those films, “Queen” tackles a period portrait — aristocrat Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman), who is justly referred to as “the female Lawrence of Arabia.”
As “Queen” begins in 1914, Winston Churchill is explaining how Bell was instrumental in Britain’s realignment of the Middle East following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse.
Flashback a dozen years to when Bell, among the first women to attend Oxford, begs her father to let her escape London’s stifling gender restrictions. He complies, sending her to stay with an uncle in the Tehran embassy.
There she meets and is romanced by embassy secretary Henry Cadogan (James Franco, surprisingly effective), and here Herzog tries something really new: romance.
Theirs, surprisingly, is not a struggle for dominance as might be expected from this auteur. Instead it’s a gauzy courtship scenic enough for a Hallmark card, complete with marriage proposal and a Macedonian coin split in half for each to remember the other.
Bell’s father refuses to give his blessing — but Bell moves on! She meets none other than T.E. Lawrence, though Robert Pattinson’s brief cameo is likely to cause chuckles among moviegoers startled to see the “Twilight” actor in these circumstances.
Like every man Bell meets, Lawrence (though thought to be gay) is besotted and also proposes.
The next man to enter this adventuress’ life is dashing but unhappily married Maj. Charles DoughtyWylie (Damian Lewis, “Homeland”) in Damascus. They too are fated never to be, what with World War I.
“Queen” remains Kidman’s show, and if still with a movie star-ish aura, she is a treat. Herzog, however, never attains real complexity or an understanding of Bell’s interior life. But damn if the desert doesn’t look splendid.
(“Queen of the Desert” has brief nudity and adult themes.)