Letters from Baghdad

Fascinating insight into Iraq’s so-called ‘female Laurence of Arabia’

Certificate PG Directors Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum Cast Tilda Swinton, Rose Leslie, Rachel Stirling, Paul Mcgann, Helen Ryan, Christopher Villiers, Lucy Robinson Released Out now

For so long, Gertrude Bell’s fascinating story has been criminally overlooked. As a hugely influential British traveller, political officer and archaeologist, she fell in love with the Middle

East, overcame setbacks and helped shaped its destiny. It’s such a shame, then, that she has so often been dubbed the ‘female Laurence of Arabia’, for her efforts more than earned her a place away from the shadow of the diplomat and military officer TE Lawrence.

Letters from Baghdad is an engrossing documentary that puts Bell firmly in the spotlight. In doing so, it makes up for 2015’s much-maligned epic biographical drama Queen of the Desert. That movie saw Nicole Kidman portraying Bell, the woman who had travelled widely in Arabia and was so instrumental in helping draw the borders of Iraq after World War I. This time, Tilda Swinton takes on the role, although you never actually see the acclaimed actress on screen.

Instead, Swinton explains Bell’s extraordinary journey by reading extracts from the exquisitely insightful letters the charismatic explorer penned throughout her time in the Middle East. Directors

Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum accompany the audio with previously unseen footage and photographs from Bell’s own collection, supplemented with documents from the Iraq National Library and Archive. Such ingredients lend the documentary an emotional depth and sense of place.

Where it perhaps falters is in its talking-heads. Shot in black and white to fit in with the rest of the film, they use actors in the role of Bell’s contemporaries. But while it brings the likes of TE Lawrence, Vita Sackville-west and Arab reformer Suleiman Faidji to life, their largely positive recollections act as a restraint. There is too much emphasis on fact in this case and a frustrating lack of reflection. It’s been 40 years since Edward

Said’s book Orientalism redefined our understanding of colonialism and empire but you would not know it from this film.

Even so, it succeeds on other levels. The letters get under Bell’s skin and show the warmth she had with her family. The film also highlights her dedication and intelligence as she travelled to the Ottoman Empire, defied her government and became respected in an area of the world where women tended not to exert influence. “In the desert, every newcomer is an enemy til you know him to be a friend,” she wrote.

She made many friends.

Bell also learned Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and became a foremost Western expert on Eastern culture. Yet we learn that she “never mastered the art of spelling” and we get an insight into the men she loved. Still, it’s not perfect. Sometimes the documentary skips what feels like an important point – most starkly her later, negative thoughts on the Sunni prince Feisal’s reign. At other times, the chronology feels out of sync.

But watching Bell’s rise and seeing her create a lasting physical legacy in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum (which, the filmmakers point out, was looted during the US invasion of 2003) is a sheer delight. The documentary also rattles by. You feel you know enough about her to feel deep sadness at her untimely death, aged 58 of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Unfortunately, you just wish it had told you a little bit more.

Impeccably researched and packed with primary sources, it brings the history of Bell and

Iraq to life.