Waiting For The Barbarians Film

[Von Stroheim]

Strong cast in this film - very Back of Beyond in a colonial epic .  An unamed 'Empire' outpost.



Based on the Coetzee novel very reminiscent of the Italian film Desert of the Tartars.  In that case it was the Hapsburg empire.

[Nogbad]

Good spot. Looks definitely worth seeing

[Mike Blake]

Oh yes - if the love interest isn't too much! Looks promising - but no battle scenes in the trailer so none in the movie ?

[Pan Marek]

Careful folks.  This film was released in Europe in September 2019, and reviews are tepid:
From Wikepedia:
"Waiting for the Barbarians holds a 50% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.78/10. On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 55 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

...and for whatever reason, Depp recently seems to  show up in not so great films. 

[Mark Plant]

"Waiting for the Barbarians holds a 50% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 16 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.78/10. On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 55 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

I longed since stopped paying any attention to critic reviews of movies. Rotten Tomatoes, in particular, seems unable to reliably relate to audience satisfaction.

Star Wars: the Last Jedi has a critic score of 90%. Pretty much double the audience rating. And there's no shortage of similar anomolies.

[Pan Marek]

Mark-
Hey, it was just a warning.  But I generally agree with critics.  Sometimes I think they're "off" when I read the entire review.
Then I'll take the chance and see the film anyway. 
Plus there's the "if I need to pay for it and how much" test.  I'll try just about any movie on TV for free.  I can always turn it off.

[madman]

It takes a real stinker for me not to have a good time out at the movies. In my 60 years that has meant less than a handful. However I have used the views of "critics" (who have shown by past reviews to share my tastes) to determine if I should go. Unless it in any way covers and area of interest. Then as far as I am concerned I will give it a try. If good or at least has some redeeming feature then I will also buy it. Your results may very.

[JBaumal]

Looks like it will be interesting and great scenery if nothing else. I never listen to movie critics. Everyone has their own tastes.

[Von Stroheim]

This is the Italian trailer for Desert of the Tartars. The troops are clearly Hapsburgs and it also has a strong European cast and a score by the late Ennio Morricone.

[Captain Blood]

Waiting For The Barbarians has a rather good cast - Rylance, Depp, Pattinson... Difficult to believe they’d let themselves get caught up in an absolute turkey.
I didn’t think it had actually been released in Europe yet - only premiered at the Venice (?) film festival to an audience of critics (who apparently didn’t much like it )

[leadfool]

Critics of a film are looking at a lot of things, screenplay, camera work etc.

Regular viewers usually look at "did I lose myself for 2 hours" and "was it worth what ever I just paid."

WarGamers look to see if the equipment is right for the period and if there is any game potential in the battles.  They might also think of how to convert figures to fit into that world.

I am still not sure what empire it is supposed to be.  Maybe Russia?  The Garrison uniform is more practical but generic vaguely French foreign legion.  The black uniform is hard to tell but the collar brooch looks to have an Eagle.  The weapons put it early to mid 19th century.  Must be Backistan or Beyondistan. 

[Von Stroheim]

Sky Movies Premiere has this scheduled for this Sunday 29th November at  2.00 pm

[robh]

Sky Movies Premiere has this scheduled for this Sunday 29th November at  2.00 pm

It is worth spending the time to watch but don't expect a military adventure, infact, don't expect any sort of adventure really. You get a decent character and relationship study set against a nationality agnostic background. Flags, uniforms and national icons are believable but fictitious and no clues are presented in name, location or language.

It is another of the increasingly popular revisionist history stories, evil despotic westerner/white man vs oppressed noble indigenous/native. Sadly both sides reduced to 2 dimensional stereotypes. As with all of this genre of movie it suffers from the imposition of post #MeToo and #BLM views on a historical era where they are totally inappropriate. No attempt is given to explain why the events depicted take place, you are just presented with them and told to find them offensive and wrong.

It is beautifully filmed and the scenery (filmed in Morrocco) is stunning. Pattinson's character is a bit weak and really only serves to emphasise the ideas and sentiments already expressed by the Depp character in a "..see his views reflect the majority...." way.  Rylance, as usual, is excellent in his role.

[FierceKitty]

Coetzee was writing in apartheid South Africa. You won't get far looking for exact historical eras and locations in an allegorical fantasy(remember the 18th-century reader who remarked of Gulliver's Travels that he "hardly believed a word of it"?).
I'll be giving it a miss, however; I do find the man's writing insipid and self-important.

[Nogbad]

I've read the book and cannot exactly recommend it (despite the fact he won the Nobel Prize around the same time, I think). Rather predictable characters and plot which is ripe for Hollywood, about liberal-minded BoB outpost magistrate who finds himself at odds with the brutal, racist empire he is supposedly representing. Sounds exciiting but it's a dry read.