Soporific (a review)

The best way to describe this film is soporific, as I've read before. But first, I must dispel a few myths. The most prevalent myth among the very few number of people interested in this film is that this was originally going to be a two part movie. That is not true. The studio wanted and paid for ONE MOVIE, CALLED CLEOPATRA, and everybody signed up for that. Mankiewicz decided that he was actually going to do Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra midway through the shoot, and never stopped asking money, re shooting scenes and extending the shoot until to his heart's content. It is this, and not studio overspending, love scandals or diva antics that made this movie the most expensive film of all time. When he finally, after two years, delivered the original 6 hour cut, the studio rightly so fired him because his idea of two films was insanity in itself. That's when the massive effort to edit this crap began but Mankiewicz had shot so much garbage and had surreptitiously edited it on camera that they were forced to rehire him. His widow smugly talks about this on the Cleo documentary, as if they were forced to rehire him because of his "genius", when in fact he was rehired to untangle the mess he had created that was so convoluted nobody could figure it out. Denial is not a river in Egypt, I guess.

Anyway, he should never have been rehired, that's the other tragedy of this film, an artistic tragedy. What he finally delivered and what we see in theaters is probably the most boring, soporific film of all time. It takes a special talent to take the most fascinating character of all time and make the most sleep inducing film of all time.

Now that doesn't mean this film doesn't have anything good in it. Elizabeth Taylor is stunning and gives one of her best performances, the chemistry with Richard Burton is magnificent, and the luxury is great. The rest of the cast, beginning with Rex Harrison and his "I'm so hot, so manly, never mind my decrepitude" attitude are among the worst performances I have ever seen, as well as the rest of the cast. What little good is in it, mainly Liz & Dick is unfortunately buried under the rubble of inexplicable directorial choices made by a man who was on drugs the entire time of production:

Joseph L. Mankiewicz had the most beautiful woman in history in front of him, in luxurious color, and what does he do?? Shoot her in medium shots. Not a single close up in the entire film. Not one. But he doesn't stop there. He chooses to shoot, outside of very minimal and far in between medium shots, the entire film in long shot, including the battle scenes. I wonder how did this not bomb at the box office with such a poor and bone crushingly tedious cinematography? And it even won an Oscar?? It boggles the mind.

He also decided to focus the entire film on the men. This is not a Cleopatra movie, this is a "Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavian, Roman Politics and the life of every single male character in Cleopatra's life" biopic. Where is Cleopatra?? Where is she? Whatever little we get of her, she gets blamed for Caesar's ambition, Antony's destruction. She is conniving and ravenous, and a cliché to be honest. Elizabeth Taylor makes it mesmerizing, but his take on her is sexist, contrived, predictable and boring. His insanity is further attested by the fact that he had to write a plot for every single male character, no matter how irrelevant and inconsequential he is. This is evidenced by the original shooting script(which is online), it was page after page after page of scenes that were shot about Appollodurs' love for Cleopatra, Flavius devotion to Caesar, Cleopatra's sculptor, Rufio's life, Titus the money lender and several other garbage characters. The original film also consists of ill humor, completely unnecessary. Is it any wonder the budget blew up to 40 million when every single one of this sequences were actually shot? And this is the precious lost footage people want to find, well, there is nothing even remotely memorable in it, it's the visual equivalent of pompous rambling.

But still, as the movie was shot in sequence and edited on camera, it proved impossible to do away with these unnecessary characters and Mankiewicz's childish, reductive humor. For instance, the reason why Antony was upset at Cleopatra's appearance at the barge is because before that there was a good 20 minutes of back and forth taunting as to who would appear first. Cleopatra's wit over Antony had already been demonstrated by her arriving to Tarsus on her ship proclaiming it to be Egypt, but Mankiewicz still thought it clever to further repeat the point on the actual banquet. Of course, because of time, the first part of the joke got cut, but still Mankiewicz felt he had to include the second part of the joke, which of course, flew over the audience's head. It's like going on stand up and just saying the punch line. He was an Academy Award winner and he didn't know the result of doing such a thing? That it would be a mess?

Another of the dubious distinctions of his work is the fact that he managed to make Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra, be desexualized and unerotic. An astonishing feat if you ask me.

At the end of the day, Cleopatra is the Greatest Movie that never was. Thanks to Mankiewicz's hubris, sexism and drug addiction. Tragic, and the legacy of this film is just to gather dust somewhere and in the shelves of people who actually buy it, which is interesting to me, is there even a market for it out there?? Who knows, all I know is this: People recoil in horror at the notion of actually watching it and I don't personally know anyone besides myself who actually has.