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UK, USA, Switzerland 1963
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Martin Landau, Pamela Brown, George Cole
Rating: G; Unrated (Video)
Release Date: 31 July 1963 (UK)
Running Time: 5 hours 20 minutes
The Movie Review
You are about to see one of the most ambitious movies of Fox Pictures that tells of one of the most ambitious figure in the ancient history, Cleopatra. A movie which is produced with a very big budget as high as $310 millions (adjusted for inflation). Released a year after the legendary epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and two years before the legendary musical drama The Sound of Music (1965), Cleopatra finally made her appearance on the big screen after so many accounts of postponement and so many years of production.
Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) is initially not a queen of Egypt but only a sister to the real king of Egypt, King Ptolemy. She becomes an Egyptian queen only after Julius Caesar arrives at Egypt and takes internal Egypt matters into his hand.
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The highly intelligent and seductive Cleopatra sees the best possible peaceful chance to save Egypt is by capturing the interest and love of Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison). Julius easily falls into her arms and stirs up controversy back in Rome when Julius decides to wed Cleopatra. What will befall upon the two lovers and the two different nations they rule and reign?
I truly agree with the awards and nominations gained by Cleopatra. It won awards on categories that praised the artistic quality of the costumes, cinematography and art direction, however Cleopatra didn't win an award for Best Picture. The most acclaimed category that Cleopatra didn't achieve. Arguably for its time of release, Cleopatra may well entertain the audience that have waited long enough to watch it, but for this recent decades (year 2000-...), Cleopatra doesn't have too much entertainment aspects, and probably serves only as nostalgic moments for some people who really dig classic movies.
At some point you would almost feel like it's not even a film but instead a showcase of enormous waste of money. Yes it's clearly shown that Cleopatra had wasted a lot of money only on the clothing, costumes or other eye-candies instead of on the whole entertainment quality of this movie. The inside is pretty much almost devoid of any real entertainments. Frankly, Cleopatra undeniably is not an epic movie, it belongs more to the Drama genre, as Cleopatra punctuates more to the love story instead of the battle scenes which is "almost" none. Fortunately the lines of dialogue are smart to hear especially the lines involving the debates between Cleopatra and her lovers. But the scenes are mere beautiful and not engaging enough to the level that involve the audience's emotion. Yes Cleopatra is beautifully soulless.
One thing that tickles me the most is that this movie somehow someway highlights not on the queen Cleopatra herself, but to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony (Richard Burton) and the lengthy running time of Cleopatra might even make you a little bit confused and probably even bored. But then again, setting aside all achievements and flaws, it's always a pleasure to see the dramatic lines after lines of dialogue uttered by Elizabeth Taylor.
© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
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