So today is the scheduled tribute to Liz Taylor and to celebrate her life and illustrious career, I found myself watching Joseph Makiewicz' Cleopatra. It's kind of ironic how this was actually a flop back in the day, now it's become one of the classics. It almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox to make and just made over half of the money back at the box office. The whole thing cost about $44 million to make which was absolutely ridiculous at the time.Cleopatra, as you've already guessed, is about the life of Egyptian queen Cleopatra. It begins with Caesar (Rex Harrison), coming to Egypt to fix the relationship between joint rulers Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy (Richard O'Sullivan, who eerily looks like Napoleon Dynamite). Cleopatra seduces Caesar and overthrows her brother to become sole ruler of Egypt. After Caesar is assassinated by his senators, Cleopatra falls in love with Marc Antony (Richard Burton) and together they plan to rule Rome and Egypt.
Ok, first let's be honest, this is not a historically accurate version what happened. It's the Hollywood version, in reality Cleopatra married her brothers, killed her sister and also does some pretty mean things to people she doesn't like very much. Also, the costumes are an incredibly loose interpretation of what people wore in ancient Egypt. They look more like someone from Alexandria 40BC time travelled to the 60s and was inspired to take that look back to Egypt. It's just so colourful and not necessarily in a good way.
Cleopatra is in all ways an epic movie, it took nearly 3 years to make, it goes for over 4 hours (the original cut was 6 hours), you have the Taylor/Burton saga happening at the same time and the large volumes of costumes, sets and extras would have been an epic amount for that time (or even now for that matter). It's on this scale that put's a James Cameron film to shame. It seems to tick off a checklist of what people enjoy, including:
- Several battles
- Romance
- Dramatic death scenes
- 2 big dance scenes (as if one wasn't enough)
The length was a tad annoying, not because it got boring, but because sometimes I have to eat/go to the bathroom/do other homework. There was no way I was going to get the opportunity to see it all in one sitting. I found it very easy to watch, the dialogue was witty and the actors did a great job. Elizabeth Taylor is really the focus of the movie, nobody else has about 100 costume changes or rides into Rome on a giant Sphinx. And she can carry a film like this, she has a grace and elegance that makes her very easy to watch, not to mention a confidence like you'd expect Cleopatra to have. You get this feeling Cleopatra had to live up to the extravagant expectations that people had of her and she doesn't disappoint. Everything about this movie is extravagant.
I also think I want to watch Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra, with Vivienne Leigh as the Egyptian queen. I think I'll have to save that for later, too many other topics to cover with so precious little time. Until tomorrow, sleep well.
