spacetime coordinates: the Gallipoli Campaign // 1919 Australia > Ottoman Empire
The Water Diviner is a 2014 American-Australian historical fictional war drama film directed by and starring Russell Crowe in his directorial debut. The film is loosely based on the book of the same name, written by Andrew Anastasios and Dr Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios. The film centres around Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer and water diviner searching for traces of his three lost sons on the battlefield of Gallipoli (watch documentary here)
Tag: period drama
0435 – The Eagle (2011)
spacetime coordinates: AD 140 Roman Britain > estate near Calleva (modern Silchester) in southern Britain > territory of the Picts north of Hadrian’s Wall
The Eagle is a 2011 epic historical drama film set in Roman Britain directed by Kevin Macdonald, and starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland. Adapted by Jeremy Brock from Rosemary Sutcliff‘s historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth(1954), the film tells the story of a young Roman officer attempting to recover the lost Roman eagle standard of his father’s legion in Scotland. The story is based on the Ninth Spanish Legion‘s supposed disappearance in Britain.
The film was an Anglo-American co-production. It may be considered a sequel to the film Centurion, written and directed by Neil Marshall, because Channing Tatum’s character in The Eagle is Marcus Flavius Aquila, the son of Titus Flavius Virilus who led the Ninth Legion that was lost in the far north of Britannia, and who was therefore the same person as Dominic West‘s character Titus Flavius Virilus in Centurion. Historically, the purported disappearance of the Ninth Legion in Northern Britain is a subject of debate and dispute
Macdonald intended the film to be historically authentic, but as little is certain about the tribes that the Romans encountered—they were generally Celtic peoples, though some may have been Picts—he made concessions. For example, the tribespeople spoke Gaelic, even though the language probably did not enter widespread use in the region until the 5th century AD; Pictish is the more likely language to have been spoken at the time. “It’s the best we can do,” Macdonald said. “All you can do is build on a few clues and trust your own instincts. That way, no one can tell you you were wrong.”
Macdonald described his view of the Seal people: “They were a more indigenous folk than the Celts, who were from farther south … They were probably small and dark, like the Inouit [sic], living off seals and dressed in sealskins. We are going to create a culture about which no one knows much, but which we will make as convincing as possible. We are basing it on clues gained from places like Skara Brae and the Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney, so that we will have them worshipping pagan symbols, like the seal and the eagle. The reason they have seized the emblem of the Roman eagle from the legion is because to them it [was] a sacred symbol.” (wiki)
0434 – The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
spacetime coordinates: 1889 Belgian Congo // London
The Legend of Tarzan is a 2016 American adventure film based on the fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Directed by David Yates, with a screenplay by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, the film stars Alexander Skarsgård as the title character, with Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent and Christoph Waltz in supporting roles.
Making Africa seem authentic was especially important to the filmmakers, since the film was shot in England, except for six weeks in Gabon, filming background by helicopter without the cast. A working waterfall and a 100-foot-long collapsible pier were assembled at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden studios. Seven versions of the African jungle were constructed to show different scenery throughout the filming. Plants from Holland were mixed with trees sculpted by the art department. Kedleston Hall stood in for the Greystoke Manor, and a cedar tree on the grounds of Highclere Castle served as the setting for an early pivotal scene between Tarzan and Jane. (wiki)
0433 – Il racconto dei racconti – Tale of Tales (2015)
spacetime coordinates: 17th-century. the kingdoms of Longtrellis / Highhills / Strongcliff
Tale of Tales (Italian: Il racconto dei racconti) is a 2015 European dark fantasy film, directed by Matteo Garrone, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, and John C. Reilly. It is a screen adaptation based on collections of tales by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile: Pentamerone ( a 17th-century collection of fairytales) or Lo cunto de li cunti (Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones), which contains the earliest versions of famous fables like Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
The Baroque stories manage to mix real and surreal with many metaphorical usages. The three tales are La Cerva Fatata (The Enchanted Doe), La Pulce (The Flea), La Vecchia Scorticata (The Flayed Old Lady), that have been freely adapted with elements of other tales by Giambattista Basile, as well as a touch of artistic license. All three stories are told in a mixed way, pieced in fragments through the whole film, with all three briefly joining for a royal funeral near the start and a royal coronation at the end.
0429 – The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)
spacetime coordinates: remote Cumbrian mountain village 1348 >> 1980s New Zealand
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey is a 1988 feature film, an official Australian-New Zealand co-production, directed by Vincent Ward.
Ward and his production team based the look of the film on extensive research into the Middle Ages, particularly the mining industry, although this was then rendered imaginatively. The colours of the film are based on medieval art and, in particular, medieval and renaissance artists’ ideas about heaven and hell. The blues in many of the modern-day sequences are based on the inks in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, while the reds and oranges of the motorway lights and furnace fires evoke images of hell in the works of Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel and Matthias Grünewald. Ward later said he had not achieved what he wanted to with the colour of the modern-day scenes due to the film’s short shooting schedule. Ironically, the colour in the medieval scenes, which were turned into black and white, was far better than that in the 20th century scenes. Some of the mining scenes were inspired by engravings from the German mining manual De re metallica, although it dates from two centuries after the time of those scenes. The angel of death seen flying across the moon at one point is based on a medieval engraving in Paris’ Père Lachaise Cemetery.
See also: Middle Ages in film
0425 – Centurion (2010)
spacetime coordinates: 117 AD Roman outpost of Pinnata Castra & Roman forts along the Glenblocker line and the Gask Ridge at the southern border of the Scottish Highlands.
Centurion is a 2010 British historical action-war film directed by Neil Marshall, loosely based on the disappearance of the Roman Empire’s Ninth Legion in Caledonia in the early second century AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana#Map
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020558/
0412 – Loving Vincent (2017)
spacetime coordinates: Arles 1891
Loving Vincent is a 2017 animated biographical drama film about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh, and in particular, the circumstances of his death. It is the first fully painted animated feature film. The film, written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, was an international co-production between Poland and the United Kingdom. The development was funded by the Polish Film Institute, and partially through a Kickstarter campaign.
Each of the film’s 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 125 painters.
Rotten Tomatoes‘ consensus states: “Loving Vincent‘s dazzling visual achievements make this Van Gogh biopic well worth seeking out – even if its narrative is far less effectively composed.”
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