Queen of the Desert
IFC Films | Release Date: April 7, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
11
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergApr 6, 2017
Bell is embodied, in a commanding and versatile performance, by Nicole Kidman, who supplies a gravitas and emotional complexity worthy of the woman she plays. Read full review
67
The Film StageGiovanni Marchini CamiaApr 6, 2017
Although the film is ultimately a celebration of Bell’s numerous achievements, which are inseparable from her sex considering the time and place, it’s nonetheless regrettable that her love life should serve as the narrative thread, especially since this thread is formed through an absence of relationships. Read full review
60
Screen DailyMark AdamsApr 6, 2017
While enjoyable in parts, its episodic pacing lets down the real-life story of a bold and remarkable woman. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 8, 2015
Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 13, 2017
The great and usually fantastically innovative Werner Herzog has turned Bell’s story into a conventional, cliché-riddled, overly talky and plodding biopic where very little happens for long stretches of time, and we have to endure deadly-dull voice-over narration while looking at admittedly gorgeous scenery and, well, camels. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleApr 6, 2017
The main flaws in “Queen,” however, are a lurching narrative coupled with dialogue awkwardness, and a blasé approach to Bell’s motivations. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoApr 6, 2017
It’s a great story, but the movie has a flatness that can’t be denied. Who’d have expected a Herzog film to invoke thoughts of “Masterpiece Theater” and Merchant-Ivory productions at their most stiff and formal? I surely did not. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Apr 5, 2017
Whatever imprint Queen Of The Desert makes belongs mostly to Kidman, who stresses Bell’s compassion, her fearlessness, her eponymous regality. Read full review
50
The PlaylistJessica KiangFeb 8, 2015
It's such a disappointment when you consider the wild portraits of pioneers that Herzog has given us before, that he's so reverent here. Isn't he the director who can locate the madness in everything he sees? Where is Bell's madness? Read full review
40
Village VoiceKristen Yoonsoo KimApr 6, 2017
Herzog has previously thrived on madness, so the failure here proves even more curious. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 8, 2015
It is grown-up, respectable and historical, perfectly competently made, lots of accents and period dressing-up … and just the tiniest bit dull. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 8, 2015
Despite the director's frequently stated mission to liberate the poetry in his material by excavating what he has described as "ecstatic truth," this is a literal, rather flat epic that keeps telling us in voiceovers of its spiritual dimension, without actually generating much evidence of it. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 8, 2015
]Herzog's] film has the distinction, and also the disadvantage, of being probably the least severe Herzog has yet made: it’s pretty and watchable, with Kidman trying her heartfelt best, but it can’t make its Gertrude Bell, as lover, cultural pioneer and feminist icon, add up to more than a series of voguish poster-girl poses. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 6, 2017
In no way, shape, or fashion does Queen of the Desert qualify as a good movie, but for fans of Werner Herzog — those of us who have followed cinema’s Teutonic imp of the perverse since the 1970s, when he was staging all-dwarf fables and sending conquistadors across mountains — it is fascinating and something close to a must-see. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 6, 2017
Though Kidman delivers a workmanlike performance, the story manages to be soppy and ploddingly dull, told via a screenplay that drives home the fact that it’s not really about momentous events, but momentous feelings. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comAngelica Jade BastienApr 7, 2017
Ends up being an emotionally empty, thematically ill-defined, and listless affair. It is never able to communicate the complexity of the woman at its center. Read full review
16
IndieWireNeil YoungFeb 8, 2015
Choosing to make a film about such an astonishing, rule-disregarding, inspirational woman and concentrate on her relationships with fellas...is questionable enough as it is – but if Herzog had managed to properly dramatize those relationships, he might have conceivably gotten away with it, rather than ending up with this exercise in syrupy, (sometimes cringe-inducing) banality. Read full review
0
Slant MagazineChuck BowenApr 4, 2017
Throughout Queen of the Desert's narrative, there's no sense of danger, of texture, or even of a rudimentary idea of what's truly driving Gertrude Bell. Read full review
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