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(More customer reviews)This film is based on a novel by Dino Buzzati called The Tartar Steppe (1945). And its a great novel. Much of what Dino Buzzati writes would be classified as fantasy but this novel has a pellucid realism to it that anchors it in a kind of unspecified present. The novel begs comparison with Franz Kafka's more gothic parables, Albert Camus' The Plague, and Julien Gracq's very similarly focused The Opposing Shore. The novel is existential and it examines man's capacity to cope with the meaningless of his existence but it does so in such a unique way. Never in Buzzati's novel do we feel manipulated by any heavy-handed philosophy, rather the appeal of the novel is its unobtrusively plain, though beautiful, style and structure that nonetheless capture your imagination.
Valerio Zurlini is not a name you are likely to have heard before. His adaptation of Buzzati's book --The Desert of the Tartar (1976)-- was his last film and he executes the project so perfectly that I am very curious to investigate his earlier work.
A quick glance at the cast list (Max Von Sydow, Philipe Noiret) will show that the film is full of top-notch actors, but the real star of this film is the desert and the fort itself that seems to have grown out of the desert. The desert and the fort have immense mythic allure and though there is nothing fantastic about the desert or the fort the effect this location and structure have on the soldiers stationed there is profound and disturbing. The fort is like a mirage on the precipice of a vast desert but the fort and desert are real and men must live in this location for years at a stretch. Most men would find that being assigned to such a location would be a death sentence and this is what Lt. Drogo thinks when he first sets eyes upon the desert fortress that looks like a forgotten ruin. But soon the fortress (and its mysterious history), its eccentric occupants and the way they deal with the various rumours of foreign troops maneuvering in the distance, and the desert itself seduce the young Lt. into staying for longer and longer stretches until we realize that Lt. Drogo, like so many soldiers before him, will never leave. The film can be viewed as a parable about military duty, but it can also be viewed as a parable about commitments of any kind. Like any good parable there is no one penultimate reading. The movie works on the viewer like the desert and fort work on the soldiers; at times you find you are bored and you desperately want those Tartar invaders to finally make an appearance but despite the fact that next to nothing happens you cannot take your eyes away.
What drama there is takes place within the fort, mostly but not exclusively (I don't want to spoil the film so I won't reveal too much). Most of the drama is between the soldiers themselves. Each soldier seems to suffer from some kind of debility; some soldiers seem to suffer from some kind of virus that the fort doctor is convinced is caused or aggravated by the damp conditions of the fort itself. Other soldiers seem to suffer from various forms of hallucinations or visions of grandeur which seem hopelessly misplaced in the vast emptiness of the desert.
It is fascinating to watch Lt. Drogo slowly age before our very eyes. When he first arrives he is an enthusiastic and ambitious young officer who wants to prove himself in battle but with the passing years he seems to become more and more resigned to his fate. Thus you can also read this film as simply a parable of man's life tenure.
However you view the film its a spellbinding experience. I think the film cannot be reduced to any one reading; it seems to elude any literal meaning we might attempt to assign to it.
Highly recommend both book and film.
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BEAU GESTE meets WAITING FOR GODOT in this haunting adaptation of renowned Italian writer Dino Buzzati’s controversial 1938 novel about life, honor, mystery, paranoia and death during wartime.For his first commission, infantry lieutenant Drogo (Jacques Perrin) is stationed at a remote desert garrison on the mist-shrouded border of the North Kingdom.Filling their days with endless drilling, the soldiers of Fortezza Bastiani spend the long nights wondering about an enemy no one has ever seen.As the days stretch into months, the strain of waiting for attack takes its toll on Drago’s comrades: sadistic Major Mattis (Giuliano Gemma), sardonic Lieutenant Simeon (Helmut Griem), cynical medic Rovine (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and humiliated Captain Hortiz (Max von Sydow).Rarely screened outside Europe since its 1976 premiere, Il Deserto dei Tartari (DESERT OF THE TARTARS) was the last film from Italian director Valerio Zurlini before his death in 1982 and also features legendary actors Vittorio Gassman, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, and Francisco Rabal.A multi-national co-production, DESERT OF THE TARTARS makes atmospheric use of Iran’s 2000 year-old Bam Citadel, where Zurlini filmed on the eve of the 1979 revolution that changed world politics forever.As timely now as the day it was made, DESERT OF THE TARTARS is a study of the madness of warfare in the tradition of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and APOCALYPSE NOW. Included an exclusive ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK by Ennio Morricone
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