Butler's Cinema Scene

Johnny Depp, Mark Rylance

“WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS” My rating: C (Begins streaming on  Aug. 7)

112 minutes | No MPAA rating

Not even the usually-comforting presence of Mark Rylance or a hammy performance from Johnny Depp can save “Waiting for the Barbarians,” a literary adaptation that probably should have stayed on the printed page.

Adapted by J.M. Coetzee from his novel and directed by Ciro Guerra, the film struggles to find a balance.  Its production design suggests  an old Foreign Legion movie like “Beau Geste” — except that “…Barbarians” lacks any sense of satisfying adventure.

Moreover, Coetzee’s subject is one individual’s moral struggle, an interior drama not easily depicted dramatically — even when you’ve got someone like the Oscar-winning Rylance assuming top honors.

Rylance plays The Magistrate, a bookish fellow toiling in a dusty desert town on the far-flung edge of an unspecified late 19th-century empire (French, Belgian, German?). Though he’s supposed to be in charge of local government, not to mention a garrison of bored soldiers, The Magistrate prefers to spend his time in archaeological digs, with occasional nocturnal visits to a local prostitute.

Then he’s paid a visit by Colonel Joll (Depp), a black-clad martinet with eccentric sunglasses who radiates quiet menace.  Bigwigs in the distant capital are convinced that the nomadic tribesmen who populate the desert are planning a revolution; Joll’s job is to collect intelligence on these “barbarians.”

To The Magistrate’s horror, tribal visitors to the town are randomly snatched and tortured, some fatally. But being a bit of a milquetoast, he’s powerless to do much more than sputter ineffectually.

Gana Bayarsaikhan, Mark Rylance

At least he has enough compassion to take in a native woman (Gana Bayarsaikhan) crippled by Joll’s methods; once she’s recovered he sets out to return her to her people.

For his efforts The Magistrate is branded a traitor and finds himself being subjected to the same abuse as the barbarians for whom he has a grudging admiration. Robert Pattinson inexplicably shows up as a Joll disciple who administers the punishment.

The themes set out by Pulitzer-winner Coetzee are obvious enough: jingoism, anti-intellectualism, an irrational fear of the “other.”

But “Waiting for the Barbarians” doesn’t wash dramatically.  It lurches from one episode to the next, wears out its welcome with brutality. Moreover, the character of The Magistrate is the exact opposite of a man of action; only too late does he find enough backbone to stand up to thuggism. At least the film looks fine, thanks to cinematography by the great Chris Menges and evocative production design by Crispian Sallis and Domenico Sica.

| Robert W. Butler