”Kingdom of Heaven” stutters in any language
It took me almost 15 minutes to buy my tickets to “Cruzada,” the Argentinean title for Ridley Scott’s 12th century religious epic “Kingdom of Heaven.”
I include the title in Spanish because, as it happens, I’m writing this from Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is where I’ve spent the past couple of weeks.
Fifteen minutes is a bit longer than, under normal circumstances, it would take me to score tickets at any of the movie theaters in Spokane, Post Falls or Coeur d’Alene.
But here is what I received in exchange for the wait (plus the approximately $4.25 price that I paid per ticket): three plush seats, halfway up and on the aisle, boasting the best sight lines this side of my living room and Dolby sound that made me think that the action was taking place inside my head and not just my imagination.
And, I need to add, the three seats were reserved.
Before this trip, I hadn’t purchased reserved seats in a movie theater since 1965, when I took Terry Cornett to downtown Norfolk, Va., to see Julie Andrews sing about a few of her favorite things in “The Sound of Music.”
Here in Buenos Aires I’ve done it twice in the last week alone. The first time was to see “XXX: State of the Union,” which was, at the time, the only English-language movie playing at the Recoleta Village Cinemas that I hadn’t seen.
Ice Cube blowing up things plays even better when, courtesy of Spanish subtitles, you can include language lessons with your moviegoing. Sabe, hombre?
The same for Orlando Bloom traipsing across the Middle East, facing a bunch of rogue Knights Templar and the Muslim king/ military genius Saladin.
Here is one quick, critical comment: In an interview that ran in the English-language newspaper Buenos Aires Herald, Eva Green, who plays the queen Sibylla – and love interest for Bloom’s character Balian – said that she understood why director Scott cut out so much of her character’s story: Movies are always about men, she said.
Scott disagreed, saying that he cut some 45 minutes out of his film, paring it down to the final 140 minute-plus running time, because “tighter is always better.”
Hate to disagree, but this time the talent was right. Nothing may have saved “Kingdom of Heaven” from being the continuation of second-rate historical/mythical epics such as “Troy” or “Alexander.” But a little less pacing that felt like a kindergartener’s attention span might have made the film a bit easier to sit through.
That and fewer impossibly overwrought lines such as, “The world will decide. The world will always decide.”
When I heard that, all I could think of was, “Where is Ice Cube when we could really use him.”
Also in Espanol
My time in Argentina has led me to look forward with particular excitement to the 2005 Seattle International Film Festival, which begins its monthlong run on Thursday. Thirteen of the films that will play at the festival hail from this second-biggest country in South America.
That’s hardly surprising. Two of the best films that played at the last two Spokane International Film Festivals, “Kamchatka” and “Captive,” were Argentinean. Gaston Biraben, the director of “Captive,” even accompanied his film to its February showing at AMC’s River Park Square Theaters.
Of particular interest at this year’s SIFF is “A Year Without Love,” a film that, as the festival Web site explains, “dares to place its HIV+ protagonist in the S&M leather scene of Buenos Aires.”
Considering that most other well-known Argentinean films are studies of the country’s so-called “Dirty War” of 1976-83, including the 1986 foreign-language Oscar winner “The Official Story,” something that explores the totality of Argentinean life is a welcome change.
By the way, if you’re interested in scoring tickets to SIFF 2005, go to www.seattlefilm.org, or call the SIFF information line at (206) 324-9997 or the box office at (206) 324-9996.
Operators should be standing by – and chances are good that they all speak English.