Mountains of the Moon (film)

Plot summary

Exploratory adventures of 1857, Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen), try to discover the true source of the Nile river.

Cast

Patrick Bergin as Richard Francis Burton

Iain Glen as John Hanning Speke

Richard E. Grant as Larry Oliphant

Fiona Shaw as Isabel Arundell (Mrs Burton as from 1861)

John Savident as Lord Murchison

James Villiers as Lord Oliphant

Adrian Rawlins as Edward

Peter Vaughan as Lord Houghton

Delroy Lindo as Mabruki

Bernard Hill as Dr. David Livingstone

Matthew Marsh as William

Richard Caldicot as Lord John Russell

Christopher Fulford as Herne

Garry Cooper as Stroyan

Roshan Seth as Ben Amir

Omar Sharif as Arab chief in Cairo

Paul Onsongo as Sidi Bombay

Music

The original music was composed by Michael Small, who incorporated genuine traditional African music into a traditional orchestral palette. The soundtrack album was released on Polydor Records, but is long out of print. There are two major themes, one for Burton and the other for Africa. There is also a love theme for Burton's relationship to his wife Isabel Burton (portrayed in the movie by Fiona Shaw).

Availability

The film was released in a pan and scan VHS edition from a widescreen laserdisc and is currently available as both a pan and scan and widescreen DVD.

Reception

Peter Travers, writing in Rolling Stone, called the film "an occasion", adding that "In the honorable tradition of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and John Huston's Man Who Would Be King, Mountains is an epic of sweep and intimacy. Rafelson's fondness for breathtaking vistas sometimes slows the pacing to Masterpiece Theatre speed, but his commitment to stimulate the mind along with the senses fires the film." Using adjectives such as "fascinating, magnificent, refreshing", Siskel & Ebert gave the film two thumbs up. Later, in the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert wrote: "Mountains of the Moon is completely absorbing. It tells its story soberly and intelligently, and with quiet style. It doesn't manufacture false thrills or phony excitement. It's the kind of movie that sends you away from the screen filled with curiosity to know more about this man Burton." In Newsweek, critic Jack Kroll wrote, "The exploits of Sir Richard Francis Burton make Lawrence of Arabia look like a tourist. . . . From scene to scene this film grips you as few movies do, moving between Africa and England to spotlight an extraordinary range of characters in both 'primitive' and 'civilized' cultures: from the African tribal chiefs, mild or murderous, to the nabobs of the Royal Geographical Society, honest or treacherous."

Historical inaccuracies

The film depicts Isabel Arundell coming across a lewdly illustrated copy of Burton's translation of The Perfumed Garden in the mid-1850s, before they married. This work, however, was first published over 30 years later in 1886.

At a dinner party, Burton tells his future in-laws that he speaks 23 languages. At that point in his life, however, the number would have been much smaller. He states that he has "read Confucius, the Koran and the Kabbalah in their original manuscripts", but he never mastered a Chinese language and did not learn Hebrew until much later in life.