Mjeteconer Just perfect...

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Kirpianuscus if you know the novel, the film could be a correct adaptation. if you do not know the book, the film could be boring, too slow, too long, only an experiment. in fact, the truth is at the middle. the film is more than an adaptation but exposure of the point of view of director about the isolation of man in contemporary society. the purpose is served by the great cast, the desolated landscapes, the expectation as way to survive, the construction of the dramatic end. it is translation of a deep feeling and the book of Buzatti seems be, in many scenes, the perfect tool. so, it is not fair to define it using the expectations. because something does it special. maybe, the reflection in yourself. or the long expectations. or the sensation to see a Kafka works.

Cosmoeticadotcom The Desert Of The Tartars (Il Deserto Dei Tartari) is a film that has been described as a cross between Beau Geste and Waiting For Godot, and into that mix I would toss some of the films of Hiroshi Teshigahara, especially Woman In The Dunes, as well as the troop interactions seen in the 1960s American television sitcom F Troop, even though The Desert Of The Tartars is not a comedy. This is because the slow moving and contemplative first half of the film follows the setting up of the main military officer characters between each other, and with their men, while the second half of the film speeds up the pace of the diegetic time, and focuses more on the reactions of the officers to the world outside their fortress, rather than within it. The reason for these comparisons are that, unlike three of those four mentioned influences, this 140 minute long, color, 1976 film, by Italian director, Valerio Zurlini, with a screenplay by André G. Brunelin, based on a novel by Dino Buzzati, called The Tartar Steppe, is a film almost hermetically sealed from laughter. Having stated that, it's not a film that is overly somber. It is the sort of film, like those in the canons of Bela Tarr, Theo Angelopolous, and John Cassavetes, that is simply nonpareil, in the sense that there really is no other film like it, for good or ill. Overwhelmingly, I'd claim that the film's difference is overwhelmingly for the positive, but there are a few negatives that keep the film in the near-great category, rather than that of the unequivocally great.

Aw-komon The fact that this film ever got made is a marvel. Some of the biggest stars of European cinema got together with Zurlini to make this one-of-a-kind film about boredom and existential despair. The profound emptiness lurking within every man as he tries to cope with an absurd existence and which always looks for an escape through some distraction or mindlessness (such as war, pointless work, perversion, etc.)rather than face the frightful prospect of coming to terms with itself IS the subject of this film and NO COMPROMISE WHATSOEVER is made to please the audience. The pace of the film is slow and methodical, deliberately making the audience become as bored and uncomfortable as the protagonists. However, if you know this or sense it, you are no longer bored but aware of the film's intentions and fascinated. When the finale comes to bring together all that went before, the understaed effect is overwhelming. One shot in particular, that of the Tartars suddenly appearing over the hills way out in the distance is so fantastic that it becomes etched in your mind forever. The story is about a military officer (Jacques Perrin) sent to a fort somewhere in the middle of a god-for-saken desert where the endless similarity of the days nearly drive him nuts to the point where he comes to hope for a war or attack of some kind to change things. He's hoping for anything that'll distract him from feeling the emptiness inside and can't find it. The plot is the laboratory experiment by which Zurlini expounds his view of the eternal isolation of man from man and the essential absurdity of existence. Some of the most bizzarely fascinating location photography is featured but the tone of the film is intentionally 'dry' and 'non-poetic' (unlike the very poetic way his previous film "The Professor" starring Alain Delon was made, for instance)and most of the stars (except for Von Sydow and Trintignant) have relatively small roles. Trintignant is pretty hilarious in his role as the fort's doctor. Overall, "Desert of the Tartars" is a not-too-successful (its impact is nowhere near the level achieved by Antonioni's "The Passenger", for instance) but still thoroughly fascinating experiment in uncompromising dramatic cinema.

blutosky From the great Italian book "il Deserto dei Tartari" by Dino Buzzati - one of the masters of European 20th century - Valerio Zurlini managed this strange film with a great cast of characters. In a lost fort named Bastiano in the heart of an unknown dessert some soldiers are waiting for an attack to give a sense to their life.This is the story of a great part of us and this is what Buzzati thought. The life of Giovanni Drogo (Giuliano Gemma) - young lieutenant - is inside the fort like our life is inside something perhaps more immaterial but very similar.