Waiting for the Barbarians

London Film Festival review #6

Columbian director Ciro Guerra has already proven himself to be one of the most talented and interesting directors working today with his previous four feature films. Although Embrace of the Serpent remains the best-known of these, Wandering Shadows, The Wind Journeys and Birds of Passage are all highly impressive in their own ways.

Waiting for the Barbarians, Guerra’s English language debut, is certain to enhance his reputation even further, and likely to win him some major awards. Based on a novel of the same name by J.M. Coetzee, who has written the screenplay himself, the film stars Mark Rylance as the magistrate at an unidentified colonial outpost around the turn of the 20^th-century. The magistrate is a kind and decent sort hoping to live out the years until his retirement in as peaceful a way as possible. Unfortunately for him, a vain and sadistic police officer arrives and sets out to make a name for himself by pre-emptively quashing a rebellion he claims to believe the natives are planning, thereby shattering the uneasy peace. This character is memorably played by Johnny Depp in his most villainous role to date.  The other big star present is Robert Pattinson, who has a minor part as Depp’s right-hand minion, and does not appear until well into the film.

Guerra was recruited by the producers, so this may not be his most personal project, but colonialism is clearly a theme that interests him, as we can see from Embrace of the Serpent. Although the filmmakers have made an unusual decision in shooting the film in Morocco but using Mongolian actors as the ‘barbarians’,  it is to their credit that this geographical impossibility never jars. Rylance was apparently on board before the director, who said at the London premiere that he was very pleased with the choice as the only other actor he could imagine playing the character was Alec Guinness. This is probably Rylance’s best film role yet – the magistrate is seldom off-screen, and the character’s status changes dramatically throughout the film, allowing the actor to display considerable depth and range in a performance which never falters. At the end, the magistrate is forced to question whether he is really as good a man as he had thought he was – a moment which could easily be overplayed, but is not in this case.

Waiting for the Barbarians is always absorbing, sometimes shocking, and often moving. It is helped in no small part by the stunning cinematography of Chris Menges and the perfectly-judged musical score by Giampiero Ambrosi.