Apparently Kenneth Branagh‘s Death on the Nile (20th Century, 2.11) is (a) fairly mediocre but (b) not bad enough to be regarded as an albatross around Branagh’s neck. It won’t get in the way of his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar campaigns, I mean.
As we speak Nile has a Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 51% and 71%, respectively. Despite an industry friend passing along buzz that Nile “definitely won’t help him” and despite the film opening three days after the announcement of Oscar noms, it’s not a Norbit thang.
Another friend believes that the presence of Armie Hammer is a major determining factor in the negative reviews.
Death on the Nile “is getting a huge downgrade because of Hammer,” he says. “You realize how powerful that is, right? You have to disapprove of him in it, and the obvious way to do that (especially since he’s quite good in it) is to flip off the movie.
“What the critic lemmings basically want to say is: Do not see this. Because if you do see it you are helping that rapist. I mean, imagine if this is a huge hit. That helps the rapist. That hurts The Agenda. This is how all these fuck-shit totalitarian Twitter dweebs think now.”
I haven’t seen Nile myself, but I’m still a little hung up on the synthetic look of it. In the trailers damn near everything looks digitized. The Nile itself, the Egyptian locations, the luxury porn vibe of the S.S. Karnak steamer. Who’s been to Egypt and cruised down the Nile? I haven’t been but there’s a sense of real life, the fragrant aroma of earth and river banks and vegetation and exotic foods that a traveller to Egypt always absorbs, and which seems anathema to the Branagh aesthetic.
Why does it seem that the ‘78 version with Peter Ustinov was at least half-organically composed with glimpses of actual Nile locations while the Branagh version, which the IMDB reports was partly shot in Egypt, seems to be almost all digitally composed?
Just like Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, another barrage of suffocating wealth porn that, interior sets and costumes aside, seemed mostly created with high-tech software. It’s like the POINT of these films, apart from the diminished satisfactions of the creaky Christie cliche handbook…it’s like the POINT of these films is to offer a constant sauna bath of wealth porn.
Is there one glimpse, even one insert shot of anything in this super-luxe Egyptian glamour realm that hasn’t been buffed and polished and CG-enhanced? The POINT, it seems, is to dwell inside this bubble, this membrane, to make everything look luscious and spit-shined and smothered in wealthy sauce. To never allow even a teaspoon-sized portion of the earthy Egyptian realism along the Nile banks, not so much as a hint of realism that might remind viewers of the exotic wake-up feeling of being in a strange land.
I’m basically saying that I loathe and despise movies that seem to be about little more than treating viewers to lavish Kardashian-style abundance.