The movie is centered the re-enactment of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (which I haven't been taught about before in my history classes).
Mainly, i am impressed with the beauty of the cinematography, wonderful painting-like images. Also the setting is excellent and it gives a wonderful image of 16th century France: the costumes, the locations, the hair/makeup. It might not be 100 percent accurate, but creates a rich, aristrocratic, dangerously beautiful vibe on its own. The horrendous scenes of the murders in all their violence are terrific... the viewer is loaded with many, well narrated scenes; especially the piles of corpses stayed in my mind afterwards, which were depicted in a nearly poetic manner.
The actors did a wonderful job here. Isabelle Adjani is, as usual, terrific. Her nude scenes, depicting the queen's adultery, lust and incestuous affairs are acted in such a way that they are a form of art. They are certainly not typical Hollywood style and deserve to be celebrated.
Overall, I must say, for me personally the film epos was - too long. nearly 2,5 hours and I had sometimes a difficult time to keep up with the actions as I confused characters and places. (must one be familiar with the historical background beforehand? I am not sure. But it might be better...). Some scenes were intentionally slowly paced, which is a great choice of the director in terms of mood and style, but it was too much for me. I compensated that by admiring the wonderful images, costumes, sceneries (nearly everything the art department did for this film!) and got many new inspirations out of this.
Overall still a great movie which deserves to be watched with 100% of your attention (otherwise you might miss important things). Prepare for love, blood, violence and a feast for the eyes.
Mainly, i am impressed with the beauty of the cinematography, wonderful painting-like images. Also the setting is excellent and it gives a wonderful image of 16th century France: the costumes, the locations, the hair/makeup. It might not be 100 percent accurate, but creates a rich, aristrocratic, dangerously beautiful vibe on its own. The horrendous scenes of the murders in all their violence are terrific... the viewer is loaded with many, well narrated scenes; especially the piles of corpses stayed in my mind afterwards, which were depicted in a nearly poetic manner.
The actors did a wonderful job here. Isabelle Adjani is, as usual, terrific. Her nude scenes, depicting the queen's adultery, lust and incestuous affairs are acted in such a way that they are a form of art. They are certainly not typical Hollywood style and deserve to be celebrated.
Overall, I must say, for me personally the film epos was - too long. nearly 2,5 hours and I had sometimes a difficult time to keep up with the actions as I confused characters and places. (must one be familiar with the historical background beforehand? I am not sure. But it might be better...). Some scenes were intentionally slowly paced, which is a great choice of the director in terms of mood and style, but it was too much for me. I compensated that by admiring the wonderful images, costumes, sceneries (nearly everything the art department did for this film!) and got many new inspirations out of this.
Overall still a great movie which deserves to be watched with 100% of your attention (otherwise you might miss important things). Prepare for love, blood, violence and a feast for the eyes.