The Desert of the Tartars

Young lieutenant Drogo is posted to a remote fort at the edge of the desert. Everyone there is waiting for an enemy to come from the north. Years pass, the enemy does not come, but the waiting itself becomes an order nobody can leave. Valerio Zurlini directed, from Dino Buzzati's novel. The cast includes Jacques Perrin, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey and Giuliano Gemma. It was shot in Iran at the Bam citadel. That vast mud-brick structure is the film's entire visual world; it was largely destroyed in the earthquake of 2003, so the film is also a record of a building that no longer stands. Despite looking like a military story there is no war. The subject is waiting: a life spent preparing for an event that will not happen. The score is by Ennio Morricone and its repetition carries the waiting itself. The telling is slow and deliberately monotonous. Who it is for: viewers who like existential literary adaptation and seventies European cinema. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; the film is about nothing happening.