First movie ever made by Ridley Scott, the Master of Hollow Spectacles. Visually stunning. As a period piece, the research that evidently went into preparartion of the costumes, settings and army paraphalia, is simply amazing.
The plot is perfunctory. It is the kind of scripts that you figure can only be saved with a tragic climax near the end, which, is this case, never came. But who cares. The visual quality of this film is so painstakingly worked out and so richly layered, that its own very sophistication alone seems, for lack of a better word, "cultured". One sees tributes to earlier Flemish Masters from to Vermeer to Steen, to Rembrandt, in terms of lighting (side profile), composition (by the window), and coloration (rich dark tones). Like the old Masters, Scott here refrained from letting his frames lapse into cloy prettiness: in presenting articles and fine details for our inspection, Scott kept in the coarse and unsavory, which I particularly admire as signs of a healthy sensibility.
It is therefore distressing, though interesting, to note the regression of Scott's visual quality, from "Duellists", to "Blade Runners", to "Gladiators". Even an advertising man has a soul to lose.
