Mountains of the Moon *** (1990, Patrick Bergin, Iain Glen, Richard E Grant) – Classic Movie Review 11,252

‘Two strangers made friends by a savage land. Two friends made enemies by the civilized world.’

Director Bob Rafelson’s 1990 historical adventure film Mountains of the Moon tells the extremely peculiar tale of John Hanning Speke and Sir Richard Burton, who set out in the 1850s to solve the mystery of the source of the Nile. The film starts: ‘East African Coast 1854’.

This long, unwieldy story of close friendship, triumph, betrayal and Speke’s mysterious death is told by director Rafelson with great vigour, authentic atmosphere and visual splendour.

The acting of Iain Glen (as John Hanning Speke) and Patrick Bergin (as Sir Richard Burton) is full-blooded, and there is an ideal support cast. But the film does not quite add up to the spectacular epic it wants to be thanks to narrative hiccups and storytelling flaws in the clarity-lacking screenplay by William Harrison and Bob Rafelson, based on William Harrison’s 1982 novelised biography Burton and Speke and the explorers’ journals.

Also in the cast are Richard E Grant, Fiona Shaw, John Savident, James Villiers, Adrian Rawlins, Peter Vaughan, Bernard Hill, Anna Massey, Leslie Phillips, Roger Rees, Delroy Lindo, Matthew Marsh, Richard Caldicot, Christopher Fulford, Garry Cooper, and Roshan Seth.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,252

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