Cleopatra
Before watching this movie, I was a little excited to start the movie. I thought surely it would be epic, and I had kind of been in the mood to watch either this or Spartacus. It just so happened that Cleopatra came up on Encore before Spartacus reached a watched instantly status on Netflix. I was even a little excited to see Elizabeth Taylor in such a large and leading role.
After having watched the movie:
(Possible spoilers below)
No on told me this movie was going to be four hours long! And quite honestly, it was probably for the better, because 365 Movie Challenge or not I don't think I would have ever watched the movie if I had known it was just over four hours long. Interestingly enough though, and I learned about this after the fact, the movie was meant to be done as two independent movies that ran three hours long each. The first of the two movies would have focused around Cleopatra's relationship with Julius Ceaaer, and the second of the two movies would have focused around Cleopatra and her relationhip with Mark Anthony.
At the very least, the movie had a lot of great and rather epic things to look at and I'm being completely serious. All of the work and construction that went into making set pieces and props that had to be done twice when production was moved from London to Rome. It just kind of blows my mind and I can't help but think it's a little ridiculous to do things twice. But when your lead actress, Elizabeth Taylor, gets sick during production you sometimes have to work around things.
Even after reading over the numbers a couple of times there were still a couple of gray areas for me, so lets put this into a better perspective and crunch a couple of numbers. After adjusting for inflation in the year 2007, the movie cost $297 million to make. Almost $200,000 of the budget was spent on wardrobe expenses for Elizabeth Taylor, who wore a record number sixty-five costumes to include one piece made of 24-carat cloth. Not that I think the wardrobe Elizabeth Taylor wore was ridiculous, I really just like that she has sixty-five costumes for the sake of having sixty-five costumes. I even fell in love with the majority of the pieces, which doesn't happen often, and I just really want to touch the piece made out of 24-carat cloth. If that isn't enough to catch your attention though, reportedly a total of 26,000 costumes were constructed and pieced together for the movie. Which is incredible and anyone who sews or works with fabrics knows that yardage and cost adds up quickly given that all the senators were wearing togas.
Wardrobe costs aside, at the height of production this became the only movie 20th Century Fox was working on. It became a massive financial burden and a lot of pressure was put on the producer to create a hit. The movie would eventually break even and turn profit after six years, but in the mean time I'm sure it was an incredibly long six years for the producers responsible for the film.
Final thoughts: Even after it's all said and done, I much more would have preferred watching the two separate movies that just shared a character who would link the events together. The movie was an epic, as I had expected, and even though it was four hours long there are a lot of small things to really appreciate about the movie. I tend to be drawn to wardrobe which explains why I tend to rattle on about it most, but even the photography in the film was incredible. If ever you have four hours to kill, this movie has a lot to offer.
OFFICIAL COUNT 100 DOWN 265 TO GO
Next up: Hotel Rwanda
P.S. All of those kids who have been on MTVs Sweet Sixteen, you're entrances will never be as grand as the entrance Elizabeth Taylor arranged in this movie. Her parade, moving at such a slow pace so the crowd has the best opportunity to enjoy the show, will always top anything you could dream up. Sorry, but facts are facts.
Oh and for the record, I wouldn't turn away any gifted fabric or clothing made from a 24-carat material.
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