Marco Polo
(2007 telefilm/Genius Entertainment)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Telefilm: C
There are
cards and then there are Hallmark cards.
That being said, when you are at Best Buy or your favorite independent
video store and you see a certain type of DVD cover art, before your brain has even
had a chance to engage, instinctively your hand begins to pull back and
the light bulb lights: it's a Hallmark Production.
Filmed on
location in China and various locales in the Far East, Marco Polo is as lavish,
lush and beautiful looking as its subject would seem to warrant. Unfortunately,
it is also as hollow, self-serving and, frankly, ludicrously fanciful as the
scenery and costumes are gorgeous to look at.
Despite
the renown of the book The Travels of Marco Polo (Il
Milione), precious little is actually known about the Venetian world
traveler. His chronicle, based on his journals, was dictated to a
fellow prisoner, Rustigielo, a popular writer of historical romances
at the time, after they had both been arrested during ongoing struggles between
Venice and Genoa. Taken down in a Franco-Italian dialect that was
very soon extinct and told in a didactic travelogue style that might at
best be described as impersonal and, at worst, fictional, autobiographical details
concerning its author were in very short supply.
None of
this has discouraged filmmakers through the years at attempting to bring
his story to the screen. Although Marco
Polo has been portrayed by actors as various as John Saxon, Gary Cooper,
Horst Buchholz and Desi Arnaz (in a musical version!), the definitive version
has yet to be made. Ian Somerhalder (of Lost) steps up with a valiant attempt but, alas, isn't up to the task.
His accent, which doesn't quite cut it, is, however, light years beyond
Brian Dennehy's portrayal of Kublai Khan as LA DA; he doesn’t bother
with an accent at all, opting for shaved, penciled eyebrows for historical and cultural
veracity. In the bonus feature interview with Dennehy, the first
thing he laughs over is the casting of a large Irish American, himself, as
the famed Oriental potentate. One has to assume this gives the
audience license to laugh, too. No doubt someone has been dipping
into Samuel Taylor Coleridge's renowned stash.
In a
reversal of a usual filmatic cliché, it is the frame story that is
closest to truth, everything in between largely fictional. If truth
is not an issue, this film is easy on the eyes, with a romance inserted to pass
for a plot and some martial arts with B. D. Wong for excitement. There
are credible performances by both Wong and Yan Luo, as the Khan's wife,
Chabi, a true power behind the throne. The sets, production design,
costumes and locales are all beautiful (though there appears to be more bad
beards here than in the 70's PBS production of The Life of Leonardo da Vinci), yet all is truly for
naught.
It is
speculated that the reason Marco Polo was never mentioned in the voluminous
writings of Dante was the overall lack of truth in the tales he told.
Those who reach for the DVD might take a cue from the infamous warning in that
great Italian writer's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter
here."
- Don Wentworth
