Exile In Buyukada
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Film: B-
I was
very interested in seeing exactly how the story of Leon Trotsky would be
handled in a program narrated by Vanessa Redgrave, who I like. Was it a film or a TV special? It was shot on film entirely and had people
playing the man and his wife. The result
of the 72-minutes-long Exile in Buyukada
(2000) is something akin to Leonard Nimoy’s TV classic In Search Of.
That’s
not bad, but you can see even the producers knew it could only go on for so
long. This is not bad, but has a basic
feel to it and if you know what is going to happen, you get zero suspense. Even if you do not, it is still too laid back
and takes too much time trying to second guess the man and not enough time digging
into the history of the man and his influence.
The
actors cast are fair, but they really do not necessarily get a chance to
act. If this were worse, this would feel
like those silly Sunn Schick “Classics” like In Search of Historic Jesus, In
Search of Noah’s Ark or other silly speculation films of the 1970s form the
great exploitation filmmaking unit. This
is better, especially in its use of still photos and even film clips. This focuses on the title location in Istanbul, where the Trotskys spent their
final years, and is based on Isaac Deutcher’s book The Prophet Outcast. The man
did get around.
The
letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image is on the dull side color and depth wise, but still
has the solid look of film, which includes the grain that accompanies it. Colin Mounier shot the film. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which is almost
mono, is adequate to handle Redgrave’s dialogue, but there are subtitles all
over the place, on the actual filmprint.
This had a theatrical Dolby release, so the sound is odd. The only extra is a text section telling a
brief history of Trotsky’s life, and in a twist, is narrated by a male voice.
So
overall, this is interesting, yet it drags.
The box dubs it a Docudrama, but that does not feel right either. Maybe a longer epic on his life and what he
was about would have been more interesting, but as it stands, Exile in Buyukada is for educational
purposes or the most interested parties only.
- Nicholas Sheffo
