This is in praise of a revolutionary heroic woman whose life and actions have impacted the world without leaving her story told. Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum's timely documentary, Letters from Baghdad, changes that fate for the unheralded and remarkable Gertrude Bell. Gertrude was born the first child of an English mining magnate, who was also among the first female graduates to attend Oxford University. This was at the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when male scholars felt women's programs should be crushed before they caused too much trouble.
She was an unusually confident and intelligent woman who was not patient with women's domestic roles of entertaining society, having tea parties and making babies. She was also extremely rich and supported by her father to do as she wished. This meant traveling through then Mesopotamia: Turkey, Iraq, Syria with guides, a few dozen camels, and her camera risking near death at the hands of warlords. She explored regions of the Southern Iraqi desert that had never been visited by any European; drawing maps, taking pictures and making notes on tribal alliances and leaders that would become essential information for the British Empire. Her delineation of the Southern Iraq border exists today. To the consternation of her parents and some of the British leadership she became an indispensable Orientalist with knowledge surpassing even the great Lawrence of Arabia with whom she often worked. (She is not even mentioned in the famous Olivier movie about him!) She also developed a deep love of the Iraqi people and advocated self rule for them after the Turkish Ottoman government was pushed out by the British. Naturally the British did not want to give up their foothold in the oil rich desert at a time when the automobile was just beginning to become the future. Neither did the the American corporations with whom they were allied. Though she was instrumental in the crowning of the ally friendly King Faisel to the new formed government she was seen as a nuisance and became marginalized. A most memorable quote from her letters: "We should never have come into this country without a plan for what to do once we got here." Does that sound familiar?
Never the less she was responsible for the establishment of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, which held some of the world's most ancient treasures from the birthplace of civilization in ancient Babylon, until it was looted after the US invasion in 2003.
The film itself unfolds the story through the reading of her prodigious letters to her parents and various lovers. Tilda Swinton acts the voice of Gertrude and her various friends and acquaintances fill in the story through re-enacted interviews. Narrative is elegant and suggestive - connecting comments with rich imagery of archival footage from a world long gone of camels riding through the dust of desert storms, woven boats in the crowded river banks of Baghdad, street markets and the faces of Islamic peoples who are long gone as is the country and way of life they once knew. Gertrude's photographs of ancient ruins are an irreplaceable treasure given that ancient cities like Mosel, Aleppo and Ur have been bombed and destroyed by ISIS, the Americans and other forces. It was particularly moving to me as it brought me back to my own travels in Morocco and deep love for the mysterious otherness of that Muslim desert country. Gertrude's wandering in the desert reminds me of Paul Bowles' famous novel The Sheltering Sky in which Kit, the American female protagonist, is found alone and wandering in the desert by the end of the book. She is transformed into a stranger by her encounters in a strange land. Gertrude Bell is as well, but her transformative had an effect on the history of Iraq and the rest of the middle east, which is still playing out today. Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, an adaptation of Georgina Howell's biography of Bell, was released in 2015, but appears to have been a flop.
I applaud Sabine and Zeva for having the courage and foresight to make this film using Gertrude's own words and photos. Its an essential history that all Americans should see so we can understand our part in the complex puzzle of that region's politics.
She was an unusually confident and intelligent woman who was not patient with women's domestic roles of entertaining society, having tea parties and making babies. She was also extremely rich and supported by her father to do as she wished. This meant traveling through then Mesopotamia: Turkey, Iraq, Syria with guides, a few dozen camels, and her camera risking near death at the hands of warlords. She explored regions of the Southern Iraqi desert that had never been visited by any European; drawing maps, taking pictures and making notes on tribal alliances and leaders that would become essential information for the British Empire. Her delineation of the Southern Iraq border exists today. To the consternation of her parents and some of the British leadership she became an indispensable Orientalist with knowledge surpassing even the great Lawrence of Arabia with whom she often worked. (She is not even mentioned in the famous Olivier movie about him!) She also developed a deep love of the Iraqi people and advocated self rule for them after the Turkish Ottoman government was pushed out by the British. Naturally the British did not want to give up their foothold in the oil rich desert at a time when the automobile was just beginning to become the future. Neither did the the American corporations with whom they were allied. Though she was instrumental in the crowning of the ally friendly King Faisel to the new formed government she was seen as a nuisance and became marginalized. A most memorable quote from her letters: "We should never have come into this country without a plan for what to do once we got here." Does that sound familiar?
Never the less she was responsible for the establishment of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, which held some of the world's most ancient treasures from the birthplace of civilization in ancient Babylon, until it was looted after the US invasion in 2003.
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| Bell in Egypt between Churchill and Lawrence |
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| King Faisel I of Iraq |
The film itself unfolds the story through the reading of her prodigious letters to her parents and various lovers. Tilda Swinton acts the voice of Gertrude and her various friends and acquaintances fill in the story through re-enacted interviews. Narrative is elegant and suggestive - connecting comments with rich imagery of archival footage from a world long gone of camels riding through the dust of desert storms, woven boats in the crowded river banks of Baghdad, street markets and the faces of Islamic peoples who are long gone as is the country and way of life they once knew. Gertrude's photographs of ancient ruins are an irreplaceable treasure given that ancient cities like Mosel, Aleppo and Ur have been bombed and destroyed by ISIS, the Americans and other forces. It was particularly moving to me as it brought me back to my own travels in Morocco and deep love for the mysterious otherness of that Muslim desert country. Gertrude's wandering in the desert reminds me of Paul Bowles' famous novel The Sheltering Sky in which Kit, the American female protagonist, is found alone and wandering in the desert by the end of the book. She is transformed into a stranger by her encounters in a strange land. Gertrude Bell is as well, but her transformative had an effect on the history of Iraq and the rest of the middle east, which is still playing out today. Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, an adaptation of Georgina Howell's biography of Bell, was released in 2015, but appears to have been a flop.
I applaud Sabine and Zeva for having the courage and foresight to make this film using Gertrude's own words and photos. Its an essential history that all Americans should see so we can understand our part in the complex puzzle of that region's politics.
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