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Rating: The review is based on my last viewing of the film, which dates back to more than five years ago. I therefore venture to describe the traces and memories it left me after such a long time: the crisis and dissolution of the couple's relationship, the allure of solitude, the fear and then the discovery of the unknown, the fascination of travel, the fragility and at the same time the complexity of human relationships, the abandonment to one's own destiny.
All this, and much more, is "The Sheltering Sky," in my personal opinion the best of Bertolucci's films. I must add that the overall judgment of the film is strongly influenced by my passion for Paul Bowles, one of the perhaps less known figures of the Beat generation (a definition that indeed is a bit narrow for him), a great animator of free spirits and a focal point in Tangier for the western rebelliousness of those years.
The film, which does absolute justice to the book, is essentially divisible into two parts: the first tells the vicissitudes of the desert journey of a crisis-stricken American couple, accompanied by a mutual friend. The second is focused on the relationship with a Tuareg tribe and consequently is very interior - and consequently much slower (assuming this can be considered a defect) - than the first.
The context of reference is that of the first decades of the last century, where few dandies and equally few wealthy tourists could afford the luxury of embarking on an uncomfortable, dangerous but extraordinarily fascinating journey like that of the North African desert. The couple in crisis consists of Kit and Port (played by the extraordinary Debra Winger and John Malkovich), who challenge themselves by identifying in that journey the last resort to recover the roots of their relationship and forget the incommunicability. The film, especially in the first part, is continuously permeated by this malaise, the frustration of no longer being able to understand each other, the despair of instead finding further reasons to drift apart.
The desert dominates everything, depicted as it is. The desert constitutes the perfect backdrop to Bowles' story, because it is an environment that makes no concessions, doesn't help, does not inspire romanticisms. It almost seems to accompany, with its hostile estrangement, the dissolution of Kit and Port's relationship. For his part, Bertolucci adds sumptuous cinematography, which alone is worth the film, and a splendid soundtrack.
In conclusion, what makes this a great film? In my opinion, it’s Bertolucci's ability to illustrate universal themes such as love and its dramatic implications, the journey, understood as a visible projection of an inner path, and death, which, in a foreign world where wealth and youth are useless, shows its most cruel face.
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