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The Sheltering Sky 1990 Second viewing after in an interval of about a decade and after just finishing the novel of Paul Bowles, who gave Bertolucci’s film a one word review: awful! What exactly displeased him one can’t say but it might be fair to assume it was not the dazzling camera work of Vittorio Storaro who captures the vastness and color of sky and sand magnificently. Fairing less well are the interior landscapes of the central figures, Port and his wife Kit, John Malkovich and Debra Winger respectively, as Bowles detailed character sketches of the travelers, as this is how the couple, along with an admiring friend, Tunner (Campbell Scott) see themselves, as they gather themselves together for the start of their voyage into the Sahara; must be inferred by the actors, and it is most detrimental in the case of Kit whose one indiscretion with Tunner and her subsequent guilt feelings are obscured by what is depicted as an ongoing affaire with Tunner and Kit’s dependence on Port, as the novel makes clear in her interior monologue, that is at the root of her break with reality at his death, then comes as a surprise. Port’s infidelity which occurs only once in the film, at the beginning with his visit to the tent of a whore, fails to discern between simple sexual pleasure and a more subtle attraction to mysterious beauty—and the desire to posses it— as the novel describes Marhina: And suddenly she stepped inside—a slim wild- looking girl with great dark eyes. She was dressed in spotless white, with a white turbanlike headdress that pulled her hair slightly backward, accentuating the indigo designs on her forehead. Bertolucci’s whore hardly matches the description and gone is the long interval in which Marhina, preparing tea, tells a fable of the three girls from the mountain that seek their fortune in Algeria but more than anything else want to drink tea in the Sahara, the phrase that gives Part 1 of the novel it’s title. But probably most troubling to Bowles must have been the moment when Port utters to Kit, in abbreviated form, Bowles most profound observation Someone once had said to her[Kit] that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed while he is humping her under the sky that gives the novel it’s title. Despite the quibbles at details that were magical from Bowles hand, the film stands well on it’s own as an epic of the desert and it’s hostility to those of another age.

The Sheltering Sky is not easy to sit through, but I found it immensely rewarding and not just for the spectacular visuals or soundtrack. The characters have no range of emotion, so the viewer must take upon him- or herself all of it, and it’s not a light burden. The film’s first half is as ponderously dull as the second half is breathlessly brutal, and it hooked me. In particular, the film contains one of the most emotionally tortured and completely devastating cinematic deaths I’ve ever watched. The relentless psychological violence makes you feel like a masochist. Bowles’s narration is not effective or warranted until his final comment: “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times – and a very small number, really.” Listening to these words after witnessing the main characters nihilistically disintegrate, fade away or otherwise spin off into their own trajectories was positively annihilating. Hats off to Malkovich and Winger; though I wasn’t certain of their performances in the earlier part of the movie, I later realized it is an immense feat to portray such empty, vapid, disaffected people yet leave the viewer emotionally wrung out.

I adore this film. Debra Winger gives a heart wrenching performance. This is a sensual film with romance and exploration at its core. We need to be more than a tourist in our lives. Let’s be travelers even if we get lost. The Sahara never looked so enticing and shrouded in mystery. Bertolucci provides a sumptuous canvas for this travelogue of soul searching and finding meaning in your life. Find your destination in life so you can call some place home or be eternally lost seeking a home that never finds you.