Critics reviews

It's a stunning film, an ancient fable that's as austere as any Hollywood treatment of Egypt is ornate, and yet packed with detail and action that makes it utterly convincing. The widescreen desolation surrounding the story of a doomed would-be reformer is never not spectacular.

There's a marked anti-Soviet subtext to this 1966 Polish drama... yet it's thoroughly commanding as a period spectacle. Director Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Mother Joan of the Angels) makes stunning use of color and wide-screen, evoking primitive awe with his framing of the barren desert landscape and displaying a sophisticated, modernist sensibility in his hard-angled shots of architecture and crowds.

...It's a tough film to follow, since there are four nations involved, dozens of major characters, including one exact lookalike of the young heir apparent, and lots and lots of bald priests. The movie is three hours long, so if you commit to it you'll probably find a way through all this...