Can a film capture the existential dread of a journey into the Sahara?
In short: Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1990 adaptation of Paul Bowles’s novel follows an American couple seeking to save their marriage in North Africa. Instead, they find themselves unraveling in the desert. While the film earned acclaim for its score, critics remain divided on whether this haunting story is truly translatable to the screen.
The 1990 drama The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich, attempts to bring Paul Bowles’s 1949 novel to life. The narrative follows Port and Kit Moresby, two Americans who travel to French Algeria in 1947 alongside their friend George Tunner. Their journey, intended to mend a fractured marriage, descends into a series of misunderstandings, betrayals, and ultimately, tragedy. As the couple ventures deeper into the Sahara, the physical environment mirrors their internal disintegration, culminating in Port’s death from typhoid fever and Kit’s subsequent psychological collapse while wandering the desert.
The film’s reception has been notably polarized. While Ryuichi Sakamoto’s evocative soundtrack received significant accolades, including a Golden Globe for Best Original Score, the narrative adaptation faced harsh scrutiny. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 45% approval rating, with many arguing that the source material was potentially unfilmable. Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the work as a beautifully modulated cry of despair, yet Roger Ebert found the experience hollow, noting that he was left with the impression of his fingers closing on air.
Beyond the technical execution, the film’s interpretation of the source material has sparked debate. Raj Chandarlapaty has observed that Bertolucci’s adaptation softens the character of Belqassim, the Tuareg who takes Kit captive, contrasting it with the more erratic brutishness found in Bowles’s original text. Even the author himself eventually distanced himself from the project. In a 1998 preface to his novel, Bowles famously remarked that the less said about the film, the better, highlighting the persistent tension between literary vision and cinematic translation.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: The Sheltering Sky (film)
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