Customer Reviews

Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for Livingstone

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My most recent order from Amazon.com was Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for Livingstone. While this wasn't a great movie, it was a well-made movie that was more than worth the $[...] I paid for it. The film does the job I ask of it: portraying the Dark Continent, the Africa of adventure.

A National Geographic Television presentation, Forbidden Territory perfectly captures the period. We see African henchman, Europe's finest explorers and its basest adventurers, the mustachioed, tuxedo-clad "armchair geographers" of Royal Geographic Society, a faithful missonary, and the poor souls he sought to protect from Arab slavers. The costuming was great, right down to Livingstone's little blue "conductor's" cap and the motley pugaree on Stanley's pith helmet.

While the film de-demonizes Livingstone and Stanley so much that it would send any post-colonialist Cult-of-Achebe English prof into a pontificating hissy fit, it thoroughly develops Stanley's character, portraying him as a tormented soul and an indomitable survivor, partially through a series of flashbacks to his days as a Welsh [...] in a workhouse and his days as a Confederate soldier. In spite of Aidan Quinn's best efforts to overact the part in a few scenes. Fortunately, the casting of Nigel Hawthorne as old Doc Livingstone was pure genius. To paraphrase Troy McClure, "it was the part he was born to play, baby."

In a nutshell, Forbidden Territory is no Lawrence of Arabia, but it is a pretty good period piece guaranteed to delight anyone who has ever dreamed of battling tsetse flies and Somalis.

I ordered this video because my son was doing a project on world explorers and his subject was Dr. Livingston. But when I saw this movie, it took me back in time and into a world not too far from our present time, but yet so distant. The photography, acting and pace are beautiful. It is amazing to see a world from less than 150 years ago when a large continent was uncharted, devoid of automobiles, airplanes, railways, satellites, cameras, tape recorders, etc.; and a handful of people were walking a few miles each day, taking notes in journals and charting the dark continent. This movie is a time piece.

My only disappointment was that it covers only the last days of Livingston's life and not his discovery of Victoria Falls, etc. Another movie I recommend along with this is "Mountains of the Moon" which has nothing to do with Livingston but is a few years down the time line, and is a spectacular adventure to discover the source of the Nile.

This and "Mountains of the Moon" are the difinitive DVD's on the search for the Source of the Nile. Well worth having in your library.
I have been to Africa on Safari several times and am very interested in the early African history of exploration and hunting which very often overlapped each other.
Wish there were more movies like these...Excellent

This film shows a glimpse of what Africa was like in the 1870's - perhaps what it really was like. You may be expecting romance, serenity, and wonders of nature; however: You will get the hard reality of Arab slavers who murder more natives than they capture. You will experience the difficulties of forming an expedition and holding it together. Fearlessness of disease is met with the brick wall of disease. The only romance is the letter writing from Stanley to Alice Pike which is precious little.
There is a good deal of introspection into Stanley's life starting with his childhood. Though interesting, this feels like an interruption to the story of the expedition. It does tell us, however; that Stanley is searching for other things as well. The actual meeting between Stanley and Livingstone seems anticlimactic but, now Stanley discovers the unrelenting drive in Livingstone to explore.
--Stanley has reached his goal and perhaps found the father that he never had. Livingstone gives him letters to take back to England and these eventually become the proof of his success.
Take the challenge and go on the expedition with him.

I really liked this movie. I had heard a comment by Pastor Ravi Zachariah about this being a good movie, I recommend it to anyone and everyone. "Doctor Livingston, I pressume" were words that I learned early in my childhood from the cartoon on a black and white screen. I have a new respect for Dr Livington legacy and life of Missionary devotion, only the true calling of God is understood by the men and women who live in the places where no other human being would dare to be.

This was an unexpected pleasure.
The film covered Stanley's backround rather well.
Unfortunately, the trip to Livingston didn't cover the real hardship of the jungle portion of Stanley's trek. Nor did it cover the conflict with the British Consul, Kirk. I understand that it was in the interest of time that this was done, but some inclusion would have been interesting.
Still, this film is very good and I highly recommend it.

The old movie 'Forbidden Territory' provides an excellent lesson of the history of those early missionary and exploratory adventures in Africa - far from the commonly seen accounts of Gordon's heroic deeds to 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

I watched this movie, and was not sure if it was acurate or if it was another attempt to dissolve famous persons from the past. I was not pleased with the presentation and would not recommend this to my family or friends.