The movie is not one of those wide-screen epics that might have been directed by David Lean. It's wide screen, all right, and it's an epic, but it's a not a movie about adventure and action, it's an epic about the personalities of the men who endured incredible hardships because of their curiosity, egos, greed or even because of their nobility. Rafelson (whose credits include "Five Easy Pieces") fills his movie with unobtrusive period detail; he has not only the costumes and the settings right, but also the attitudes, as men in proper attire and an astonishing variety of facial hair crowd into the Geographical Society to hear lectures from the great explorers. These men look ancient and proper, but actually they are fans, and to them Richard Burton is a dashing hero - a man they envy because he has gotten out from under Victoria's skirts by thousands of dangerous miles.
To win their ovations, Burton and Speke were prepared to risk their lives in the unknown. We see their expeditions snaking across uncharted territories, where death by native attack was less of a threat than disease, famine, pestilence or simply getting lost. When one expedition finally reaches a lake that may be a source of the Nile, Burton arrives carried on a stretcher, almost too sick to think. A diary by a member of Scott's expedition to the South Pole is titled "The Worst Journey in the World." That could also be the diary of this expedition.
Back in London, Burton (Patrick Bergin) and Speke (Iain Glen) have a falling-out, based on a lack of communication and a tragic misunderstanding. Speke takes credit for finding the source of the Nile, Burton is adamant that the evidence is not sufficient. An unscrupulous publisher tells Speke lies about Burton, and Speke acts on them, making unforgivable statements about his former friend. When he learns that they were lies - that Burton has the material to destroy him in a debate - he falls into despair. There is the suggestion, tantalizing and unresolved, that he may have been in love with Burton, a man whose sexual appetites seem to have been fueled as much by curiosity as by lust.
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