Ludwig

Ludwig

"I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others." -Ludwig II

One of the most unnecessarily long movies I've ever seen.  It clocks in at almost 4 hours, and there is no reason why.

It is about Ludwig II of Bavaria, who was deposed for being mentally ill (whether or not he actually was is still controversial).  It mostly seemed that he was unhappy, because he was secretly gay but also extremely religious and fighting off his feelings.  But he did also seem a bit off -he had a weird obsession with Richard Wagner, the composer, among other things.


My main reason for wanting to watch the movie was to see Romy Schneider reprise her role as Sissi.  At one point Tyler came into the room during disc 2, and I wanted to show him Romy Schneider speaking as she was on screen.  I had to fast forward for a  LONG time before any dialogue popped up -she was literally walking around castles just looking around silently for at least 10 minutes.  She got in and out of a carriage 3 times, and I never found a part where she said more than a sentence or so.

The real Ludwig II of Bavaria.

I did enjoy watching her in the first part of the movie when she did have some dialogue, but the script was so bad and the pacing so slow that it wasn't really worth it.  She still looked beautiful, so that's something!

After the first half hour I ended up watching most of the 4 hour movie in fast forward.  With the subtitles, I could see what they were saying, but the constant scenes of nothing happening and nothing being said were a little less painful that way.  I highly recommend it if anyone decides they do want to watch this movie.

The story was interesting enough that I did want to see what happened, but in the end I would recommend just reading about what happened on Wikipedia -sad to say, it's more interesting than watching the movie:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_II

"Mad King Ludwig."