This film features one of the most extraordinary locations I've ever seen on film,apparently shot in Southeast Iran, these giant, snow-capped mountains loom in the distance while closer, a desert fortress rises above what appears to be the remains of abandoned, ancient ruins. In this setting, an outpost on the edge of the desert of the Tartars, overseeing rock, sand, and a perpetual mist, the extraordinary external visual world stands for the internalized world that evolves over time, soldiers at the outpost suffer from mysterious ailments that scientists can not name or cure, a metaphor for fear of the unknown, which eats at the inner core of these soldiers who live in a world abandoned by time. The men train for the inevitable attack that lurks just beyond their eyesight or understanding, there is a sort of desert fever that kicks in, so it is not really known if there is an army out there or if it's all in their mind. The stunning,visual world has been created, once again, from the brilliant mind of Valerio Zurlini.

The film reminded me of two others, Tarkovsky's `Solaris,' where men are sent to outer space only to discover that the planet surface mysteriously interacts with each man's internal memories, also a recent Hungarian film by Peter Gothar called `The Outpost,' an absurdist, Kafkaesque journey that as one engineer gets promoted and travels farther and farther away into the outer reaches of the country, bribing nearly everyone she meets just to get there, leaving the comforts of anything remotely resembling normal, and instead discovers a peculiar outpost at the end of the world where the mind plays terrible tricks.

Excellent, haunting movie, with great actors, but it falls short of the book. This I suspect often happens when reading a book before seeing the film. The book, the Desert of the Tartars by Dino Buzzati is an allegory for a man life and destiny. A man's hope to greatness, to glory, to accomplish great deeds. But as time passes, greatness is never attained, glory never achieved. Most of us us settle down in our routine. Drogo full of youth and enthusiasm set up for Fort Bastiano, the fortress protecting the border of his country. With the passing of time the precise, monotonous routine in the fortress becomes his life. He returns to the city and to his fiancé, but the city life does not please him. This part of the book is never shown in the movie. He returns to the fortress with hope of greatness if the Tartars ever attack and the star of glory to defend his country will shine upon him. Time inexorably goes by. Rumors of sights of Tartars prowling in the desert below are just rumors. Drogo is, we are getting older. His health starts to fail. But there is still hope in his hearth that the enemy may come. Then suddenly the enemy comes. The Tartars are invading, the desert under Fort Bastiano is full of them, the war has started, and while Drogo is carried away a young inexperienced officer coming from the city will have the honor and the glory of defending his country. Drogo's carriage is taking him to the city below where the greatest of all Enemies is awaiting for him.

The Desert of the Tartars is an epic movie where nothing happens over 2 hours and 21 minutes...except to show us the gradual and fascinating disintegration of a group of military officers in an isolated outpost of empire who are full of pride and who lead lives as pointless as their careers. It helped me understand things better when I looked up the author, Dino Buzzati. His book was published in 1940 shortly after he had served some time in Ethiopia as Mussolini postured and killed his way to a new Roman empire. Many thought the book was a veiled reference to the sort of empty grandiosity Mussolini embodied. The book became widely available only after WWII.

Here we have a group of officers, none of whom have ever seen combat except for one who can barely move, awaiting an attack that may never happen, whose purpose in their lives can only come about through glorious battle. And some of these officers are convinced that some sort of activity far off in the desert can sometimes be seen. Can it be the ghosts and dreams of the long-ago Tartar invaders? They talk of the "enemy" as if it were some anonymous thing. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, with the lives of these men governed by punctilious manners and regulations. These are officers whose code of conduct has them practice fencing with each other while their men wait behind machine guns.

We see all this through Lieutenant Drogo (Jacques Perrin) who arrives at Fort Bastiano, a great hulking desert fortress made of mud brick, in 1907 on his first posting. "Beyond the fort there is a desert," he is told. "And then, nothing. The desert of the Tartars. They may even have crossed it, centuries ago, but they vanished after destroying the ancient city. The desert has kept their name. But the older that history is, the more men change it into legend. So we don't know what's true and what isn't."

In my view, the sad heart of the film is Captain Horvitz, played with great power by Max von Sydow. Years ago, Horvitz had seen the lights of the enemy, had given the alarm and no attack occurred. He has refused all opportunity to leave Fort Bastiano. Years pass and he becomes commanding officer. In time, he is sent away. "I hope you will be in command of the fort when the enemy will attack," he tells Captain Drogo as he prepares to leave, "and I know it will, even if I was ordered to ignore it. What nonsense and what disregard. I might have been useful in wartime. I'm so regretful. I waited for such a long time...without knowing why..."

Many officers we met with Lt. Drogo have died, become unbalanced, and in many cases have been simply sent away as their superiors gradually have reduced the strength of the fort. More time slips away and Drogo, now second in command, gray and ill, is in turn sent away from the fort. Drogo had become as fixated on Fort Bastiano and the "enemy" as Horvitz became....and yet now there seems there may be a genuine attack.

Yet, when Drogo was still new to the fort he was convinced that his posting was an error. The sympathetic doctor gives him a letter with a medical reason for a new assignment. "You are wise to leave," Doctor Major Rovin tells him. "I was sent here by mistake," Drogo tries to explain. "Here or elsewhere," Rovin tells Drogo, "we're all somewhere by mistake." This sense of passionless inevitability runs through the film.

One would think that nearly two-and-a-half hours of this would be tedious. It isn't. The director, Valerio Zerlini, explores some serious themes. Is there an enemy or not? Has the fort been purposefully weakened for unknown schemes? Where actually is the fort located? (It seems it takes only three days by horseback to reach the middle of the desert after leaving the green hills and valleys of Italy...or is it even Italy?) I don't think any of this matters. The film, for me, is an allegory of how easily men can slip into the pointlessness of duty, pride, obedience and glory. Well, this approach may be a bit existential, but we can make what we want of it as we see the progression of disintegration played off against the essential meaninglessness of these men's lives.

What helps the movie immeasurably are two other factors. First, there is a whole roster of first-rate, skilled European actors, all of whom know how to underplay. In addition to von Sydow, we have Vittorio Gassman, Helmut Griem, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Giuliano Gemma, among others. Second, there is the looming presence of the desert and Fort Bastiano itself. Much of the film was shot in Iran in the ancient city of Bam. Fort Bastiano is actually Arg-e-Bam, the Citadel of Bam. The citadel and the ancient town next to it were built of mud brick and straw eons ago. When I saw the first shot of Fort Bastiano I thought I must be seeing some early version of Computer Generated Overkill. The Citadel of Bam was huge, towering over the ancient ruins. Tragically, a massive earthquake hit Iran in 2003 with Bam at the epicenter. The only thing remaining of the Citadel, literally, is a huge mound of clay-brick rubble. Iran says the Citadel will be rebuilt, but it will take years. It is a huge cultural loss.