Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

tomsview "Roots of Heaven" was an interesting idea, but executed with enough flatulence and hot air to have been a major cause of the increase in Earth's greenhouse gases.The story of a man, and a small group of followers, who go on what becomes an illegal crusade to stop the slaughter of the African elephant, should have made an inspiring film.There have been plenty of reasons given why such a worthy project turned out so lacklustre, but I feel the main reason is not necessarily the accepted ones of confused story lines and undefined characters - the problem is more in your face.The film is full of eccentrics: loud, bombastic, opinionated and declarative ones, and eccentric characters are rarely appealing or even entertaining.John Huston made some of the best films of all time: "The Maltese Falcon", "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", "Moby Dick" and about a dozen others. They all featured 'larger-than-life' characters, however the 'larger-than-life' characters got away from him on this one and actually became annoying.Of course Huston may not have noticed what was happening because he was probably a bit like that himself, and often had a hand in the scripts.He and scriptwriter Romain Cary (the author of the novel) created a character, Morel, played by an uncharismatic Trevor Howard, who seemed to have a number of variations on his expansive character throughout the cast; just look at the performances of Orson Welles, Errol Flynn, Frederick Ledebur, Oliver Hussenot, Gregoire Aslan, Francis de Wolff, and Eddie Albert - definitely a fail in first-term screen writing class.The film looks good when it steps outside with fabulous shots of elephants and Africa, but of course the cast and crew famously suffered for that authenticity. The interiors back in the London studio were another matter, and look over-lit and fake.Although Juliette Gréco was apparently forced on the film because she was producer Darryl Zanuck's mistress at the time, her understated performance was a relief from all the histrionics surrounding her.Like many reviewers I feel that "Roots of Heaven" is fascinating more for what went on behind the camera than in front of it. The good news was that Huston bounced back - "The Man Who Would Be King" and "Fat City", were impressive ways to wind up a Quixotic and sometimes chaotic career.

JLRMovieReviews Trevor Howard would like you to sign his petition to save the elephant. The elephant is one of Africa's biggest creatures. Yet, he is usually gentle. His only enemy is that of man. Man hunts elephants for his skin, his tusks, for the sport. All this is what Trevor Howard stands up for and wants others to join in his quest to save the elephant. Unfortunately, no one has signed it. Even a man of the cloth rationalizes a reason not to sign it. When someone makes the rather unique remark, that he's going about it the wrong way, he tries another tactic, a more hands-on approach. Featuring a very good supporting cast that includes Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Herbert Lom, Paul Lukas and Orson Welles, this should have been better than it was. It does contain a rather earnest performance by Trevor Howard, Errol Flynn with his usual cavalier style, an odd fascination about it (maybe due in part to the mystique of Africa and the elephants) and great photography/cinematography of the elephants themselves, particularly near the end with a dramatic stampede of them. But other than aforesaid attributes, this safari of wannabe criminals gets tiresome by the end and frankly wore me out. If you're watching this just for Errol Flynn, don't!

MartinHafer It's really amazing that the film crew went to so much trouble to make this movie. After all, they went to the hellishly hot and rather primitive country of French Equatorial Africa and filmed it on location- -and because of this the film looks great. Yet, inexplicably, at the same time the movie looks so incomplete and sloppy at times-- particularly when it came to many of the characters. As a result, the film's great message is muted and far less effective.When the film begins, a hunter has already killed four elephants and is about to kill more when he is attacked and beaten up by Morel (Trevor Howard). It seems that Morel is outraged by the wholesale slaughter of African animals (in particular, the elephants) and he's sick of sitting back and doing nothing. Soon, he goes to see the governor and begins circulating a petition to stop the slaughter--mostly to no effect. So, he and a few followers decide to take the law into their own hands. They burn ivory warehouses and attack hunters--shooting them in the butt! And, in one of the few funny scenes in the movie, they storm a ritzy party and deliver a well-deserved spanking to a society dame who delights in talking about all the elephants she's slaughtered.All this sounds very timely and important, right? Well, yes...but the film manages to take a great idea and make the least of it. While Trevor Howard is fine in the lead (though he's billed third!), many of the other characters are underdeveloped and wasted. Instead of seeming like real folks, they seem like they are doing a walk-on--like many celebrities that appear and disappear in a Muppet film! Flynn got top billing though he was barely in the film at all. And, when he was on camera, he pretty much played himself--a dying alcoholic (he died a year after this film was made). Orson Welles is an interesting character-- yet his change of heart from hunter to conservationist seemed bizarre and confusing--again because his part was severely under-written. Eddie Albert appears out of no where late in the film--and has a few good moments but is otherwise quite out of place. And, the same can be said about MOST of the rest of the cast! You would have thought that the writer, director and producer would have noticed this big problem. With better writing and directing, the film SHOULD have earned an 8 or 9. Instead, it's just an overly long and forgettable film.By the way, I found this film of particular interest because I just got back from a photo safari in South Africa. In my trips to this country, I was surprised how few animals remain and how those that do are confined mostly to game reserves. Also, while the elephants are the subject of "The Roots of Heaven", the biggest problems today are the poaching of the rhinos and the near-extinction of species such as the African Wild Dog. My advice is go soon to visit Africa soon as some of these animals simply might not be there in the near future.

Ben Burgraff (cariart) THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, John Huston's 'Save the Elephant' African drama, based on Romain Gary's ponderous novel, was a costly, torturous misfire about which even Huston himself had little positive to say ("The pictures that turn out to be the most difficult to make, usually turn out to be the worst - like ROOTS OF HEAVEN.") While the story, of an almost fanatical idealist and his international band of rag-tag followers, fighting against the poachers who were hunting the species to near extinction, was a timely one, the production suffered so many calamities and setbacks that what finally reached the screen bore little resemblance to the initial concept. But what a back story it had!Originally intended to star was William Holden, who was, in real life, an impassioned activist concerning Africa and it's wildlife. With Holden and Huston attached to the project, an all-star supporting cast was easily recruited, including Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Orson Welles, Paul Lukas, and Darryl Zanuck's newest 'protégé', Juliette Greco. Then Paramount politely informed Holden that he had unfulfilled obligations to the studio, and they would not release him to make the 20th Century Fox production. With the other talent under contract, and an inflexible location 'start' date, Fox faced the dilemma of no acceptable 'leading man' being available at short notice...and ended up casting British character actor Trevor Howard in Holden's role. Howard, however, had no 'marquee' value, so Errol Flynn, in a decidedly secondary role, found himself the 'star' of the movie!Huston arrived in Africa with Darryl Zanuck (the often jealous producer may have been a bit nervous having Juliette Greco working with world-class lotharios Huston and Flynn), and the 140-degree inferno quickly took a heavy toll on the cast and crew. Eddie Albert collapsed with sunstroke, and everyone except Huston and Flynn, who had each brought prodigious amounts of alcohol to consume, were soon suffering from amoebic dysentery. With the frequent production delays, Huston went big-game hunting, and philosophized to the world press. Flynn and Huston, both larger than life personalities, started arguing on set (considering the quantity of alcohol they consumed, it was not surprising!), and Flynn dared the director to fight him. While it might have been an interesting contest, twenty years before, when Flynn was in shape and a talented amateur boxer, he was long past his prime, and Huston, who had actually been a professional boxer in his youth, flattened the actor with one punch.It was NOT a happy production!The end result of all the suffering was a film that lacked cohesiveness, with unresolved subplots, and poorly defined characters. Huston would move on to a western with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn, THE UNFORGIVEN; Zanuck dumped Greco and began preproduction on his epic, THE LONGEST DAY (featuring NEW 'protégé', Irina Demick); and Flynn, after a brief recurrence of malaria, would produce and star in the abysmal CUBAN REBEL GIRLS, and would be dead in less than a year.THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN was a disaster, for all involved!