No, this is not classic cinema nor does it even approach being a superior film but when's the last time you saw a film about Galls and Gaul? Vercingétorix, as one reviewer notes, should be seen in the original French as too, too much gets lost in the translation over to being dubbed. If one is not familiar with Roman history and especially the military writings of Caesar, the story will have little relevance. All you have to do is read the scathing reviews herein submitted by indignant viewers who wanted a rerun of Braveheart. The betrayal of Vercingétorix due to the intrigues and shifting alliances among the Galls is well documented by Caesar in his Gallic Wars. This film does capture some of that. Having said that, I must observe that after having seen the dubbed version released as "The Druids," and seeing the stilted performances, I likely would have written a review like most of the others. However, the French version comes across very differently. I must add just one point to the one favorable review in the way of a slight correction: The film is about the Galls who were a loose association of tribesmen speaking a language, Gallic, which was related to the Celtic languages spoken today, namely Scottish and Irish Gaelic and Welsh. Manx and Briton are versions of Welsh. Unfortunately, while the Romans were great political historians and wrote extensively on the politics of the Galls, they did no language studies. Hence, no texts in Gallic survive today and we have only bits and pieces to reconstruct what those original languages were like. The same is true for Etruscan, which did not belong to the Indo-European family. My point is, this film attempts to capture some of the cultural features of those people who were eventually absorbed by Rome and eventually became the nation of France.
