Hacker Cinema
Mountains of the Moon
1990 · Film · 136 min
Directed by Bob Rafelson
The story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire.
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For anyone interested in Burton, I strongly recommend the now-forgotten film The Mountains of the Moon (1990), directed by Rafelson and starring Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as his companion John Hanning Speke. Bergin (whose career quickly faded after this, unfortunately) is fantastic as Burton, an early Byronesque renaissance man who eschewed Victorian customs but combined both learning and adventure, and whose lack of respect for societal norms made him unpopular with the upper classes. Overall, it's an incredibly beautiful film, shot by the great Roger Deakins on location in Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_of_the_Moon_(film)
This is my favorite audio book. I had a long drive to a friend’s wedding so I picked up an audio book to listen to, Lansing’s Endurance. I recommend it over the hardcover book, which is the way I consume most non-fiction, because of it incredible suspense.
Not knowing who will survive and who will perish and will they be able to persevere under the most extreme circumstances makes the audio presentation one of the most compelling tales of adventure I’ve ever heard. The book is great, but it includes pictures of the ill-fated expedition and so subtlety foretells aspects of the outcome. I recommend listening to it first, then buying the book.
For real life adventure lovers I also recommend Into Thin Air about climbing Everest and the movie, Mountains of the Moon about the explorer/translator Richard Burton [1].
[1] https://www.adventure-journal.com/2016/06/historical-badass-explorer-sir-richard-francis-burton/
See, for example, the troubles the noted explorer and translator Sir Richard Burton had. His translations of the Kama Sutra and 1001 Arabian Nights were considered scandalous in Victorian England.
He was an undaunted explorer and traveled widely and spoke 29 languages. He wrote extensively, but sadly his widow considered some of his papers too explicit to be published after his death and instead destroyed them.
His search for the headwaters of the Nile are the basis for the film Mountains of the Moon . See [1].
[1] Historical Badass: Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton