LAST NIGHT I CONQUERED THE CITY OF THEBES (2025)

LAST NIGHT I CONQUERED THE CITY OF THEBES breaks the one rule that I think films should never break, which is that it requires that you have to read on the film to know what in the holy hell is going on.  If you don't read that the film is a series of talks around an old Roman hot spring  that are unconnected to each other except by the location, you are going to be lost...

...actually odds are you are going to be sleeping for a good chunk of the film since the film is told long takes as you watch people sit or just a black screen (people are at the baths at night and we can't see them) . People sit and talk and not talk. There are long silences as people search for words in conversations that we have no context for. This is like just like eavesdropping on someone around you -except that we can't walk away when the dialog becomes dull. There is no indication of what any of this is about, conversations just happen and before just ending and another unconnected one starting up. 

We jump from group of characters to others with no indication as to when we are.  Sure the Roman ghosts are speaking in Latin, but if you are like me and you are reading subtitles to know what is being said, you may not catch it (I was curious why I suddenly understood what was being said on screen and realized my highschool Latin was coming back to me). I suspect that some of the clothing is supposed to indicate a change, except that almost all of the conversations happen in the baths so no one is wearing clothes. (And I have known guys who have worn the "loin clothes" of the Romans, so it wasn't clear to me that the century changed)

While I was intrigued by the opening, and the guys talking about ancient battles before pulling the rug out and having it be about a video game (another fact that makes the later time shifts very unclear), the film shifted into boredom as uninteresting conversations collide with long takes and frequent desire to use natural lighting which makes many scenes dark (aka black). The worst part is that the conversations were never interesting enough to answer the required question of every film "why are you tslling me this story?" at all. The film doesn't know why it's tell us these stories, or if it does it's in the filmmakers' heads and not on the screen.

While the film's beautifully acted (cheers to the guys speaking Latin, this is the first time I've ever heard it sound like real people speaking- I say that after years of lessons and more years of films) and beautifully shot (when it isn't black) this film is a true waste of time. It's a pretentious film that never transfered from the artists head.

Not recommended.