‘Mountains of the Moon’ (R)

When explorer Sir Richard Burton and his companion John Speke set out to find the source of the Nile in 1857, their quest took the civilized world's fancy the way the race to the moon took ours. This river, which flowed unabated and unassisted by rain through arid desert all the way to its delta at Alexandria, Egypt, sprung from somewhere in unchartered Darkest Africa, but where?

Its headwaters -- which, according to Ptolemy's 2nd-century map, sprang from twin lakes at the foot of the Lunae Montes, or Mountains of the Moon -- were still undetermined. The difficulties of the terrain had thwarted explorers from Herodotus to Burton for 2,000 years.

The search for the source of the Nile is a great story, it's a hundred great stories, just sitting there gathering dust in the history books, waiting around for the right filmmaker.

Director Bob Rafelson isn't the one. His otherwise handsome "Mountains of the Moon" dumps the facts about source-explorers Burton and Speke somewhere in the scrubland in favor of a dramatically embellished (where not falsified) colonial buddy picture. That Rafelson, still best known for the 1970 "Five Easy Pieces," chose to base his film on William Harrison's "historical novel" of the same name, is not only factually but dramatically disappointing.

Nevertheless, there it is, "Burton and Speke: The Movie," in which uninhibited Renaissance man and native-appreciator Burton (played with animalistic appeal by Patrick Bergin) and uptight, all-but-repressed-homosexual Speke (a tight-lipped Iain Glen) become firm friends in the African wilderness, only to be torn asunder by a dastardly publisher called Oliphant (played with amusing vigor by wild-eyed Richard E. Grant) and a chauvinistic Victorian society, which desperately needed a British hero (Speke), not an Irish one (Burton).

No matter that in reality Burton had nothing but contempt for Africans, that there was no Oliphant, and that it was Speke, not Burton, who was detained by an African chief, and that the chief's name was Mutesa, not Ngola. Also, neither explorer probably addressed history quite so deliberately as to say, "The river is shrouded in mystery. Who will be the first to discover its source?"

Ironically, some of the movie's best components are among its most embellished. The movie's comic topper is a highly amusing but of course apocryphal moment in which Burton and Livingstone (yes, that one) dig deeper and deeper under their clothes to outdo each other in war wounds. Fiona Shaw's portrayal of Burton's freethinking wife Isabel (she was Daniel Day-Lewis's speech therapist in "My Left Foot") is a gross exaggeration but it's also a strong performance. Even in this subsidiary role, she threatens to become the movie's most empathetic character.

Once again, a Westerner takes a trip to Africa and comes back with picturesque scenery -- cinematographer Roger Deakins (who shot "White Mischief," another African movie) has a crisp, bright eye for primitive compositions -- but artistically empty hands. Another Sir Richard, in this case Attenborough, who has served his share of misspent time in Africa ("Cry Freedom"), shelved a budding project on Burton pending the Rafelson film. After this movie, Attenborough might as well restart his.