this movie is full of stunning visuals, but lacks much in the way of a plot line

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2003)

I have seen this movie categorized as an American science fiction movie yet I cannot find anything American in its story line. There isn't any simulated sex, gunplay, or cursing in this movie. In fact there is little dialog for its three hours (even if you count the grunting of the prehistoric men, women, and children). This film deserves to be relegated to the world of art house showings since it is as foreign a film as any I have ever seen. It would make no real difference if it was originally made using the French language and subtitled in English since the majority of human expression in this movie comes from the sounds of human breathing.
Don't let the first three minutes of terribly disjointed music set to a completely black screen scare you out of the theater. Stick around to sit thru the next twenty minutes while prehistoric man learns to use a piece of animal bone as a club. Once past this prehistoric buildup the outer space part of the movie begins. At least in Armageddon when they were showing the prehistoric buildup to the present they used a narrator to explain the situation to us. In this movie you are left to wonder if you walked into the right theater; since you seem to be watching a National Geographic film on how prehistoric man learned to eat raw meat rather than a movie about outer space.
The most memorable scenes from this movie that stick in my mind are the scenes of space flight. Especially the very long shots where we get to watch everything in motion to include the spacecraft, planets, and our own point of view. In many of the scenes we are looking not at the spaceship itself but at the stunning backgrounds.
Overall this movie is full of stunning visuals, but lacks much in the way of a plot