Highly skilled, challenging, and full of brains and heart

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2014)

The film's technical merits are without exception. Most predominant is that the whole movie feels like one long sequence shot, from about minute 2 until nearly the end. There are disguised cuts, and the movie finds moments to settle down the camera to contrast the movement. But the orchestration of actors, the re-framing of the camera, and the support of crew outside the frame, are nothing short of phenomenal.
The film's artistic merits are easy to see in the performances, design and composition, but harder to puzzle out emotionally/intellectually. They rely partly on multiple ambiguities, and the audience will need to do some broad-view thinking about life and art to really crack open the movie. For all of this, I would not say that the merits are so rarified that they should push away anyone who wants to see a challenging movie. They are hard to crack, but not because you really have to understand all the references.