story

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2013)

I'm a plot man myself. You know, A story, B story. even C story, but this film tried to have A - Z stories, which in my mind didn't quite work. Like a fabric, often a film layers multiple yarns to reach a stitched cloth. On first viewing, discounting the extraordinary poly-charactered performances, this cloth did not sew the pieces together enough for me, to make it a yarn worth spinning.
There are brilliantly disparate performances by this ensemble, notably from Doona Bae, whose androgenous sexuality is hard to dismiss (50 shades of Lena Wachowski?). Wonderful make-up, scenery and CG components that are capturing, but this film for me lacked an arc; and that may be because this film has no central heart.
We are asked by the film makers to suspend disbelief, without serious character analysis and journey.
We are instead asked to suspend a story arc in favour of a possible link in lineage, time and face. Face, because while we see the same characters play such disentangled roles, there's not a lot of structure to link one character, plot or emotion to another.
So what am I to think? I sure do need to watch this film again - to which I might write a completely different critique, but on first viewing this is, as was the Matrix 2 & 3, far too high a hurdle to jump, and far too wide a chasm of story for me to hold this film up as archetypal or game changing.
I fear I just want to say wtf?
I shall watch it again, and leave you to disseminate a film far in scope but potentially short in answers.