Pretentious "cinematic" crap

Rating: 1/10 (5 July 2004)

It happen a couple of times every decade. A director with more money than sense decides to make a movie without the tedious encumbrances of a story. No awkward plot resolutions, no "continuity" nuisances. Just a disconnected series of short scenes, acted with an air of great intensity or drama.
And, guess what? When you make a film without a story or continuity... nobody can figure out what's happening. You wouldn't think this would be a big surprise.
This "film" almost looks as if someone took bits of film from some unsuccessful, uncompleted project and deliberately cut them so as to obscure the story line and hide the fact that the story never resolved.
The result, of course, is a piece of crap.
Sophisticated cinema devotees do not wish to admit that they have no clue about they are watching. They do not seem to notice that the director, having nothing to say, has managed to say nothing. As long as each three-minute scene is acted with drama and intensity, the film becomes a Thematic Apperception Test, and some viewers will project their own story and emotions into the empty motion and noise and praise the movie they have just seen... a movie which exists in their heads and not on the screen.
The usual adjective for this kind of film is "cinematic."
The last time I was this annoyed with film was the time I went to see "Last Year at Marienbad" with a friend who insisted on staying until the end.