A beautiful disaster.

Rating: 2/10 (4 December 2017)

It is difficult for me to reconcile how staggeringly beautiful this movie is - how enchanting the setting and framing it is, how classically inviting the filmography - against how dreadful and wholly unsatisfying this movie is. It's an incredible blend of heavy-handed, studio-forced expository asides and pointless vignettes that fail to identify or even pursue stakes.
No one in the film matters. Nothing that happens matters. I have no idea how this was accomplished in such totality, when such incredible care was undertaken to capture the textures of the train car walls.
That it is also a vehicle for the career rehabilitation of the career of Depp, most recently of violently abusing his wife, makes me hugely regret having given this mess money. Find a copy of the brilliant 1974 version with Albert Finney, and enjoy a proper treatment of this grand tale.