Unduly long, nihilistic and just plain stupid

Rating: 1/10 (29 August 2010)

This film was excessively long. It somehow missed the editing process altogether, for if anyone had actually taken a serious look at the camera time given to the entirely unappealing--if not repugnant--and nearly still image of the shriveled old lady (Cate Blanchett) dying in her bed, they would have discovered that, lo and behold, fully one-quarter of the movie is wasted on a single shot. I honestly think that if this film had been submitted as a final project in an editing class at film school, the student would have failed the class.
Nowhere was I drawn into the story so as to be able to sympathize with the characters. On the contrary, I actually came to wish for the death of the mumbling old lady with ashen face, quivering lips and intolerably irritating pseudo-southern accent, because she was literally boring me to tears. Never was I given any reason to believe that any of the random and disconnected scenes involving various and sundry arbitrary people had any importance whatsoever. In a final flourish of nihilism, the film ends with the depressing message: "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" or, perhaps more to the point: womb to tomb. I disliked this really annoying and pointlessly epic film immensely. The only way I could even make my way through it was by dividing it into three parts. Even then, each hour was a form of slow torture by boredom. To make matters worse, this monstrosity is filled with cheap sentimentality and shallow, trivial "insights" on life--a veritable compendium of banality and pseudo-philosophizing. Very, very bad.
There was a single creative concept here, but the execution was so egregious as to veritably extinguish that small spark of creativity.