shocking

Rating: 1/10 (9 March 2006)

The only reason I can understand people would give this such a high rating is because they think that a slow pace and lack of dialogue means art and deep. It is not. As a film studies teacher i've watched films with slow narrative, in fact many of my favourite films are slowly paced but this is snail like and its all over the place. It jumps from some kind of documentary shot (hand held running through yet more grass) and ambient sound to another beautiful shot of our main female character wearing a Vivien Westwood cut dress (was it fashion for native Americans to wear off the shoulder animal skins or 3/4 crop tops in 1608) Its awful. Go watch crash, Capote, walk the line, sideways even batman begins for modern Hollywood, this is dreadful. Its like watching a 10hr Calvin Klein or Tommy advert, i kept expecting them to whisper "eternity by Calvin Klein". There are some great shots but then not as good as many other films that have a fully explored plot depth and content. If you want deep and sexual frustration watch lost in translation. I can't think of another film that tries to be such an epic and fails so bad maybe water world....but even that film is better. For all those that keep saying how this is an art film, maybe try peter Greenaway, if you want to be visually stunned especially prospero's books, or the cook the thief his wife and her lover. This isn't art; its Hollywood trying to do subtle, and it doesn't work. An art film is not just something that looks pretty it is supposed to challenge the audience, the only challenge here is to sit all the way through.