Utterly Craptacular!

Rating: 1/10 (31 January 2006)

Malick is true to form in this, his latest and greatest cinematic offering. I have chosen to award this film with the most symbolic rating, a 3. Three. Let us pause to reflect. Three is the way the thesis meets the antithesis and becomes synthesis! Three is the way the liminal is whole, becomes separate seeker, and is reintegrated back into society! Three is the highest, most representative and appropriate rating I am willing to give for such a mewling, self-indulgent, disjointed and pretentious piece of crap of a movie since the Thin Red Line. Oh wait, Malick did that one too. Imagine that. Visually stunning, careful and methodic. Malick brings a poet's sense of tone and a philosopher's pointlessness to his audience. Oh, no, it's not that I didn't "get it," or thought it was overlong or boring. Quite the contrary. I knew exactly what I was watching chapter/verse, metaphor/meaning, as I would know the repeated beating of a Powhatan war club to my brain. Who were the Powhatan? Well, you wouldn't know by watching this movie that's for sure! No, while the movie was mytho-historically, culturally and in all other ways mundanely accurate, it was to my way of thinking a near total waste of celluloid and low, low expectations. Did I say totally meaningful and overly creative at the expense of cohesion and story content? If you are looking to see some amazing actors and wasted talent, beautiful imagery and beat-you-over-the-head artistic form for the already pretentious - please go see this movie. I don't hate this movie. Really. How could I? I gave it a three.