Y-a-w-n-n-n

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2006)

If you want a REAL soporific movie, go see Terrence Malick's latest. He has this obsession with photographing water and sky, preferably against the sunlight, so the color is washed out, i.e. bad Technicolor. He's also got the cliché beloved by arty cinematographers: the gigantic moon, bigger than you or I will ever see it, unless we launch into outer space . Whether it's Guadacanal or ole' Virginy, Malick lets his camera drift on and on. He must figure he's creating a significant pastorale reading of history, but in effect it's plain boring. It would help us viewers if the dialog were louder than the musical track. I suspect that Malick distrusts speech and would feel more comfortable making silents. The music track borrow shamelessly from Wagner's Rhine music from his "Ring". Appropriately, it never resolves itself into exciting drama the way Wagner wrote it.