Great on the technicals

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2016)

The production quality of this film is amazing: Locations, conditions, editing, acting. It's a slow film, and conveys emotions. It takes you into another world with crisp details and beautiful camera work.
The flip side is that it leaves you feeling... empty? At least not satisfied. Definitely not happy. This is a hero's journey, but he doesn't reach redemption. He seeks after something, overcoming adversity(!!) at every step, on sheer grit alone. But in the end he reaches his goal, and you don't feel happy for him. It's hard to watch a movie 2.5 hours long with the spanning visuals and locations- you literally become part of the trip- and then not feel good at the end. And the rub is that because it's such a BIG feeling film, the at best neutral finish, or at worst negative finish is multiplied 10-fold. It feels like a downer. It feels pessimistic.
Again, there are plenty of positives to the film and I'd still recommend it, but it's a hard journey to go on just for the sake of seeing it.