I agree that the film is a little disjointed - things like the very long karaoke scene (what an awful song) I found tedious and unnecessary, but rationalised to myself that the director was trying to create a lighthearted, falling-in-love-and-life-is-so-sweet kind of atmosphere - something I think was done more successfully in the scenes of the couple at the movies, in the forest, etc. This almost lulls you into a false sense of security, though the temple scene foreshadows the dramatic shift in mood that comes with the latter part of the film. The jungle scenes are powerfully spellbinding, both visually and aurally, with their long spells of darkness and almost complete absence of dialogue and they, I believe, make up for any inconsistencies in the earlier part of the film. I saw this in the afternoon, and emerged from the darkness of the cinema and the jungle feeling absolutely intoxicated. I will never forget the tiger's face in the darkness - psychedelic and haunting.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Appalling!
7 February 2005
While the film has one redeeming feature, namely some striking shots e.g. the shot of the sheep hanging from the tree, the scene of the funeral procession on the raft, or the scene of the boats leaving the village (which seemed influenced by the scene when the warships approach in the fantastic "Fellini Satyricon"), these were more photographic than cinematographic, and would have been better appreciated hung on a wall in an art gallery than embedded in a painfully slow-paced film that comes in at a whopping 162 minutes and suffers from terrible dialogue, extremely poor character development, over-acting, uninspired symbolism and heavy stylisation. This is the first film I have seen by Angelopoulos, and his reputation having preceded him, I expected a lot better, but can honestly say that this is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I won't go out of my way to watch any of the director's other work in the future. The four friends I went to see it with agree.
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