| Art for the sake of art - not for the audience |
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| written by emdoub |
October 26, 2012 - 4:39 PM PDT |
Acclaimed by critics and film buffs alike, this is remarkably unwatchable. The pace would have to be doubled to make it all the way to leisurely, the dialog is remarkably inane, the characters have no depth, no apparent motivation for their actions, and no apparent notice of the characters around them. Long, pointless vistas of barren landscape are apparently rave-worthy cinematography.
Bring a book to read - the occasional glance at the screen is all you'll need. |
| A Mute Point |
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| written by RJones3 |
February 25, 2009 - 9:25 AM PST |
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2 out of 4 members found this review helpful
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| This movie has won the general acclaim of critics, so why do I hate it? I think the main problem is the writing of Sam Shepherd. Shepherd knows how to impress the critics, but he does not know how to write dialogue. The main character is conveniently mute for the first twenty minutes of the movie. It is eventually revealed that he suffered a traumatic marriage breakup four years before, but the missing four years remain a mystery, even after his brother protests with the movie's only obscenity. Some of the most poignant speeches of the movie are directed into a voice recorder for later use by the interlocutor. Symbolic perhaps of the modern failure to communicate? Or simply a lazy way to forward the action? Even when characters are talking to each other, one is usually revealing his/her inmost thoughts while the other prompts with one-word questions. The speeches are dragged out to such length that at one point I thought my DVD player had broken down. When there is no real interaction between characters, the logic of the dramatic action suffers. That leaves the question of whether the final resolution makes sense, or whether it raises more questions than it answers. Critics love ambiguity. |
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