I'm all for imagination, and a bit of ambiguity, I love movies that range over the scale of ambiguity within acceptable "egghead cinema buff" limits. We can be tedious in our superiority complex I know. I've had a lot of fun digesting the 1000's of movies over a lifetime required to gain that title AND the patience and tolerance for that range of cinema orphans many of us hold dear in our collections. Be it B-Movie or Low Budget tolerance and being able to see the treasure in the cheaper box, or be it the high toned ambiguity of movies that range the gambit of Agnes Of God or Under The Skin, or such other movies where not everything is explained to a finite conclusion BUT, there is a limit, I don't mind being asked to interpret that surrealistic painting for my own vision of what it is, and accepting the different view of another viewer, but when both of us are standing before a canvas with 2 red dots spaced 8 inches apart and a yellow dot in the left corner and asked to tell the artist what they see....well. I could do that at home and you've brought nothing worth my time to this conversation if you know what I mean.
This movie is that canvas, a beautiful atmospheric canvas, with some red dot characters and a premise that falls short of providing enough information to interpret. There's a word that comes to mind, PRETENTIOUS, near insultingly so. If I could say one thing to the director's face, it would be, you think WAY too much of yourself and what you THINK is a clever display of your "high brow" intellect, is actually but an expose of your own shortcomings. You can come up with a premise, intriguing and even capable of holding one's attention, but lack the COMPLETE vision and ability to follow through.
This movie, unlike the MANY who play with ambiguity and intrigue, that satisfy and delight while still leaving things open to interpretation, this is a real big gun with the wrong ammo, and the misfire is a big as said gun. The ART of those kinds of films is their ability to give you enough puzzle pieces to form a picture, even if those pieces are shaped in a way that different viewers can put together different pictures in the end. Let use Agnes Of God as a prime example, was it a virgin conception?, WAS it God, Was it Stigmata, was it a field hand, what was that song she sang at the end? MY answer may be different than yours BUT the pieces of that mystery are ALL there for ALL of those answers to be possibly correct and legit explained as such. I cannot tell you anything but PURE conjecture about this movie though, there is NOTHING to back up what I just randomly decide, and put forth as "the answers". It honestly is the only movie I've ever seen out of 1000s that I legit can say, "Well, I will just say it was this" but I have ZERO legit points in the film to back that up aside from just my own conjecture that this is what this thing meant. It was beyond disappointing considering the acting, cinematography, atmosphere, and premise.. I don't think I've ever seen such a waste of all those things to end with nothing but 2 hours of wasted time (90 minutes to watch it, and 30 minutes to sit and wonder why in the world they would embarrass themselves intentionally that way in their own self-delusion that they were being high brow and "Artsy". It just really made them (Director, screenwriter, producer) look silly. Watch this ONLY if you wish to see (For some reason) the perfect way to both ruin a potential masterpiece and embarrass yourself with misguided pretention at the same time.
