Siberia

A strange film that explores the mental landscape of a man struggling with his devastating memories. The filmmaking is of variable interest and boredom points its nose a little too often. Abel Ferrara has a lot of energy and inspiration but does not provide great intensity or great precision of filming here to make up for the lack of a real narration. The camera moves at times in a rather crude way. Dazzling beauties are scattered throughout the film. For example, a very good editing point where Clint (Willem Dafoe) perhaps sees himself entering a room. Madness lurks. You have to take it as a particular trip, not as a very mastered work, and then it becomes an interesting experience beyond the flaws.

If my dreams would be that boring, I would simply stay awake till I get some real trippy stuff going on in my mind. Verdict: pseudo-artsy-intellectual movie that achieved mainly one emotion in my soul: boredom by torture (if this of course was/is the aim of writer and director, they did well). Some introspective scenes including some nudity and violence don't make something good by itself, and even Mr. Dafoe's acting skills could not save this movie for me - and I really like some of his more experimental and trippy movies like The Lighthouse (2019, also directed by Abel Ferrara) or Antichrist (2009, Lars von Trier).

In his attempt to film dreams, Abel Ferrara shows a nightmare. Although the images of Willem Dafoe in a remote and frozen place visited by characters he doesn't understand, are mysterious, the hallucinatory journey becomes confusing. Based on the active imagination that Carl Jung showed in "The red book," this representation of the dream world feels scattered and somehow more ordinary than it would have us believe.

And appropriately I fell asleep halfway through. I did wake up eventually and watch it all but only with a few cups of coffee to keep me going. I usually love Ferrara and thought I could watch Dafoe in anything. This tested that theory to destruction. Oh there are some excellent scenes but on the whole it's just so soporific. Maybe it's all that snow..............................

Siberia is art, in photography, in directing. People expect to watch a fiilm of good drama told by a mainstream artist. Those ones don't know Ferrara's universe. It's plenty poetry in it!

If you love Bela Tarr's movies or Tarkovskis, or LYNCH's you should watch that. Really powerful and intense poetic, don't try to find a plot, don't go and sit in front of it like you are watching a peaceful drama, because it is not. It is poetry, it has some stunning visuals, sound, OST, Willem Dafoe is allways a tremendous actor.

Run to watch it and you decide if you like it or not. But if you are finding a, plot and a "normal" Movie, avoid it.

Only for those ones who want to go more away than cinema can't (metafisic cinema). Really a cinematic experience, more in the way of MALICK. Really engagging to senses.

7 Stars out of 10.