Pompei - Eros e mito

Missed opportunity. The modern cutaways are embarrassing and totally unnecessary. Wrong presenter and wrong director. Some of the footage of the city are great but the closeups of the speakers and the attempt to make it arty are overindulgent and not sophisticated in any way. Great subject matter that has been covered before in better ways, so not sure why they bothered and who funded and why Isabella Rosallini to present it. Maybe sounded good at a meeting but rubbish in practice!

I think this is a really interesting take on a documentary. We truly don't know everything about a society from thousands of years ago regardless of how many texts and artifacts are found. However a volcano happened to preserve nearly an entire town and we get a glimpse into the life there like no other site on earth. This documentary expands upon that and takes a more artistic approach into depicting the culture. This documentary is definitely not for everyone as it's quite unique and brings in a lot of artistic elements that one doesn't normally see in a standard documentary. I would say this first artistic cut aways of a Pompeiian myth is quite unnecessarily long. I had to check if I was watching the same show still.

At 8:33 into the so called documentary, a dreamy scene of actors walking through the woods and insufferably lasts for about 5 minutes. The movie is only 1:21:01 which means that the first reenactment scene is 6.2% of the movie. First of all, this is not a reenactment becauae how could it be?... Second, it's not the last of these unnecessary fictional scenes in the documentary. This is followed by footage of people talking about Pompeii myths/stories for the next 3.5 minutes. This means that over half of the first 16 minutes of the video is showing everything but scenes of Pompeii.

At one point there is even a group of men dressed in American football uniforms standing in the same forest scene as modern depictions of gladiators. There are also couples dancing in modern clothing in the forest.

When they are showing actual scenes of Pompeii, half the time the camera is focused on the narrator from indirect views that often show only the sky with Isabella staring into the distance away from the camera. The movie is less of a documentary and more of an interpretation of mythology and assumptions of the people who once lived in Pompeii.

It's like the director was a student of Godard but didn't get noticed by anyone of significance , so they turned to documentary film and infused endless unnecessary and distracting views/framing into the supposed documentary. I don't want to discredit the director for their attempt to make the film more interesting, but it doesn't work with the subject. I hope they have found more meaningful film work that is conducive to their personal cinematography aesthetic.

There is some worthwhile info and footage in the film, but it could've been condensed into 30 minutes. They definitely wasted money on paying Isabella to narrate this and be filmed for it. It would be just as good and potentially better with some unknown museum curator, Pompeii academic, or archaeologist narrator. But good for her. I'm sure it was fun to make and get paid to do so.

Yes, unfortunately I watched the whole thing. I am perplexed at how terrible it is. Film students should watch this as an example of what not to do: garbage.

This poorly constructed and trite expose of focuses on the mythology of the Gods worshipped by the populace and skims over the architecture and artworks on the walls of the buildings. It is made more excruciating by reenactments of the Gods by actors in modern dress in a forrest setting for a extended periods in the movie. I was expecting something totally different as there must be a great deal of research and scholarly evidence that could have made this a much more impactful event. All it all this was a total waste of time and should be avoided as it represents a romantic and dull view of the SIN that the occupants were supposed to have indulged in.

Could have been a good doc but it's focus is more on style than history.

A lot of talking heads talking about stuff you are likely not so interested in.

I wanted to see the ruins and learn more about that. NOt some wall paintings and a bunch of academic types debating the meaning.

In all I was rather bored. Especially since this clocks in at nearly 90 minutes.