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I'm a plot man myself. You know, A story, B story. even C story, but this film tried to have A - Z stories, which in my mind didn't quite work. Like a fabric, often a film layers multiple yarns to reach a stitched cloth. On first viewing, discounting the extraordinary poly-charactered performances, this cloth did not sew the pieces together enough for me, to make it a yarn worth spinning.

There are brilliantly disparate performances by this ensemble, notably from Doona Bae, whose androgenous sexuality is hard to dismiss (50 shades of Lena Wachowski?). Wonderful make-up, scenery and CG components that are capturing, but this film for me lacked an arc; and that may be because this film has no central heart.

We are asked by the film makers to suspend disbelief, without serious character analysis and journey.

We are instead asked to suspend a story arc in favour of a possible link in lineage, time and face. Face, because while we see the same characters play such disentangled roles, there's not a lot of structure to link one character, plot or emotion to another.

So what am I to think? I sure do need to watch this film again - to which I might write a completely different critique, but on first viewing this is, as was the Matrix 2 & 3, far too high a hurdle to jump, and far too wide a chasm of story for me to hold this film up as archetypal or game changing.

I fear I just want to say wtf?

I shall watch it again, and leave you to disseminate a film far in scope but potentially short in answers.

Shocking. Ham fisted, vaudevillian and heightened, the auteur intrusion denied any chance of caring for anyone. Some great crew on this too.... Mandy Walker as DOP must have really had to trust director Baz with such appalling continuity and realism. Some of her wide shots were inspiring but the insistence of lighting the CU's with such full light - in the supposed middle of the harsh desert, was just jarring. Chris Godfrey, as SFX supervisor must have really had to trust Baz's urging to allow such obviously poor matte paintings and poor composites. Even the lens focal lengths between plate and foreground were out of kilter. Obviously Baz's homage to poor FX of the 1930-40's. I was expecting see little clay-mation monsters pop onto the screen a la JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, circa 1950s. Oh Baz oh Baz Oh Baz. The story the story, the story. We must at least be thankful that David Lean is dead so he didn't have to witness such obliteration of the The Epic. What a shame.... There goes the neighbourhood.

I saw this film on the end of Austin Powers' 'Spy Who Shagged Me': and thought it was going to be a hard act to follow. But THE EXTRA proved to be a sharply honest account of a talentless film extra's hopeless attempt at acting. Told by the Director to simply "be in a coma", the hapless character buffoons her way to a squirmish new low of acting.

I had to ask myself whether this was real or not.

It's brilliantly underplayed and oh so embarrassing!