I rarely criticize. But I find this piece completely overdone. It's like every shot is intended to promote critics to say "beautiful cinematography" or "so symbolic".
It would be one thing to include visual references once in a while to universe, spheres, continuum, death/rebirth, etc. But truly, I find all this is so overdone it's simply patronizing.
All the shots within symmetrical architecture, the references to circles, all the visual mathematical patterns which try to be symbolic of it's theme, it's like someone designed this just to provide fodder for a dissertation abstract.
This is what's wrong with the New Age: All this effort to be intense, meditative, conceptualizing the spiritual cycle of life/death/growth/rebirth, references to ancient failed religious cultures and civilizations, etc. It all becomes Kitsch (loosely defined these days as an attempt to over-sentimentalize and communicate canned spiritual platitudes through digital quasi-religious imagery in an attempt to be philosophical, profound and intense).
The problem is that this sort of imagery, which is rampant in computer graphics these daze (the lotused guru centered in the explosion of enlightened universal nebulous self/god discovery, etc. etc.) is completely anti-art, anti-emotional, anti-intellectual, not even based in reality of revelation of any kind, just visual pablum, like something you find on a greeting card or CD cover in a scented store in Woodstock, with no genuine human fallibility, funkiness nor truth to any aspect of human reality (nor even spirituality).
True he fails to cure her in time, but his extremely over-acted tearful intensity, the vague crutch-like references to history, religiosity, spirituality, it just all seems so contrived, posed, and for lack of better words, patronizing.
True the skill and presentation is amazing, but this is not new. When craft completely outstrips content, this creates a phenomenon called "slick".
This is a very slick, overwrought attempt at extracting applause for visual brilliance and spiritual profundity, but in the end becomes just a perfectly blended, photo-shopped faux-philosophical platitude, like some poster or card with some deep introspective quote or other from the Dalai Lama, (except no Buddhist could ever be so shallow and predictable).
I find I resent all the Catholic and other religious references, just more effort to add contrived intensity to an already canned theme.
It's also as if the movie can't transcend any of it's points, but just states them over and over and over, attempting to make a hypnotizing mantra-like dream about spirituality, life, death, fragility of life, the continuum, etc. but rather than stating it once, or subtly, it fairly beats you over the head with endless perfectly framed symmetrical shots of every symbolic reference it could muster.
This kind of thing is better done in one image, one frame, a post-card which you are free to toss or file or forward, but not something which you have to watch over and over and over for hour after hour, as if you didn't get it the first time.
This is exactly how you make something which could and should be really deep into something cheap, sentimental and silly. This is how you do Kitsch. I for one cannot accept Kitsch without camp. To take oneself as seriously as this movie attempts to do is nothing but, I hate to say it, bad taste.
Excuse me while I go rinse the stevia and wheat-grass from my teeth, and purge my nostrils of the bad incense and uncrimp my knees from the absurd pose of enlightened philosophical faux-religiosity the imposed lotus-position of contrived spiritual and emotional profundity has self-flagellated me into. So sorry guys, you worked hard, but this is just a bunch of extremely well-done schlock.
It would be one thing to include visual references once in a while to universe, spheres, continuum, death/rebirth, etc. But truly, I find all this is so overdone it's simply patronizing.
All the shots within symmetrical architecture, the references to circles, all the visual mathematical patterns which try to be symbolic of it's theme, it's like someone designed this just to provide fodder for a dissertation abstract.
This is what's wrong with the New Age: All this effort to be intense, meditative, conceptualizing the spiritual cycle of life/death/growth/rebirth, references to ancient failed religious cultures and civilizations, etc. It all becomes Kitsch (loosely defined these days as an attempt to over-sentimentalize and communicate canned spiritual platitudes through digital quasi-religious imagery in an attempt to be philosophical, profound and intense).
The problem is that this sort of imagery, which is rampant in computer graphics these daze (the lotused guru centered in the explosion of enlightened universal nebulous self/god discovery, etc. etc.) is completely anti-art, anti-emotional, anti-intellectual, not even based in reality of revelation of any kind, just visual pablum, like something you find on a greeting card or CD cover in a scented store in Woodstock, with no genuine human fallibility, funkiness nor truth to any aspect of human reality (nor even spirituality).
True he fails to cure her in time, but his extremely over-acted tearful intensity, the vague crutch-like references to history, religiosity, spirituality, it just all seems so contrived, posed, and for lack of better words, patronizing.
True the skill and presentation is amazing, but this is not new. When craft completely outstrips content, this creates a phenomenon called "slick".
This is a very slick, overwrought attempt at extracting applause for visual brilliance and spiritual profundity, but in the end becomes just a perfectly blended, photo-shopped faux-philosophical platitude, like some poster or card with some deep introspective quote or other from the Dalai Lama, (except no Buddhist could ever be so shallow and predictable).
I find I resent all the Catholic and other religious references, just more effort to add contrived intensity to an already canned theme.
It's also as if the movie can't transcend any of it's points, but just states them over and over and over, attempting to make a hypnotizing mantra-like dream about spirituality, life, death, fragility of life, the continuum, etc. but rather than stating it once, or subtly, it fairly beats you over the head with endless perfectly framed symmetrical shots of every symbolic reference it could muster.
This kind of thing is better done in one image, one frame, a post-card which you are free to toss or file or forward, but not something which you have to watch over and over and over for hour after hour, as if you didn't get it the first time.
This is exactly how you make something which could and should be really deep into something cheap, sentimental and silly. This is how you do Kitsch. I for one cannot accept Kitsch without camp. To take oneself as seriously as this movie attempts to do is nothing but, I hate to say it, bad taste.
Excuse me while I go rinse the stevia and wheat-grass from my teeth, and purge my nostrils of the bad incense and uncrimp my knees from the absurd pose of enlightened philosophical faux-religiosity the imposed lotus-position of contrived spiritual and emotional profundity has self-flagellated me into. So sorry guys, you worked hard, but this is just a bunch of extremely well-done schlock.