This is in many ways a beautifully photographed and acted film, but fails in its quest to achieve any kind of meaning or significance.
The film attempts to show that we are all intimately connected and our lives interwoven no matter where we live on the planet. Unfortunately, pretty much all the events in the film are driven forward, not by the influence of distant events but by seemingly random by individuals in the film. Characters who have shown that they are reliable and are in positions of trust suddenly start behaving in stupid and dangerous ways for no apparent reason.
Worse, the supposed interconnections between the stories are often slight and imbued with happenstance rather than any sense of tragedy or inevitability. One segment--the Japanese story--is so detached as to be pretty much superfluous and could easily be deleted from the movie.
I can sort of see what the makers wanted this to be, but unfortunately they never got beyond the stage of good intentions.
The film attempts to show that we are all intimately connected and our lives interwoven no matter where we live on the planet. Unfortunately, pretty much all the events in the film are driven forward, not by the influence of distant events but by seemingly random by individuals in the film. Characters who have shown that they are reliable and are in positions of trust suddenly start behaving in stupid and dangerous ways for no apparent reason.
Worse, the supposed interconnections between the stories are often slight and imbued with happenstance rather than any sense of tragedy or inevitability. One segment--the Japanese story--is so detached as to be pretty much superfluous and could easily be deleted from the movie.
I can sort of see what the makers wanted this to be, but unfortunately they never got beyond the stage of good intentions.