Brady Corbet's third feature is undoubtedly his most ambitious, bound for awards season glory. But the longer this breathtaking epic runs, the more it reveals its frustrating, unmistakable flaws.
Hmm. I thought this was one-half of a classic film. But it sputters and dies at the end. It's like they ran out of money and ideas at the three-and-a-half-hour mark. I thought maybe they were hamstrung by the facts of real life characters and legally couldn't fully tell what happened. When I found out it was all fiction I decided that they owed us a comprehensible finale.
“the film itself is far too easy to grab hold of. It’s thematically dense yet narratively compact”
“Part 2 puts perceptibility into the shredder”
You could say these ideas conflict, but great call I felt that way too. There’s a simultaneous richness and superficiality at work. It’s like the movie has idea-blue-balls. A grandiose convalescence of high and low brows, themes, plots, moments, all swelling up…and then staying that way. And we are left with a (pretty impressive) lure to give interpretation and impart some meaning unto a text which might be in need of it.
Hmm. I thought this was one-half of a classic film. But it sputters and dies at the end. It's like they ran out of money and ideas at the three-and-a-half-hour mark. I thought maybe they were hamstrung by the facts of real life characters and legally couldn't fully tell what happened. When I found out it was all fiction I decided that they owed us a comprehensible finale.
“the film itself is far too easy to grab hold of. It’s thematically dense yet narratively compact”
“Part 2 puts perceptibility into the shredder”
You could say these ideas conflict, but great call I felt that way too. There’s a simultaneous richness and superficiality at work. It’s like the movie has idea-blue-balls. A grandiose convalescence of high and low brows, themes, plots, moments, all swelling up…and then staying that way. And we are left with a (pretty impressive) lure to give interpretation and impart some meaning unto a text which might be in need of it.