Seriously. This is the worst movie I’ve seen all year. It
might be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my 58 years on Earth. I
watched and watched, start to finish, I wanted to find something I liked about
it. And when the end credits rolled I found nothing to like. Yes the
cinematography was well done but that’s about the only nice thing I can bring
myself to say.
Know this going in: there is no plot. This movie is a series
of random acts with a single character as the focal point and that’s about it.
I had to look up the credits at imdb.com to find out the name of the main
character. By the way it’s Rick and he’s played by Christian Bale.
So in trying to piece together what I watched, Bale is a
scriptwriter (at least I think he is) who goes from one spot to another, to
parties, to clubs, to the streets of LA, to the beach. He gets involved with
various women who accompany him from one location to the next where he then
encounters another and leaves the first behind. He is robbed, he is beaten, he
waxes poetic about his life. But nothing happens. I know part of this is just
me. I like a film to tell a story, to have a narrative that moves me from point
A to point Z, a journey that takes me from one spot in a story to a finale.
This film does nothing like that.
Director Terence Malik has been hailed as one of the most
artistic directors of his time. Great. Fine. I loved THE TREE OF LIFE. I
enjoyed THE THIN RED LINE and THE NEW WORLD. TREE also didn’t use the straight
narrative that most movies do but at least it had a form to it, a beginning, a
middle and an end. This movie just feels like we dropped into the midst of
nothing happening and went through nothing.
I read reviews of this movie and some have summed it up
perfectly. One said that it was a 2 hour commercial for nothing. I felt that
exact same way. Then I read others where people were discussing the depth of
the movie using terms that felt so pretentious I felt as if whoever was writing
them was doing so not to give an honest review of the movie but to make
themselves appear as if they were deep thinkers. Those type of people tend to
be full of themselves and always trying to rise above the rest of us poor
cretins who simply want to be entertained or told a story. They find
psychological meanings in something as simple as how one holds a spoon or fork
while eating. They contemplate their navels as if the secrets to the universe
can be found there. In short in an attempt to appear wise and knowledgeable
they refuse to tell the Emperor that he’s not wearing any clothes, instead
discussing the finery of the material he is wearing instead.
Yes I watched this movie all the way through. It was a
struggle. At least twice I found myself dozing off so I backed the movie up to
the last scene I remembered and started it there again. By the end I was angry.
Angry that I had taken up over 2 hours of my life to watch this film. Angry
that I had been duped by the marvelous movie that was THE TREE OF LIFE into
believing this movie could possibly be as good. It was the furthest thing from
it.
This was the sort of movie that people who found the Andy
Warhol film EMPIRE to be an artistic masterpiece. If you don’t know the movie
was over 8 hours of a static camera shooting the Empire State building. This
movie is as boring but different in that it never sits still. The camera is
always moving. If you suffer from motion sickness I implore you, steer clear of
this film.
I watched the extras as well, few of them that there were,
and discovered another item to make explain why this movie was so bad. Malik
didn’t always give the actors dialogue to speak. He basically set up the
situation and told them to come up with their own, to speak as the character
they were playing. Of course the actors ate this up and felt that he trusted
them to bring something to the project, that he provided them with the creative
freedom to be a part of this artistic endeavor. Note to all actors: there is a
reason you are an actor and not a writer; there is a reason why you are hired
to perform the words that are written for you rather than to write the
screenplay. The fact that many of you say some of the most ridiculous things
when a microphone is placed in front of you on the red carpet should be a clue
that creating dialogue is not your forte. Stick with acting, let a writer make
you look good.
This piece has gone on too long. From the movie I watched
there is more written here than there was to this movie prior to it being
filmed. I don’t hate Terence Malik for making this movie or for robbing me of 2
hours of my life. But the next time I see his name attached to a film I will
think twice before watching it. The fact that the movie never received a major
release that I’m aware of becomes obvious after watching it. While movies made
by business executives concerned only with the bottom line and the chance to
build a franchise make me ill this is the other end of the extreme, a movie
made to represent artistic endeavor while offering nothing for the majority of
film goers out there. Had I paid $10 for a ticket to see this movie I would
have been arguing with the manager afterward. This is a move that people should
be paid to watch and even then they would be ripped off.
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