No start middle or end. Very poor. What was the point of this film
Cinema Paradiso ..... Why make me write over 100 characters to say how poor this is?
Pretentious self conscious and very dull.
Poor attempt to replicate french cinema style in Hollywood, or wherever it was made.
Pretentious self conscious and very dull and repetitive
Pretentious self conscious and very dull and repetitive
Pretentious self conscious and very dull and repetitive
Pretentious self conscious and very dull and repetitive
I did ask myself after a while, perhaps I was not in the right mood to watch this. Yes its roots appear French style in nature but for the American market. Acting was wooden, un-natural by the leading lady. So after a while and having jumped further into the film to see if it got better, decided to remove the disc and return asap. Sorry to all those involved in making the movie, but would not recommend to someone. Instead, put your coat on and go for a walk!
As an outspoken enemy of all things Terrence Mallick has ever had any affiliation with (most notably the Tree of Life) I was somewhat loathe to watch to the Wonder; however I thought must remain professional and as such sat down with an open mind.
What followed was a disjointed and clichéd romance with religious overtones that seem to lead into nothingness. I could not help but picture a long and tedious car journey that ends with a slow decline into a vast open space – not one lush with possibilities but barren and void of defining features. Whether it was the romance story or the religious subtext, or perhaps a combination of the two, either way this is yet another Mallick film I could not recommend.
Ben Affleck stars as Neil, an American travelling Europe who meets Marina (Olga Kurylenko Quantum of Solace), a Ukrainian single mother living in Paris with her daughter. Their courtship is brief and portrayed through a number of predictable set pieces and montages depicting the couple in any number of clichéd romance settings, and reaches a head when Neil ask Marina to relocate to his home in Okalahoma with her daughter.
Soon after their arrival in the States things begin to go south for Neil and Marina, Neil finds himself drawn back to an old flame and Marina finding comfort in the company of another lost exile, Father Quintana (Javier Bardem). From this point the couple drift apart and the space between them begins to fill with religious quandaries regarding Quintana’s crisis of faith and the Catholic responsibility felt by Marina regarding her daughter and her relationship with Neil.
The links between the first two acts of the film, the courtship and relationship of Marina and Neil to those of the film’s latter third and Father Quintana’s crisis of faith are not only tenuous but seemingly non existent. Though symbolic images of God litter the earlier parts of the film they are muted, lost in the fragmented portrayal of romance and ultimately ineffective by the film’s conclusion. Alongside this the character’s themselves are little more than paper shapes, cut to resemble their more memorable counterparts from more obvious Hollywood tripe.