Quite disappointing

Prior to seeing this film I had watched 'the weeping meadow' which i really enjoyed, and felt was (despite the audiences distancing from the main characters) highly emotionally engaging. This film however, I found to be slightly ridiculous. The dialogue was terrible in that it was too unrealistically 'poetic' (or at least tried to be), consequently creating a stifled performance from kietel and other cast members, it felt preachy and somewhat emotionally cold in some places and despite the elements of cinematic greatness, which do occur momentarily, I still found this film to be 'superficially deep' in that the poetic speeches, sweeping landscapes etc... merely resulted in a film that LOOKED poetic but in actuality was completely void of any true human depth. The cinematography and production design are the only saving graces of this rather disappointing epic.