Pretentious pile of crap

LOL! Loved your post. I just saw this steaming pile of poo :-( The first scene where I thought the director lingered on Nicole's face a wee bit too long was when she went to the opera/concert/theatre with the fiance. How long was that take of her face? I noticed her face didn't move once (too much Botox, maybe). But then I noticed that the director lingered on Sean's face way too much, and then the Anne Heche scene at the door when Sean answers it. Could they not afford an editor???

I agree with a lot of what you have said, and while this isn't the worst movie I have ever seen, it certainly ranks right up there (or down there). For the pretentious people that will say I didn't understand it, stop right there. I got it, I just didn't like it. Leaving the camera on Kidman's face at the opera might have done something if she had shown emotion. Laughed, cried, smirked, anything. But she just sat there with the camera on her in a closeup for five minutes, no change in facial expression at all. How is anyone supposed to know she has come to some realization or has some doubts. She entered the scene just as she left it. And that wasn't the only time it happened. The camera goes to a closeup and stays there without the actor or character giving us any indication of what is going on in their heads. If this is what got left in the movie I can't imagine how bad the scenes that got left on the cutting room floor were. It was an interesting premise with a lot of promise. But too many scenes just drag on without advancing the story one bit. The scene where the kid gets in the bathtub with her was utterly ridiculous. She isn't shocked when he walks in, she doesn't tell him to get out, she lets him get naked and get into the tub with her and still waits another 5 minutes, after her fiance all but catches them, to tell him to get out. It tried to be artsy, it wasn't. It tried to make you question your own beliefs, it didn't. It tried to have some subtle poignent meaning, it didn't. All in all, interesting ideas, poorly directed, slow pace, and pedestrian acting.

Wish i read this sooner.I couldnt agree with you more.
I let my wife talk me in to watching this movie but we both agreed.Complete crap.
Doing the dishes would have been more fun.

This " pretentious pile of crap" actually makes people have to use their brains to some extent and that might seem provocative for some .
All the answers arnt handed to you and thats what makes me rate this movie 10/10. Offcourse the superb cast, score and Kubrick-feeling helps also.

Have you seen Wood Allen's movie, the one he did between Annie Hall and Manhatten. It's called Interiors. You know, critics poured scorn all over it when it came out, I HATED it at the time but if you watch it now it resonates ever so strongly that it just jumps out at you. I'm not saying I "get" "Birth" either, I saw it twice in two days because I wasn't sure if what I saw was what imagined but I LOVE the film. The music, the pictures, the colors and the performances all just worked to create the whole.

If you are not busy being born, you are busy dying.

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you know, i'm a pretty smart girl, but i really didn't "get" this movie. for a minute or two, i thought that my sensibilities were too blunt to appreciate the subtle drama of the film. and now i realize that various is right: there wasn't much to get. it was a sham masquerading as an arthouse drama. you want cool arthouse-ish drama? rent closer. or better yet---go see the play. this was one of the most pretentious films that i have ever seen (i think the woody allen films vie for the top spot). and it was utterly cliched to boot. when i saw anne heche's character bury the package in the beginning of the film, i knew exactly what was going to happen. well, not exactly....i thought that perhaps she had buried ann's diary, rather than unopened letters that she had written. but yeah, i got it, the mistress had buried deeply personal information, the troubled young man found it, and then the rest of the *beep* piles up predictably. the only thing that wasn't rote crappy filmmaking was the ending---and that's because there was no real ending. for a minute i thought she was going to drown herself in the ocean, which would have made the film a little interesting, but no, she walks down a beach and we are supposed to conclude that they'll have a marriage fraught with problems because of the number that this little boy did on them. moral of the story: if you're screwing someone's husband, and they die, don't bury intimate details of their life in Central Park.

all i know is that i just wasted two hours of my life. two whole hours. i will never get those back....

Go cry to mamma. You go on and on but all you have to say is that you didn't like the movie. Too bad for you. And announcing in advance that you know you didn't get it and that somehow that's not a valid criticism of your point of view because you know it doesn't make your position stronger. Pauses between dialogue is the ONLY specific criticism you level here.

"A great movie is one that is long on action and short on dialogue." - John Ford

Hitchcock said any good movie should be viewable with the sound off.

Sergio Leone's greatest movie was 3 hours long and contained just 15 minutes of dialogue.

But maybe you consider all great directors to be "pretentious".

"Do you realise that Otto spelled backwards is Otto?"