literally begins with a closeup of a womens face who is singing for 2 minutes (timed it, its 2 minutes) before the movie really begins
this should be shown in film schools as a shining example of style over substance
awful film, boring and pretentious does not even begin to describe it
I agree that the movie is pretentious, but I actually rather enjoyed it. I found the story somewhat compelling and didn't catch myself looking at my watch despite the two-hour-plus running time (until the final, awful concert scene; I fast forwarded through that).
I thought the acting was uniformly good (even Paul Dano was bearable) and some of the minor characters -- the mountaineer, the teenaged masseuse, the silent couple -- were oddly arresting. And even though there was an overload of pretentious shots, they were mostly quite brief, just long enough for you to say "oh, what pretty camera work" before getting back to the actual story.
And yes, as many critics pointed out, the "insights" on ageing were none too original, but as someone who just turned 60, I still found them worth contemplating.
7/10