I've seen this movie before you're not gonna catch me again. A high metascore with an arty director and a low budget. Those ten minutes told me all I needed to know = more concerned with being artistic and unusual rather than mainstream entertainment.
I used to work in a video store a long long time ago and this would be one of those movies that we'd only get a handful of copies of in. One row on the new release shelf at most.
Squares like you still have shitty Netflix movies to watch. Why did you even bother with something beyond your comprehension?
shareI agree with the OP that it’s dull, but I reject your excluded middle fallacy. There is a lot of middle ground between impenetrable, soporific artiness like this (or a more extreme example like TREE OF LIFE) and lowest-common-denominator mainstream fare. Said middle ground includes stuff like ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, or even FIRST COW (which is very far from mainstream but features compelling characters and a comprehensible narrative).
shareThe Tree of Life is a masterpiece. It was on every list of best of the 2010s
shareThose lists were wrong. A critic I like, Slate’s Stephen Metcalf, had a great jibe about that film: “It’s like a two hour AT&T commercial.”
shareThere were major critics who saw that the emperor has no clothes in TREE OF LIFE. Wesley Morris, Kenneth Turan, Rex Reed, and Stephanie Zacharek all panned it.
sharei feel movies like the green knight ask something of you. you have to meet them half way, put some effort into your watch: you have to maintain focus and have patience.
& i'm happy to do that when i think that effort is rewarded. here, i think it was highly rewarded.
i certainly don't want to watch movies like this all the time, but i'm happy that movies as good as this are around when i'm in the mood for them.
I don't disagree with much of your assessment: high on "art" and low on "mainstream", but that's not a problem for me.
I had a rich experience with the film, and I found it quite engaging. It's a really great "hero's journey" with a protagonist who kinda humanizes the mythology, and it's an interesting take on the epic poem.
The visuals, sound, and atmosphere were also top-level, and the strange, fantasy world was haunting.
So, for me, it was a great journey and gave me lots to think about and ponder after the fact.
If that's not your bag, cool.
Is being "non-mainstream" bad, though?
To switch a movie of after ten minutes implies that no effort has been made by the viewer. It weakens any insight that their opinion may have held. It's barely enough time for the opening credits to finish rolling.
share+1
shareHow long do you consider sufficient? Life is too short to stick with every movie all the way through if it’s not holding your interest.
shareI can't speak for the other guy...
But there's absolutely nothing wrong with dropping a movie because it's not holding your interest. Life is indeed too short. Any amount of time is sufficient for that to decide not to put any effort.
But if one doesn't put any effort, one shouldn't pretend to have any opinion or know anything about the movie.
I think you can be allowed a certain right to an opinion, far more than someone who has seen none of the film. To fail to engage the viewer in the first ten minutes is a significant knock against a movie, no matter what occurs thereafter.
share