Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie is really odd. I saw this movie when it previewed in Dallas Texas at the AMC movie theaters, Shelly Duvall was there in person. . A very nice lady. After the movie ran, she walked to the front of the theater to talk about the film. The host or interviewer said 'I have a question, Shelly? What was that?" She looked very embarrassed and said " Well, i guess this is the kind of movie you do for experience.' Yeah. as if this seasoned actress needs the experience. anyway I felt sorry for her as she was being told what the audience had experienced was a very strange film that was not all that great. All i have to say is there is a lot of beauty in the film, though it is kind of odd. i didn't really like or dislike the film. It was sort of a fairy tale gone to mars or something.-Thanks.-

There's a blood vessel that pumps between the selves we drive through the day and the incubus we nourish, a creative self (perhaps cocreated by a love), relatively unconstrained, who we promise ourselves we will birth some day.The most sublime art is what we imagine that young, more unfettered mind imagines. Its why we live, a large part of it, I think.This is the domain Maddin has decided to explore. Its a sort of Joycean commitment, a raw commitment to dreams less shaped than usual by borrowed items and fed by distilled urges in blood. Small surprise that these don't fully resonate; its supposed to be strange, strange in disturbing ways.I like the fact that this goes on too long. It has to go on long enough to plainly state that you are not a tourist, instead you've unknowingly entered something you can never really leave.In its general shape, it is "The Tempest" meets the "Sarrogossa Manuscript" visually flavored by Max Parrish.It has dreams within dreams and as they shift different controlling or dreaming minds move to the foreground, even a statue (us). There are sexual enchantments, shifting from honesty and deceit, knowing and manipulated. There's a Prospero and a Miranda, a Bloom/hunter who dreamhunts.I think if you are serious about self, then you will be about film and that will lead you to Maddin and eventually to this. It isn't his most virile vision, but you can sure see what's going on. And that's worth something.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Spoilers perhaps.This is a wonderful movie that plays like a poem. The color is strong and overbearing. The situations are odd and dreamy. The characters are Fellini-esque and lovely.The DVD commentary on this film is very information and heck, I just like to hear Guy Maddin talk. His idea of metaphor like when the shovels are hovering by the girl's head in one scene is both sick and funny.If you like interesting directors like Lynch, The Brothers Quay, Cocteau or Hitchcock, Maddin is the guy for you. I have a goal to watch all his films, both long and short. I am so addicted to his work, I am so surprised to find only a few comments here about this film. Maddin should be more known!I love his use of older technique and Victorian/silent movie values with a modern twist.

This surreal fairytale setting and the campy dialogue doesn't sustain for a full 90 minutes. You are swept away during the first half on heavy soft filtered images with exploding colors but soon come to shore as the movie winds down, getting us all ready for bed.