This movie is visually stunning but otherwise almost completely unsatisfying. There is more full male nudity than in any other non-porn movie I have ever seen, and the casual way it is handled is marvelously refreshing; but despite abundant nudity and the theme of gay love interrupted and reclaimed, this is the LEAST erotic and the LEAST romantic movie I have seen in ages.
Every second of its over three hours is so tightly choreographed, every slightest movement so obsessively under the director's control, that it might as well be claymation. It is bloodless and cold, so cerebral that the flesh on abundant display might just as well be clay in an animator's studio.
As long as I had no idea who anybody was, how they were related to one another, and what the point of the movie was, I was fascinated just watching the people move like dancers through the fantastic sets and landscapes. But when its point began to come clear, that point was so trite that I wished it had stayed cold and confusing but fascinating to watch.
Overall, though, I'm glad I watched it, because it changed ME in a way I never would have expected. I discovered for the first time that I've spent all my life thinking of Mexico as a barbaric country full of poverty, drug lords, brutality, violence, filth, ugliness and absolutely nothing worthwhile. A country like that could not have given birth to a movie as accomplished and sophisticated as this movie is, so I'm completely overhauling my attitude toward our neighbor to the south.
Every second of its over three hours is so tightly choreographed, every slightest movement so obsessively under the director's control, that it might as well be claymation. It is bloodless and cold, so cerebral that the flesh on abundant display might just as well be clay in an animator's studio.
As long as I had no idea who anybody was, how they were related to one another, and what the point of the movie was, I was fascinated just watching the people move like dancers through the fantastic sets and landscapes. But when its point began to come clear, that point was so trite that I wished it had stayed cold and confusing but fascinating to watch.
Overall, though, I'm glad I watched it, because it changed ME in a way I never would have expected. I discovered for the first time that I've spent all my life thinking of Mexico as a barbaric country full of poverty, drug lords, brutality, violence, filth, ugliness and absolutely nothing worthwhile. A country like that could not have given birth to a movie as accomplished and sophisticated as this movie is, so I'm completely overhauling my attitude toward our neighbor to the south.