With a script that has the maturity of a first year college rumination about meaning and life, this catatonic film shuffles like arthritic legs. If only it had been half as long it might have had made the endurance lighter for all.
The characters and the premise are faintly lifted from Thomas Mann's 'Magic Mountain', as seen by Peter Greenaway, with all the arch cleverness and consequent life taken from it because it lacks intellectual agility. It is mediocrity aspiring to be grand and deep simultaneously. The movie title itself anxiously announces that intention. The paradox in this context is a cliche.
The dialog is deliberately stilted, artificial, and as such, this heightens the effect of portent and significance but is an adopted gesture of such superficiality as to strain the attention and interest of a viewer.
And the grist of the narrative is a quasi Bergman reckoning of family happiness and enmity. It's triteness and source material are evident and make one return to the original rather than waste time with this third generation copy.
The characters and the premise are faintly lifted from Thomas Mann's 'Magic Mountain', as seen by Peter Greenaway, with all the arch cleverness and consequent life taken from it because it lacks intellectual agility. It is mediocrity aspiring to be grand and deep simultaneously. The movie title itself anxiously announces that intention. The paradox in this context is a cliche.
The dialog is deliberately stilted, artificial, and as such, this heightens the effect of portent and significance but is an adopted gesture of such superficiality as to strain the attention and interest of a viewer.
And the grist of the narrative is a quasi Bergman reckoning of family happiness and enmity. It's triteness and source material are evident and make one return to the original rather than waste time with this third generation copy.