After I saw "Pomegranates" I looked very much forward to seeing this film. As others have commented, it is visually astounding - the entire work. It is also very foreign. The film takes place in the Ukraine and the language is Ukrainian, the action taken from folk stories occurs centuries before in a culture as foreign to the Western European mind as if it had been shot in the Far East with little attempt to explain it as it rolls along. I am a professional performing musician and one of the valuable lessons I've learned over the years was that the public can take only so much "foreigness" in an artistic work before the brain tunes it out - or shuts it down. The sound track was the culprit here where crying became wailing and bawling, singing became intoning at best or screeching and people tended to scream rather than talk with each other. It was a very loud track and became unpleasant and over-stressed with little interruption. The noise in itself was absolutely exhausting. True, these were unfamiliar times with unfamiliar people and unusual instruments and music, but as I mentioned above, the mind tunes them out, whether we like it or not.
Curtis Stotlar
Curtis Stotlar