when i watched this i felt like i had to settle into a different world, old japan with villages, bandits, swords and lots of mud. so much time is given over to smaller moments, conversations that serve no purpose except to make you sink deeper into the world. over the course of the movie, each location begins to feel like a real place.
this isn’t a grand movie with grand themes, and isn’t a massive 207 minute rise and fall epic like…
a melancholy and haunting painting. a girl gets lost in the marketplace, half-born, so close to the path to the palace. it’s the feeling of taking a wrong turn, then suddenly you enter a world that you don’t understand. it’s cyclical - the original story in poland, the crying girl at the TV screen, the repetition of nikki/sue/the girl’s husband, the rabbits. it’s impossible to determine for certain what is real - is laura dern’s character a figment of the…
