I'm sorry, but this is a failure. In all fields.
First of all, it is immediately obvious that this film was based on a book. From the first minutes you FEEL that the script is not constructed as it should be if it were created with "film language" in mind. The "conversion layer" is so present that you simply feel it in the pacing, in the narrative structure, in the dialogue, and especially in the staging - scenes without vision or deeper conflict seemed to me more like visualizations of paragraphs filled with repetition and descriptive dialogue, rather than visual storytelling sequences. It's a book CONVERTED into a movie. Not ADAPTED.
Secondly, the film is full of nonsense in terms of believability. The characters just behave stupidly and chaotically. The question remains - is it the writer's, director's or actors' fault? I suppose that unfortunately the script and direction failed - actor just did what they were told to do. The things we see on the screen may have been described in a book in a credible way, supported by psychology and a better introduction, thus being considered probable while reading. In other words, such nonsense could be considered believable in a book. But in the movie - where we SEE things, not IMAGINE them - these women just act like children. Period. Not once, not twice, but many times. And - what is even sadder - almost always at pivotal points of the history. So almost all dramatic events shown in the film are the result of... completely senseless decisions of the characters.
After 25 minutes into the film I just gave up, lost all hope. Because by then it was already quite clear that these behaviors will not be explained to me in any mature way anyway. Grown women acting like children. In the forest. That's all. Maybe if the director had found better staging ideas... maybe if the scriptwriter had written these scenes a bit differently.... But it's quite the opposite - many, many, many moments in the film feel completely amateurish not only in terms of the believability of the characters, but also the tension, tone, and rhythm of the story.
Thirdly, the keys to great mysteries stuffed into the plot do not meet expectations. There are three timelines shown in the film, and each of them has its own set of secrets to discover, which - as a bonus - are slightly intertwined between the timelines. It's. A. Mess. If I'm counting correctly, there are 7 to 10 major questions in this story that need to be answered in three timelines. And all of them are revealed almost by accident and leave the viewer... unimpressed firstly by the way they are resolved and secondly by the banality of themselves. Everything here is... A Force of Nature, I suppose. But this approach to storytelling requires some reinforcement, some foundation to make us believe that the narrator is deliberately trying to emphasize this thread, this underlying theme and thereby show us something significant, something hidden between the lines. Here - we have the impression that the meaning of the film, the tone and the message are just another accidents.
First of all, it is immediately obvious that this film was based on a book. From the first minutes you FEEL that the script is not constructed as it should be if it were created with "film language" in mind. The "conversion layer" is so present that you simply feel it in the pacing, in the narrative structure, in the dialogue, and especially in the staging - scenes without vision or deeper conflict seemed to me more like visualizations of paragraphs filled with repetition and descriptive dialogue, rather than visual storytelling sequences. It's a book CONVERTED into a movie. Not ADAPTED.
Secondly, the film is full of nonsense in terms of believability. The characters just behave stupidly and chaotically. The question remains - is it the writer's, director's or actors' fault? I suppose that unfortunately the script and direction failed - actor just did what they were told to do. The things we see on the screen may have been described in a book in a credible way, supported by psychology and a better introduction, thus being considered probable while reading. In other words, such nonsense could be considered believable in a book. But in the movie - where we SEE things, not IMAGINE them - these women just act like children. Period. Not once, not twice, but many times. And - what is even sadder - almost always at pivotal points of the history. So almost all dramatic events shown in the film are the result of... completely senseless decisions of the characters.
After 25 minutes into the film I just gave up, lost all hope. Because by then it was already quite clear that these behaviors will not be explained to me in any mature way anyway. Grown women acting like children. In the forest. That's all. Maybe if the director had found better staging ideas... maybe if the scriptwriter had written these scenes a bit differently.... But it's quite the opposite - many, many, many moments in the film feel completely amateurish not only in terms of the believability of the characters, but also the tension, tone, and rhythm of the story.
Thirdly, the keys to great mysteries stuffed into the plot do not meet expectations. There are three timelines shown in the film, and each of them has its own set of secrets to discover, which - as a bonus - are slightly intertwined between the timelines. It's. A. Mess. If I'm counting correctly, there are 7 to 10 major questions in this story that need to be answered in three timelines. And all of them are revealed almost by accident and leave the viewer... unimpressed firstly by the way they are resolved and secondly by the banality of themselves. Everything here is... A Force of Nature, I suppose. But this approach to storytelling requires some reinforcement, some foundation to make us believe that the narrator is deliberately trying to emphasize this thread, this underlying theme and thereby show us something significant, something hidden between the lines. Here - we have the impression that the meaning of the film, the tone and the message are just another accidents.