written and directed by one duo, and produced by another (the Russo bros, who made Captain America: Civil War, and Endgame). telling a complicated story is relatively trivial—anyone can do it, it just takes perseverance; and millions of dollars is a good incentive. it does, however, require a greater degree of intelligence and artistry to put together a genuine synthesis of thematic / narrative content, and visual form, which this film does accomplish while also telling a complicated story. i don’t mean to be the most pretentious prick around, but it’s telling that in this day and age, it takes a duo to pull this sort of thing off. this is basically Endgame, but instead of adapting some comic book bullshit, it was based on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
there are ideas at the heart of this, even if they are not the most complicated versions of those ideas. the experimental cinematic elements are, yes, undeniably pop-flavoured; but they are still successful in establishing a recognizable, popular rhythm (Endgame)—and then bringing it to another level that audiences know a film like Endgame could never rise to. in a jam packed, humongous auditorium, with a crowd hanging on every beat, sequences like the rocks. as well as the constant montages, are have a palpable effect. the film is undeniably successful in presenting its subject matter to a mass audience. again, the level that it rises to might not be as experimental as we might like; it might simplify Nietzsche’s sublation of nihilism in order to fit it into the narrative, but the film is deeper and more cinematically experimental than most other films, while also being funny and popular.
minor things that bothered me: they spent way, way too long in that office location. that was annoying. i also thought there could have been more work done to integrate the relationship conflict between yeoh & her husband character, with the primary conflict between yeoh and her daughter character. the resolution of the primary conflict overshadowed that of the secondary conflict to the extent that i’m having trouble recalling just how it was even accomplished. for maximum scriptwriting points, you would have to integrate the two conflicts so that the primary mother/daughter conflict depended on the resolution of the husband/wife conflict.