It's so hard writing about a movie that almost everybody decried as unwatchable and not sound pretentious. Actually, I'm not gonna even try to explain it. It would be like trying to explain "life". When you go past all the narratives that you use to filter the world, the "earth" itself is not explicable. What on this "earth" is comprehensible if you are really honest with yourself?
There are things in this movie that are hard to get. When something is hard to get, it means it requires thought. What happens when thought comes up against something inexplicable? ( First of all you don't trust the ratings and figure it out on your own. You excuse the darkness and see it with new eyes.
To say a few words about Ethan Hawk's appearance in this movie, I would say it's like Ferrara's appeal to the spectators: "Come and watch this movie even if it was for a big movie star but take something away from it". Unfortunately,however, we keep "hearing what we already know and as a result nothing new happens".