Linda Lee

The movie was rich in visual beauty but I looked for a plot and never found one. I waited in vain for story arcs to develop as characters appeared and disappeared for no reason at all, like the token white ally native. There was no resolution or recourse to any problem presented, from racism to deforestation. For a character study, we're given rough sketches of a man, not a detailed potrait. The movie's overall message seems to be, life will have trauma, tragedies, and if one is lucky enough, a few glimmers of hope and happiness, all in exchange for playing a small part in the grand scheme of things. The ending is abrupt and not reassuring or uplifting in any sense. The narration out of the gate breaks the most basic rule of storytelling, show not tell. Many of these problems could be owing to basing a feature lenghth screenplay on a novella.