Trang Le

finally got around to watching this after 1 whole year. back when this was first announced, i could barely contain my excitement about the film. i could not make it to the cinema myself throughout its official broadcast period, and was so eager for it to be uploaded online at the soonest. all the buzz and hype around the movie, those rave reviews that streamed in unceasingly, altogether built up my sky-high expectations of the movie. such a big letdown it turned out to be. to give credit where it's due, its aesthetic elements and repertoire of scores are splendidly executed, and could've perfectly set the right mood for each scene they accompany. but i feel its a little too ambitious on the director's part to condense the entire length of the novel into a duration of 2 hours. the film successfully narrates the events unfolding in the original novel, but it does so in such a slapdash manner. in order to pack all the events into the narrow space of a movie's length, it skims through the events with little done to flesh out and do justice to each scene/event. transitions between scenes/events feel abrupt, character development sketchy, emotional depths not yet captured in full. esp the first half of the movie which flashed through my eyes like a beautiful montage but left little imprint on me. that being said, i'm still smitten by the film scores and every attention to detail shown by the producers to make the film stay true to the original book. in a way, they have successfully breathed life into characters and scenes that were previously only static texts.