Ashes and Snow (2005)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Fantastic!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

If you are into aesthetic metaphor in the moving image than this film is well worth viewing. The director constructs a kind of guided meditation through the use of poetic narration and symbolic imagery.The film is narrated by a man of whom it would appear has suffered some kind of crises and has thus gone to live a spiritual life among nature. The metaphor and beautiful symbolism both in word and image succeed however in making this an archetypal journey of spiritual growth.The director clearly has a keen and exquisite sense of aesthetic beauty, and the film is edited very well, the combination of which I felt thoroughly worked to accomplish not only a beautiful but a relevant and meaningful experience for the viewer.There were however a few moments where I felt certain elements had been over-stressed and sometimes this felt a little laboured. For example there is a slight over-reliance on dancing, as if the director was afraid to let the beauty of stillness occupy the screen. This sometimes results in an unnecessarily 'noisy' image. At times also the dancing appeared a little ambiguous and confused, and this I feel was a mistake caused by what seems like a loss of focus towards the end.That said however, the film is overall extremely good and I found it very moving at times. It is visual poetry and truly a work of art.

First let's state clearly that this is not a movie, neither a documentary. It's photography barely moving. I cannot give a not passing grade to this movie because it IS beautiful. However, it greatly lacks is pace and variation and many other aspects. The opening scene will leave you breathless with your eyes wide open, unfortunately it doesn’t change much throughout the movie. The narrator states emphatically at the beginning of the movie "if you follow me" meaning if you watch this movie "your seconds will become hours, your hours will become days". Well, I can't say he didn't speak the truth: the hour I spent watching this movie did feel a little like a day. The chocolaty sepia is at times beautiful, at times boring. I couldn't help thinking all throughout the movie how they tortured the poor beasts to get the admittedly beautiful imagery. To make the redundancy complete, some scenes are played more than once. The narrated text is some seemingly deeply meaningful mambo-jambo, spliced with corniness and unbearable pretentiousness. A sample of this corniness would be when the narrator says something like "at the beginning of time the sky was full of flying elephants and now they sleep in the sky with one eyed open to keep watch over us and the stars we see are their eyes" - come on! If you saw the episode in Southpark where some kids make a show called "Close-Up Animals with a Wide Angle Lens Wearing Hats", then this movie could easily be called "sepia images in slow motion of people barely clothed dancing around with elephants and other wild beasts, on Buddha-bar-like music".

What a piece of Art! a real masterpiece. That was the first thing i said after watching this film, i even paused a lot of times just to enjoy the beauty of the shot in front of me. To me; it's a film about life or the world as i would like it to be, it really takes you away from all the chaos, the traffic, the rush and all what's forming our modern life as we know it, and puts you in a piece of heaven, giving u an insight on how humans can live bound to other creatures in harmony, real harmony and how it really feels like to be free and really enjoying the beauty of this world. i so can't wait to see Gregory Colbert's new film.

I watched the movie. I saw the show (the "nomadic" museum). I can see how this might appeal to some people but to me it seemed that the animals were unwilling or unwitting participants and the spirituality aspect was contrived. The human models or dancers always had their eyes closed, as though in prayer or meditation, while putting themselves in ridiculous, often uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous situations. The music and the sepia tones created the mood but were this in color with live sounds it would be a mockery of art. Of course, one might argue that this *is* art and belief should be suspended, but some of these animals seem so distressed that it proved impossible for me to get into.I know many find this film moving and beautiful. I just found it disturbing.