This movie is five hours and seventeen minutes long, so, naturally, this movie is a lot of things: there are scenes that are absolutely amazing, scenes that are ludicrous, scenes that are needlessly graphic, and scenes that are relatively touching, but in the end, I couldn't have told you what Bertolucci was trying to say with this incredibly lengthy piece; he touches on so many themes that, in the end, they all get lost in the shuffle, and he ends up just screaming incoherently at you about times passed.
There are a few absolutely brilliant sequences in this movie, but that's not enough for me to wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who isn't a hardcore cinephile; if you are a huge cinephile, there are some moments that are worth watching. Though this film is five hours and seventeen minutes long, I never really felt bored (granted it is split up into two relatively equal parts and I took a break to walk my dog in between). Bertolucci is a good director, this film is just a bit too much of, well, everything to say much of anything at all. I know there are many edits of this film somewhere (IMDb has four cuts listed, I watched the longest one), so if you can find a shorter cut, you might have more luck with this film than I.
Review of 1900
